Lots more people are beginning to get it on food rights. They are coming to understand they cant look the other way when regulators try to intimidate farmers on trumped-up charges. They are beginning to appreciate the importance of becoming directly involved in fighting the assault on private food arrangements. Most important, they are realizing the necessity of standing up to regulators who bob and weave on what is and isnt allowable on food availability.
These are a few of my take-aways from a couple days spent at the Mother Earth News Fair in Seven Springs, PA, where I was a speaker. I gave two talks based on my book, Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights, and I was impressed by not only the interest in my talks (150 people filled up the room for one), but the enthusiasm, along with questions and comments afterwards….along with the whole tenor of the fair, which is a huge celebration of farming, gardening, and sustainability.
When I described at one of my talks how Michigan hog farmer Mark Baker convinced a judge to let his case go to trial, the audience burst into applause.
How do we get the word out about all these injustices? asked one man during the question period.
What is your outlook for the next five years? asked another. Will we make gains, or is it hopeless?
To that last question, I had to hedge. There have been a number of negative outcomes. But there have also been some very encouraging signs of people coming together in support of food rights. And I heard from two examples at the conference.
One young couple came up to me after one talk to tell me how they had been hassled over possible zoning problems in connection with their farming activities in Michigan. When they invoked the Michigan Right to Farm Act, which is designed to encourage sustainable farming and reduce nuisance charges, the officials backed off. While the matter hasnt been completely resolved, and the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund has been providing the couple with advice, they told me they were encouraged to learn that knowing the laws can be so immediately helpful in making officials hesitate.
I was also approached by a woman who is involved in the ongoing conflict over raw milk in Illinois. She explained how raw milk supporters have been confused by seemingly contradictory actions from the states Department of Public Health, and were wondering if they should challenge state officials on what seemed to be backtracking and double-talk.
I wrote about the power grab by the Illinois Department of Public Health earlier this year. Following my blog post, raw milk proponents felt as if they made some progress in meetings with regulators–a number of seemingly arbitrary new rules were taken off the table….or so the advocates were told.
Then, in a meeting a few days ago, presto, the arbitrary rules were back on the table. Its all done in a very officious way, with lots of paper shuffling and reference to lawyer concerns and so on, but the intent is clear: bob, weave, confuse….and deceive as much as possible.
The raw milk supporters have decided to continue to challenge the Illinois regulators rather than meekly give in, as Donna OShaughnessy, an Illinois raw dairy farmer, explains well in this blog post.
As I was leaving the conference late Saturday afternoon, I bumped into Mark Baker, who had conducted a hog-butchering lesson at the conference. I told him about the applause from the crowd when I mentioned his case at my talk. Its very uplifting, he told me. People are beginning to get it.
Yes, people are beginning to get it. At least one lesson is clear: As much as possible, the official efforts to isolate and eradicate small farms selling food privately must be challenged. As I ask in an article in Alternet, where else in the world, besides Cuba and North Korea, is the government so abusive toward its farmers and their food?
at < www.radicalpress.com > see accounts of the astounding travesty underway in New Brunswick, where a judge sent farmer Werner Blok away for a psych. evaluation. Pourquoi? = for no other reason but that he doesn’t go along with the Central Party line. Ergo, ‘he must be nuts, right?’ This is a profound example illustrating what I keep saying about ‘having the true measure of the enemy’.
No mere co-incidence that Michael Schmidt & friends have been similarly framed-up for “farming without a permit”
but not to despair : as an antidote, read what Wilhelm Reich taught re “the emotional plague”. “Plague-y people” / govt. control freaks, go to pieces and slink away when enough “sunlight”, ie “publicity” is shone upon their wickedness
Gordon,
Yes, you are certainly correct about Canada. I guess in my mind, Canada gets lumped in as part of the U.S. Maybe not literally a colony, but certainly of a similar mindset with regard to food regulation, cultural attitudes toward agriculture and food, and private access to food.
Do not forget the October 8th Chico State RAWMI raw milk training day. It is free to all and promises to be a gathering of all sorts of information gatherers. The RSVP list reads like nothing I have ever seen. Sparks have just united with the fuel and the magic appears to be the demonstrated ability ( and track record ) to reliably produce low coliform raw milk when a plan is used. This is really going to be fun and very constructive.
res·o·nance
noun \?re-z?-n?n(t)s, ?rez-n?n(t)s\
: the quality of a sound that stays loud, clear, and deep for a long time
: a quality that makes something personally meaningful or important to someone
: a sound or vibration produced in one object that is caused by the sound or vibration produced in another
Full Definition of RESONANCE
1
a : the quality or state of being resonant
b (1) : a vibration of large amplitude in a mechanical or electrical system caused by a relatively small periodic stimulus of the same or nearly the same period as the natural vibration period of the system (2) : the state of adjustment that produces resonance in a mechanical or electrical system
2
a : the intensification and enriching of a musical tone by supplementary vibration
b : a quality imparted to voiced sounds by vibration in anatomical resonating chambers or cavities (as the mouth or the nasal cavity)
c : a quality of richness or variety
d : a quality of evoking response
At least I managed to push the thing right into the absurd = Mister Justice Randall Wong was mentored by the Red Queen, in Alice in Wonderland. After cogitating all summer – deciding how far I am willing to ‘push this particular envelope’ – I said to me-self : “I may be 64 years old, but I’m still flexible. I can change gears”. So I’m ‘going around the mountain, rather than dig through it with a teaspoon’. In Canada, it’s perfectly legal to make cheeses from raw milk, if they’re aged 60 days. See my crowdsourcing pitch on indiegogo, for a new cowshare, supplying local cheesemakers, in the Vancouver BC area, with REAL MILK
< http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/acacia-dairy/x/3435208?show_todos=true >
Great approach, a cow share to supply milk for 60-day-aged cheese. Should work.
/spæm/ Show Spelled [spam] Show IPA noun, verb, spammed, spam·ming.
1.
Trademark. a canned food product consisting especially of pork formed into a solid block.
noun
2.
( lowercase ) disruptive messages, especially commercial messages posted on a computer network or sent as e-mail.
noun \?nän-?se-kw?-t?r also -?tu?r\
: a statement that is not connected in a logical or clear way to anything said before it
http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/news_wp/?page_id=8687
This debate is framed in a strangely narrow way. We should all oppose CENTRAL government labeling. The way this is set up looks to obscure Salatin’s position, which seems to be against all labeling. Meanwhile Mercola’s going to support the federal pre-emption scam?
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/09/the-case-for-banning-internet-commenters/279960/
“So this got me thinking: Popular Science has officially shut off its comments section, pointing to research showing that disagreeable comments hurt the reading experience.”
Ah, wrong in so many ways. Head back in sand.
Another funny thing…is how the word ‘spam’ is now used in a derogatory way!
I really encourage all of the drum beaters to think about what builds real progress. In my book real progress is based on two things: low risk raw milk and market building. That means teaching raw milk and nutrition and it means production of raw milk under good standards. Over time this model has been proven beyond any reasonable doubt to be the solution to any regulator, or big Ag mettling in our freedom or our access. With low risk raw milk they have absolutely nothing to bitch about and we wear no target on our backs as we feed our people. Teaching raw milk is still a protected freedom. It is work but it works great. If any one wants to free up their raw milk freedoms try this: 455 RAWMILK educational presentations in 4 years. Trust me it works and you will not go to jail for teaching about raw milk. Our first amendment rights are still very much alive and well….we just need to use and utilize them. You teach….you teach…you teach. Still the greatest raw milk revolution tool in the box.
Dr oz definitely supports high quality raw milk…no doubt. With the recent Arkansas raw milk access laws passing now the experts start to chime in and the wave that has turned into a tsunami in CA has now broken across the nation.
You must ask yourself….if raw milk did not have some real benefits, why would the good people of Arkansas demand a new law that allows access to raw milk? At some point…all the medical pros will start to turn and align with raw milk because they do not want to appear out of sync with progressive thinking.
Next week I attend the UCDavis International Milk Genomics Consortium conference in CA. Scientists from all over the world will be attending. I will ask the hard questions and see what kind of guts they have to speak up about raw milk. Their work is funded by Big Ag, but I know their research is very supportive of raw milk and its benefits. This could be the crux of change.
Most interestingly….RAWMI has not been in contact with anyone from Arkansas but our standards are being used to produce high quality raw milk. This is wonderful and exactly what RAWMI envisioned. Set a high standard, explain it…demonstrate its effectiveness and others will follow. In the end being LISTED by RAWMI is great, but it is even greater when farmers LIST themselves and “just do it…cause it is right”. This really warms my heart!!! The credit goes to our LISTED farmers who used their farms as a demonstration project to show the world that very low risk raw milk can be reliably produced if you have a plan. The track record and the data is crystal clear. So clear that the model and web published plans are being emulated.
In a word…awesome!!!!
“Theyre calling for the legalization of raw milk. They are asking for the right to have whats called herd-share or cow-share operations in B.C. so that people who want to drink raw milk would be able to access it without doing something that is illegal.”
I was actually disappointed in how the politician put it. Not just disappointed, thought she didn’t know what she was talking about in regards to the right we had.
I actually believe that we haven’t lost the right to share a herd. Anyone can own a cow, or a herd. Sharing ownership of anything is far from illegal. On the other hand, the problem is that the totally ban on the sale of raw milk targets the herd-share manager like Alice Jongerden. I have never yet seen the court in BC officially hearing private herd-share ownership agreement as an evidence in BC. If I remember correctly, the BC court has avoided allowing the defendant to explain how agister is privately contracted to take care of someone’s herds and not selling to the public. I also haven’t heard from consumer’s point of view how Canadian and BC laws that totally ban the sale of raw milk is infringing on the most fundamental human right of access to food of their choice. The law does not illegalize the purchase of milk. So from the consumer’s point of view, we need to make a clear distinction from the seller’s right and demand that the government change the law to stop infringing on their basic right.
Going back to the seller’s position, I think we should explicitly ask the BC government to regulate the sale so that producers can meet the need of the people in a safe manner possible. Regulation is inevitable in BC because the government boldly put a label on raw milk as hazard. Yet the health officials let public members continue with their risky habits of accessing hazardous material. The Fraser and Vancouver Coastal Health Authority should and ought to know that about 500 households of former Home on the Range share members didn’t just disappeared when they added a law that said raw milk was a health hazard. Tobacco is regulated. Alcholol is regulated. Many other hazadous materials are all regulated. When a person buys a weed-killer at Rona, he can’t leave the store until he is given a specific instruction and warning by a qualified store personnel. Regulation again. I’m not personally fond of regulation. I’d rather do it small, local and private. But for the provincial scale and people who’s far away from small rural community, regulation is the only way to assure safe and accessible raw milk.
As far as food right issue is concerned, it is such a fundamental requirement that we have no choice but to keep government in check and challenge them as much as possible and coming from a place of awareness and perseverance.
Lastly, my goal has been to just do what RAWMI farmers have done. To demonstrate to the people that it can be safely and professionally done, whether it be very small micro scale or small but not that small scale. The officials here are warming up their seats and not doing their job to search for ways to assure safety of raw milk. So why not we do it before they do, so that it will compel them to get their bottom off and get to work. In that sense, being proactive may be one of the best ways to challenge the government.
Russ, we’ll have to wait till the debate to hear the actual positions. But my sense is that Salatin is expressing caution about inviting the government into another area of food production and distribution. He may want to let producers do their own labeling, encouraging the marketplace to do its work–over time, those producers that make sure to use non-GMO ingredients will likely attract more buyers than those that don’t. But, again, I haven’t spoken to Salatin about this, so I am inferring, and may be off target.
At the Mother Earth News conference last weekend, a number of people questioned me about the GMO problem. There was some trepidation about the laws being passed (in VT and CT, I believe) requiring labeling. Not because people don’t want GMO foods, but because of concern about increased regulation, and wondering if there might perhaps be a better way.
All this is why I tell people never to view labeling as a panacea. Those who implicitly call it such are really trying to keep anti-GMO activism fenced in, in typical liberal fashion. Just look at the California campaign, designed by “professionals”, designed as a disposable “election”-type campaign, designed to fail. From that point of view, GMO labeling is supposed to be another version of the “co-existence” scam. That’s why Whole Foods, Gary Hirschfeld, and others are trying to hijack the labeling movement, because they were caught out badly before their customers in 2011. I predict that if the state-level momentum continues to build, perhaps if Initiative 522 in Washington passes, there will be another coalition of industrial organic and the government, this time with Monsanto’s support rather than its veto, to put through a federal-level scam “labeling” policy.
But as far as labeling being “increased regulation”, government regulation has already built industrial agriculture and food in the first place. It’s absurd to suddenly take fright from a minor tweak which is supposed to rein in one of the worst abuses, the criminal secrecy and deception about what’s in our food. In the same way that anyone who shrieks about raw milk but cares nothing about GMOs or subtherapeutic antibiotic use in CAFOs has zero credibility as far as caring about food safety, so anyone who bristles at GMO labeling but doesn’t seem to mind Big Ag subsidies, globalization treaties, patents on plants, corporate “rights”, and so on, has zero credibility as far as caring about government regulation, since industrial agriculture could not exist other than as a planned economy project of big governments.
As for Salatin’s position, I’m basing my knowledge of it on this piece he wrote last year.
http://flavormagazinevirginia.com/rebel-gmolabeling/
I strongly agree with most of this (including rejection of “Just Label It”, which is run by a former Big Ag cadre and wants to misdirect activism to seeking central government policy). But it’s bizarre that Salatin characterizes as a “government intervention in the food system” a ballot initiative (the closest thing to real democracy we have in this kangaroo electoral system) which comprises the people seeking to force government to do something against its will. Like I said, I don’t think government can be so forced, and therefore labeling campaigns will serve better as organizational vehicles than as things which will achieve much in themselves.
But no one who believes in democracy can disparage the people fighting to seize one of our fundamental rights, our right to transparency, especially where it comes to our food.
(Besides, I’d say a ballot initiative is far less of a “government intervention in the food system” than the assertive big government program of certifying certain organizations as “corporations”, yet Salatin has seen fit to avail himself of this big government subsidy and regulation and make Polyface a corporation. I guess his faith in “self-empowerment” and “extricating government from food transactions” only goes so far.)
Or,
IDK, maybe he changed suddenly…?
& Flavor Aid gave me the willies!!
Ora, can’t believe you’d let a little needling get to you in such a major way that you’d just take your ball and go home. Maybe on Facebook, where everyone always lovey dovey that might happen, but not in this boxing ring. 🙂
These numbers come directly from a resent CDC report on a cucumbers, salmonella outbreak. Isn’t it a typical example of what the CDC passes off as a so call out break of foodborne illness.
1. Illness; diarrhea and not cancer, heart disease, osteoporosis, lactose intolerance etc. Aren’t these what the public would naturally assume the state is referring to when they say illness?
2. Food; only agricultural commodities and not canned food, cakes, cookies, candy, soda, chocolate milk etc. They are totally ignoring the really toxic foods that make up the majority of our diet. They actually have us afraid of spinach and sprouts, two of the healthiest foods on the planet.
3. Outbreak; 73 cases in 3 months, while the nearly 300 million other cases of diarrhea in this country are not even acknowledged. The average American gets diarrhea 3 times a year. There was no evidence to show that these 73 cases were actually caused by salmonella.
4. Association; cucumbers, because 67% of the 45 ill interviewed ate cucumbers while only 44% of the well people surveyed ate cucumbers and not because of any actual Salmonella contamination found.
5. Blame; 2 Mexican producers because 6 of the 45 ill interviewed eat their cucumbers and not because of any actual Salmonella contamination found.
1921–The Black Wall Street
For two days, up to 10,000 whites stormed the prosperous Tulsa neighborhood of Greenwood, also known as “Black Wall Street,” killing at least 300 people and destroying 35 blocks and more than 1,000 homes, businesses, churches and a hospital.
Historians believe the death toll may have reached 400. Some Blacks believe the numbers were even higher and say some victims were buried in mass graves.
Specific survivor accounts and documents tell of turpentine bombs being dropped from planes, the dragging death of a blind Black beggar, the shooting of an unarmed Black surgeon and escapes by women and children who were taken in by a few whites outside the city.
Commission members said primary resources about the assault were deliberately destroyed by members of the Ku Klux Klan, many of whom were also among Tulsas elite and respected community leaders.
On November 18, 1978, Jonestown
“With the liberation movements of the ’60s and ’70s, the collapse of the black-power movement, the Peoples Temple was the main institution in the San Francisco Bay area that promoted a message of integration and racial equality.”
Jones ingratiated himself with celebrities and politicians, mobilizing voters to help elect Mayor George Moscone in 1975 and becoming chairman of the city’s housing authority.
Dr. C. Leslie Mootoo, the top Guyanese pathologist, was at Jonestown hours after the deaths, and, refusing the assistance of U.S. pathologists, accompanied the teams that examined the bodies. His conclusions? Dr. Mootoo found fresh needle marks at the back of the left shoulder blades on 80 to 90 percent of the victims. Others had been shot or strangled. A surviving witness stated that those who resisted were forced by armed guards to comply. Dr. Mootoo’s opinion, and that of the Guyanese grand jury investigating Jonestown, was that all but three (only two of which were suicides) were murdered by “persons unknown.”
There were 800 or more people seen by reporters in Jonestown only a week before and the 408 bodies counted afterward by the Guyanese pathologist and teem.
The final total was changed to 913.
In spite of the money, time and effort spent, we still dont know why, or even how, the people in Jonestown died.