I was explaining to a friend yesterday that the federal government in the form of the U.S. Department of Agriculture continues to allow a multibillion-dollar food corporation to sell product, even after its chicken has been associated with hundreds of illnesses, many caused by pathogens that are resistant to conventional antibiotics.
He didnt believe me. Im sure the chicken has been recalled, he said. No, I explained, it hasnt. Nor has the producer been shut down.
Well, something must be going on so the chicken isnt being sold, he concluded, hopefully.
No, nothing. In fact, NBC News, Food Safety News, and others are reporting that the USDA has approved the companys promise to fix whatever was causing the serious illnesses–no recall or shutdown, or even an apology, required.
I find this kind of reaction from people I know–generally enlightened people who consider themselves progressive thinkers–pretty typical. When I explain that two-thirds or more of the chicken sold in supermarkets has long been contaminated with salmonella or campylobacter, they shrug. When I express outrage that raw milk and raw milk cheese that hasnt made anyone sick is sometimes confiscated, discarded into landfills, and the producers closed down amid cries that they be tarred and feathered, these individuals look at me like I am crazy.
I can tell what they are thinking: The chicken must not be a threat, and the raw dairy products must be a problem. The government scientists must know something that I, in my zealotry, am not telling them.
The fact that big corporations control the food marketplace and dictate to government officials what is allowed and not allowed has come to be accepted by most people as part and parcel of the system. Whatever the excesses of the corrupt relationships, they console themselves, surely the government wouldnt allow big corporations to sell food that makes people sick. This is the U.S.A., after all, with the worlds most modern food, health and medical systems in the world!
I shouldnt be so cynical. Ever more people are coming to see through the lies and flocking to local farms for as much of their food as possible.
Besides, its not just a matter of corruption. I have come to appreciate that theres more to the whole story than government officials being bribed by corporations (disguised as campaign contributions). You see, bribes or no bribes, our politicians are loathe to worry about or crack down on such clearly dangerous practices as indiscriminate dispensing of antibiotics to farm animals, and the creation of new resistant pathogens that result.
The reason? Cheap food. Our rulers cant acquiesce to the reality that wholesome safe food costs more to produce than the garbage our large corporations churn out. You see, cheap food has turned into one of the greatest panaceas for our rulers since sliced bread, quite literally. And conversely, privately available food direct from small farms, often more expensive than the factory food because the prices reflect the higher costs of producing a wholesome product, are suspect, and come under official attack. Indeed, the growing popularity of small-farm-produced meat, eggs, and dairy is a reminder to those who run our public health establishment and the big factory farmers that serious reform of our factory system and the mass dispensing of antibiotics and hormones would cost many billions of dollars, and result in higher food prices. That can’t be tolerated.
Since the end of World War II, when big corporations introduced such “advances” as mass produced pesticides, animal antibiotics, and powerful planting/harvesting/processing equipment, our rulers have become huge fans of the cheap food that resulted.
Until that time, political rulers everywhere always had to worry that famines, pestilence, or wars, would lead to widespread hunger. Now, at last, they had found the key to keeping peoples stomachs full. They weren’t about to let it go. People with full stomachs, even full with food of questionable quality, are much less likely to pile into the streets and revolt than people with empty stomachs…..no matter how bad the politicians’ other excesses might become.
Theres more. Politicians may not understand economics too well, but they do understand that the less people spend on food, the more they have to spend on cars, furniture, and entertainment, thus growing the GNP.
That is why genetically modified (GMO) food, if it comes through on its promise of improved yields and lower prices, will be welcomed with open arms by our officials, no matter how serious the concerns about long-term safety. If the end result is more low-cost food, bring it on.
You can be sure of one thing: as more people get sick from new antibiotic-resistant pathogens as well as GMO foods, our politicians and the scientists who work for them will only be pulled kicking and screaming from their addiction to cheap food.
Now you know why Foster Farms didnt have to worry even a little that its chicken production line would miss a beat.
My point is that this is the education public health, medical professions, veterinarians, so called scientists get from grade school on up. They buy it hook line and sinker – they actually believe it. I listened to a young farmer testify at a public hearing for WI raw milk bill; he told how he grew up on a dairy farm and drank raw milk, that he was fine doing that. Then he said he went to college for a degree in agriculture and learned how dangerous raw milk was and he stopped drinking it. Now he works for a conventional dairy farm and is vary much against raw milk. He went to college and unlearned everything real life taught him, that’s sad.
These are the people who are influencing our law makers and they are easily manipulated by the food giants because they have been, dare I say, brainwashed. This is the ground work for everything David
detailed above. I firmly believe if we are to change these disturbing facts and trends we must admit parts of our society are very broken, and start from the bottom up by teaching our children the truth, and the value of the natural world.
Perhaps our greatest moments in the sustainable whole movement will be brought to us by the reality supplied by: antibiotic resistance, sick & dying patients, cheap food industries and the fat stomach that is actually a starving stomach This is a matter of education and producing and providing the alternative nutrition in the form of organic and raw unprocessed foods…!!
The current paradigm gives us all of the educational ammunition to fight themselves. We just need to use it and educate about the links between cheap food and fat sick people. This is our challenge in education.
I take this educational challenge very very seriously. Last week, this week and next week are crowded with educational events. It is the method that grows OPDC and the overall raw milk markets. Selling ….no….Education yes!! Smart and conscious people support whole food producers.
You can bet I will be using the Fosters Farms example in all of my talks. Talking to some friends that work inside the health department, they say that the first PULSENET reports of the FOSTERS FARM linked illnesses happened 7 months ago in March 2013!! The Salmonella chicken left the CAFO that long ago.
This is beyond corruption. But…this is also something we can use to emphasize our point and educate more people!! Ther bigger the disaster the better the example.
Last point…are people conscious enough to learn and change? That is the biggest problem. People are so stupid and so uncommitted to changing their addicted cheap food habits. Why, because they ( our FDA and our country ) have delinked food from illness and linked “going to the doctor” as the link to health!!
Perhaps Darwin is correct… and this all helps with the proper population levels for star ship earth. Not very humanitarian or nice thing to say, the obvious is the obvious. A system that preys on itself ( the American CAFO illness machine ) and lies to its people will die or change!! My consumers and those that buy from cow shares and local food systems get it and will thrive. The others….are fodder for the machine that eats its young.
Gail, you are absolutely right about education. As Mark McAfee said in a previous comment, to hold a Raw Milk Institute training on the campus of a public university that also has a university dairy was monumental. In so many ways, raw milk production challenges everything these university staff have ever been taught. And yet, there was dialogue. Kind of miraculous I think.
[quote]
U.S. food and agriculture policy seems to be built on secret provisions snuck into bills at the 11th hour with little opportunity for debate, or trade negotiations taking place behind closed doors. The result is government rigged against farmers and workers who want to have a say in policies affecting their livelihoods, against communities who want to protect their natural resources and against parents who want to know what is in the food they feed to their children.
[end quote]
LINK: https://www.commondreams.org/view/2013/10/11-1
http://americanfreepress.net/?p=13204
Before I tell the punch line, let me reflect on the people in this group. They were all fairly old…they all looked very depressed and practically none of them had children helping them on their farms. They had no ability to speak. At one point I thought they were mute….they spoke so little in their lives that they could not express themselves or communicate!!?? ( they had never met a consumer and had never taught raw milk that is for darn sure ).They all shared that the kids had left the farm to have a better life. All reported that they were suffering financial ruin by selling cheap milk to processors.
Ok my punch line….
After hearing the professor announce that “OPDC could not feed the world” and therefore the ideas we had about clean delicious raw milk were not so good….I said this to him and all the rest of the visitors and especially the cow drug pusher from Pharma….as I turned to the crowd of 50 dairymen and their wives….”HOW MANY OF YOU CAN FEED YOURSELVES????” there was silence. Some then said very timidly, “we are not able to pay our bills and can barely feed our cows much less our selves”.
The only part of the food chain that wants to feed the world are the processors. That is a fact!!!
Who in the hell ever thought it was a good idea for America to feed the world was crazy stupid. It was not the American farmer that is for sure. Food sold to the world must be so cheap that it will starve the American farmer. Local food feeds the world and always has. When food is exported, it is used as a weapon and it starves local production where ever it is distributed. America should export self sufficiency not cheap highly processed junk that makes other cultures dependent on us!!
Local high quality consumer connected food is not horribly expensive, but it is not cheap. It is a fair replacement for pharma and brings health to the entire very short local food chain. This local food starves the processors and that is just fine with me. Considering the criminal mega charges brought by the goverment against Deans foods several years ago for price fixing dairy products…they should starve.
Cheap food is criminal on several levels.
“HOW MANY OF YOU CAN FEED YOURSELVES????” there was silence. ”
Not surprising Mark. Give them KFC, McDonuts, and frozen pizza and they’ll be happy ever after.
Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime ( It is more worthwhile to teach someone to do something, than to do something for them.) Middle man corporations are the scourge of humanity, non productive for profit skimmers and they want to keep it that way or even bump up their percentages lest you suffer less and get too feisty. Milk is not a weapon and will therefore never get the federal funding, not that there’s much of that left after corn and the military allotment.
Cheers, or not.
“will authentic scientific evidence have any bearing on food policy and dietary guidelines that is simple to decipher or will consumers be fed with misinformation so the dairy industry will benefit?”
“The bottom line is simple: you don’t need milk to be healthy … while raw organic milk can be taken without the burden of pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and processing, the risks of dairy consumption outweigh the benefits anyway.”
“You’d be better off eating vitamin D instead. ”
Wrong, wrong and wrong. Show me the raw milk risk statistics that support your argument. For vitamin D absorption you’d be better off just sitting in the mid day sun for an hour, instead of taking pills which I refuse to based on principle.
http://www.naturalnews.com/042503_milk_myths_lactose_intolerance_bone_density.html#ixzz2hnCWoUqS
The December 2012 Leipzig study especially established this effect in poultry.
http://www.greenmedinfo.com/blog/roundup-herbicide-linked-overgrowth-deadly-bacteria
Black is black, bad is bad.
Yes we can vote with our feet or our dollars but we won’t.
Public outrage and public opinion have never affected public policy. They are fables. They don’t exist.
We do have the ultimate power but we are manipulated by our public education.
Education seems to have always been more about brain washing than about science or knowledge.
These ridiculous outbreak fairytales were created by Corporate Food for Corporate Food to strengthen their monopoly.
You really can’t call it cheap food when it’s subsidized and has no nutritional value.
An army marches on its stomach. Napoleon Bonaparte
People are more likely to spend their last dollar on entertainment than on food.
Genetically modified (GMO) food, has not come through on its promise of improved yields and lower prices.
Education is an industry like food and pharmaceuticals. They own us from cradle to grave.
Is the word on healthy food spreading? It’s nice to have a dream. Maybe prayer is as good an answer as any, even for the atheists.
Fringe is an American science fiction television series co-created by J. J. Abrams, Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci, which premiered on Fox on September 9, 2008 and concluded on January 18, 2013.
One of three main characters was a crazed scientist Walter Bishop, who kept a cow in his lab and drank raw milk.
The Extraordinary Science of Addictive Junk Food
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/24/magazine/the-extraordinary-science-of-junk-food.html?_r=0&pagewanted=all
(referenced from http://www.lewrockwell.com/2013/10/bill-sardi/hospital-layoffs-begin/)
You might also be interested in reading “Why Humans Like Junk Food” at the site:
http://technicalproductsinc.net/papers.html
along with many other “interesting” articles…
Folks, everything in the grocery store is designed to make you addicted to it…any wonder why they want
to sweeten up processed milk?
Raw Milk – L’Chaim!- To Life!
–bill
In re. to rawmilkmikes (r.m.m.s) oft posted analysis of government data of, basically, diarrhea cases and who gets blamed for them, which is then trumpeted by the press,
(this press, BTW: (a feature at coyoteblog.com)
Trend That Is Not A Trend: Crumbling Infrastructure (14 Oct. 2013)
Trend That is Not A Trend: Rolling Stone Wildfire Article (18 Sept. 2013)
Trend That Is Not A Trend: Dan Brown is an Idiot Edition (11 Sept. 2013)
New Feature Here: Trend That Is Not A Trend Despite a rash of deadly train crashes (3 Sept. 2013)
The Magic Theory; Catastrophic Anthropogenic Climate Change is the magic theory — every bit of evidence proves it. (16 Sept. 2013)).
(Has the helm of the ship of state passed into the hands of the innumerate?)
This diarrheic-founded news, then, is consumed by people who have to tear themselves away from the latest press releases (faithfully reported as news) from a company called the Car Dash Inns. These consumers of news can be very, very distracted as regards matters of actual substance that affect their lives and that they, nevertheless, have control of through their elected representatives. This is cause for concern, isnt it?
A P. Henry said once: They tell us, sir, that we are weakunable to cope with so formidable an adversary. But when shall we be stronger? Will it be the next week, or the next year? Will it be when we are totally disarmed, and when a British guard shall be stationed in every house? Shall we gather strength by irresolution and inaction? Shall we acquire the means of effectual resistance, by lying supinely on our backs, and hugging the delusive phantom of hope, until our enemies shall have bound us hand and foot?
Hugging the delusive phantom of hope gather strength by irresolution and inaction? what phrases!
Getting back to my point, if r.m.m.s analysis is the real deal, it could be a defining moment of the emperor has no clothes. If it is the real deal, it goes a long way to putting the governments efforts in an honest context, enervating any negative goals of the governments nonsense.
My question, then, is: r.m.m., Can you work that up in a formal presentation, something that would pass muster when presented to the skeptical, thoughtful, yet willing to listen?
Mr. J. Ingvar Odegaard
“From 1997 to 2007, all types of factory CAFOs increased: 36.3% for hogs, 87.4% for broiler chickens, 93.4% for dairy cows, etc. During this decade, not only did the factory farming industry in this country benefit from governmental oversight that included misguided farm policies, unchecked mergers and soft environmental rules, but dairy factory farming doubled, seeing more growth than any other sector… With that level of financial commitment over a 10-year period, one might assume that the government does not want the consumer suddenly getting educated and preferring artisanally produced raw milkor really, artisanally produced food of any kind… For details on the enormous growth and negative impact of CAFOs in this country over the course of a single decade, read Food and Water Watchs report Factory Farm Nation: How America Turned Its Livestock Farms into Factories and check out their Map of Factory Farms in US. http://www.Factoryfarmmap.org ”
http://edibleojai.com/online-magazine/summer-2012/why-are-family-farms-receiving-more-governmental-scrutiny-now-than-15-years-ago/
I expected more in attendance. There were 23 on the RSVP, but ten less showed up. I am not disapointed. In that group, I had a mom with a husband that is recovering post cancer and trying his best to survive his western medical therapies and build a strong immune system. At that meeting there was a Doctor that loves raw milk and needed more information and teaches every client and patient he touches about raw milk! There was mom that was buying an underground Raw Milk baby formula made with OPDC raw milk and wanted to meet the farmer that she trusts with her childs life!! There were medical students, some senior citizens that are incredibly healthy and live religiously on OPDC raw milk as a central part of their daily diet.
Each one of those souls matters greatly to me…after the Share the Secret meeting…they will all go teach others.
As I read the comments and entries posted here, I see plenty of people commenting about the organic cliff, the raw cliff the horrors of the crazy people that lead America and feed America.
Why not try this instead…BE THE CHANGE and simply ignore the crazyness and teach and produce in the alterative reality and what do you know…change will and does happen.
OPDC is now in 625 stores and sales are rising with each passing week. I find myself even encouraging some of our customers to visit and buy from local cow shares that are located in CA!!
If this pattern of mutual honor and mutual teaching was adopted nationally…progress would be made and the back ground noise would simply be that….irrelevant back ground noise.
I know that Ed Shank teaches and builds market. Lets all teach and build market. We will only have an ARMY of raw milk moms if we edcuate the people and then feed them with safe delicious raw milk.
In places that have little or no markets…change is extremely hard to make happen. In places were markets are being built…change is just a matter of time.
Thought I might say something today…as we as Americans contemplate our nation and who we elect to lead and vote our beliefs.
Teaching is something we can all do and so far we are all free to teach!!!
Who did you teach today!!
By the way….our sales at BerryVale in Mt Shasta have grown since your operation started and since your LISTING. This proves concretely that high quality safe raw milk producers are teachers and brothers and not ever in competition. A rising raw milk educational tide floats all raw dairy boats.
Victoria, yes it is a shame that otherwise progressive people simply accept at face value what they are told about food safety–that it’s only about pathogens, and the valiant public health community has us all protected. I wrote something on Alternet a few weeks back about how liberal media outlets rationalize the food rights issue away.
http://www.alternet.org/food/why-arent-liberals-standing-food-rights
I will be interested to see how the interview goes. Do you have any idea when this is scheduled to air on his channel/web site?
D, I will be posting very shortly on my interview with Ron Paul. You’re right, they are supporters of raw milk rights, and based on the interview he did of me, Ron is a huge supporter of food rights.
Yep, that’s why I supported him in the last election race and it’s why I follow his channel and his other newsletters, as well as Rand’s blog. It’s just too bad so many people are totally disconnected when it comes to the politics of food.
President Eisenhower, last speech as president warned us of the Military INDUSTRIAL Complex. The coverup of history by the plutocracy was intelligently designed by them to benefit them at our sole expense. Read: Charles and Mary Beard’s US history books; Alfred W. McCann, The Science of Eating; H G Wells, history books. Bernaar McFaddens, Encyclopedia of Health; my favorite, Albert Schweitzer, MD, Philosophy of Civilization and many other who did it for the greater good, the 1. These great individuals stood up for us, the common man in the fields. The information they provided us all did not benefit the plutocracy thus they were cast aside and are no more, until now!
War enabled the plutocracy to setup a command economy for their benefit. They continue because they have spent 150+ years working on it. The agrarian society we once were was pushed aside by the industrialists so they could be in total control of our lives, from conception to end of life.
I am not human engineered like a car. I am nature engineered and eat nature engineered food, end of discussion.
LIfe truly is similar to a game of chess, those who live behind the castle walls benefit from energy of pawns in the field.
LIfe is 1 and we must act as 1. 1and1is1! We, the common man, need to look-up and decide which way is best for all life on earth and act as 1. If we don’t stand-up and take more control over our daily life, the ship we are travelling on is going to end up in the wrong port and all of us, including the earth we live on, will suffer.
Proactive in our lives from this point forward!