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Archive Contents Wednesday, December 31, 2008 ·Oh Honey (Monica) ·The Problem with the Popular Face of "Food Activism" (Monica) ·Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, and the Power of Government Influence (Monica) Tuesday, December 30, 2008 ·"Safety" (Monica) Sunday, December 28, 2008 ·The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy on NAIS (Monica) Saturday, December 27, 2008 ·USDA Announces New Bureaucratic Branch (Monica) ·King Corn (Monica) Sunday, December 21, 2008 ·Pondering a Return of the Buffalo (Monica) Saturday, December 20, 2008 ·Government Nutritional Guidelines, aka Pure Bunk (Monica) Thursday, December 18, 2008 ·Another Update on Manna Storehouse Raid (Monica) ·Abolishing USDA Inspection Laws (Monica) ·Yet Another Reason to Oppose NAIS (Monica) ·Whole Foods -- A Monopoly? (Monica) Wednesday, December 17, 2008 ·What NLIS Has Done to the Australian Cattle Industry (Monica) ·USDA Motions to Dismiss Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund Suit (Monica) Tuesday, December 16, 2008 ·Review of "Mad Sheep" (Monica) ·Exemption to Cow Fart Tax in the Works (Monica) Monday, December 15, 2008 ·Will NAIS Make Food Safer? (Monica) ·FDR's Farm Policies (Monica) Friday, December 12, 2008 ·What Will Obama's Agricultural Policies Look Like? (Monica) Tuesday, December 9, 2008 ·Update on SWAT Raid on Manna Storehouse (Monica) ·Ontario Raw Milk Farmer Fined $55k, American Academy of Pediatrics Addresses Raw Milk Safety (Monica) Monday, December 8, 2008 ·Head Tracking! (Monica) ·What is NAIS? (Monica) ·Cow Fart Tax Coming Your Way (Monica) ·USDA Actively Blocks Testing of Mad Cow Disease (Monica) ·When Antibiotic-Treated Means Antibiotic-Free (Monica) ·Diet for an UNhealthy Planet (Monica) ·Truth in Advertising Opposed by Lobbyists (and Some Government Officials) (Monica) ·Government Regulation of Raw Milk (Monica) ·For Farmers -- How to Survive a Farm Raid (Monica) ·Farm Raids (II) (Monica) ·Farm Raids (Monica) Bloggers Monica Hughes Guy Adamson Diana Hsieh Blog Links RSS Feed RSS by E-Mail Blogroll Archives December 2008 January 2009

Wednesday, December 31, 2008 Oh Honey By Monica @ 7:22 PM This article in the San Francisco Chronicle bemoans the fact that there’s really no such thing as organic honey. I believe I may have discussed this on my other blog at some point. Some of you readers may be unaware that along with some of the other hats I wear, I am also beekeeper. It’s true. Organic labels on honey are in almost all cases certainly false. The producer may be trying to indicate that the hive isn’t medicated (there are a ton of medications used on bees, including antibiotics, anti-protozoan medications, and miticides) but there really is no guarantee that even in that case the honey is organic. Bees are wild creatures and may roam up to seven miles from the hive. Unless you own the land a 7 mile radius in every direction from your home, there are no guarantees at to what your bees have come into contact with. The SFC article is interesting and also hits on the fact that there’s very little regulation of the honey industry, insinuating that there should be more. Of course, I disagree. It’s relatively easy to tell what type of product you’re getting without resorting to an expensive regulatory scheme. I really don’t need more inane rules and labels on my food, and more of my money spent on bureaucrats to enforce these rules. In any case, we’ve already seen that the USDA supports fraudulent labeling of cooked almonds as raw ones so there’s no reason to believe the same type of thing wouldn’t happen with honey under more USDA supervision. Ideally, fraudulent labeling of honey – and there is a lot of it -- should be dealt with by lawsuits, perhaps by honey organizations that care about quality, purity, and truthful labeling of honey. The fact that most people either don’t care or if they do, know how to discern good quality honey relatively easily, is probably indication that this won’t happen. So here’s a “public service” announcement. If you eat honey you should know that foreign honey should almost always be considered suspect, particularly if it is from China (surprise, surprise): The United States imports most of its honey and for years China was the biggest supplier. But in 1997, a contagious bacterial epidemic raced through hundreds of thousands of Chinese hives, infecting bee larvae and slashing the country's honey production by two-thirds. Chinese beekeepers had two choices: They could destroy infected hives or apply antibiotics. They chose to do the latter. That was a mistake, said Michael Burkett, a professor emeritus at Oregon State University and an internationally known authority on bees and honey. "You hear about people shooting themselves in the foot? Well, the Chinese honey-sellers shot themselves in the head," he said. The Chinese opted to use chloramphenicol, an inexpensive, broad-spectrum antibiotic that's so toxic it's used to treat only life-threatening infections in humans -- and then only when other alternatives have been exhausted. "That's on the big no-no list," Burkett said. "In the U.S., Canada and the European Union, chloramphenicol is on everyone's zero-tolerance list." Now, 11 years later, some of the honey buyers who take the trouble to test for it still find the banned antibiotic in some of their imported honey… The best way to buy honey is to get it from a local producer or from a specialty shop of gourmet foods that carries high quality honey. The best tasting honey is “raw honey” that is not heated or filtered. It contains all the enzymes, floral essences, and pollens that are not destroyed by heat. Both the enzymes and pollen have various health benefits but even if you’re not concerned with those, raw honey just tastes better. This honey often crystallizes at a lower temperature. Most raw honey, except for tupelo honey, is a thick paste at room temperature or is at least partly crystallized. However, this isn’t a sure way to tell that the honey is raw, since even honey cut with HFCS will eventually crystallize. How to tell? Hold it up to the light. If it’s cloudy, it’s raw. If it’s completely transparent, it’s not raw. It’s really that simple. I eat hardly any honey at all these days. Mostly I just like having the bees around because it’s a fun hobby. However, the honey my bees produce tastes absolutely amazing. Every beekeeper is biased toward his or her own honey, but I can honestly say it’s the most amazing honey I’ve ever tasted. I live in the mountains of Colorado at 8400 feet, so my bees bring in a complex mix of wildflower nectar. If you like honey but have only eaten typical grocery store honey, which is usually from alfalfa or clover, you are missing out on a diverse buffet of gold created by the ultimate alchemists: blueberry, manuka, wildflower, orange, sage, and lavender are just a few. And if you do eat honey but are unwilling or unable to explore other flavors or sources, you may at least want to check the country of origin. There is no way to be sure that you are actually getting relatively uncontaminated honey unless you buy something produced in the United States. It is not standard beekeeping practice in the US to medicate the bees when the honey supers are on. But even though honey in the US is probably not contaminated with antibiotics, it may still be fraudulently labeled as raw -- so buyer beware. Labels: De-regulation, Honey E-mail Monica    PermaLink    3 Comments   The Problem with the Popular Face of "Food Activism" By Monica @ 9:47 AM There's been an enormous buzz in the blogosphere about Michael Pollan, who is a food journalist at UC Berkeley and has done a lot of first-hand research about the food supply. It would not be a mistake to say that he is one of the foremost, if not the foremost popular author writing about food today. He's the author of In Defense of Food, The Botany of Desire, and The Omnivore's Dilemma. Stephan of Whole Health Source recently wrote: I heard an interview of Michael Pollan yesterday on Talk of the Nation. He made some important points about nutrition that bear repeating. He's fond of saying "don't eat anything your grandmother wouldn't recognize as food". That doesn't mean your grandmother specifically, but anyone's grandmother, whether she was Japanese, American or African. The point is that commercial food processing has taken us away from the foods, and traditional food preparation methods, on which our bodies evolved to thrive. At this point, we don't know enough about health to design a healthy synthetic diet. Diet and health are too complex for reductionism at our current level of understanding. For that reason, any departure from natural foods and traditional food processing techniques is suspect. I agree. The recent discovery of vitamin K2 is evidence that we should resist the simplistic reductionism of nutritionists focusing only on calories and macronutrients. And while I disagree with Pollan on various matters, he has done some good first-hand research on the food supply and has made this information very accessible to the public. For that he should be applauded. Real food is increasingly under government and government-sponsored industry attack in our society. Pollan also wrote a very long piece in the New York Times entitled Farmer in Chief in which he exhorted the future president to consider the health, ethical and environmental issues surrounding government farm and nutrition policies. It's definitely worth a read and it got a great deal of attention in the farming, nutrition, and whole foods blogosphere. I don't agree with everything in that article by a long shot, but I'm going to save my (very long) critique for a future post. So what's the problem? First, Pollan has a strong focus on our botanical heritage, but I believe Pollan's proclivities toward plants when it comes to human nutrition are less rooted in science than they are in emotion and our rich neolithic food culture. Pollan is a long-time gardener and has had interests in botany his entire life. As someone who has also personally been more interested in the botanical side of things and used to teach botany, I can attest to the fact that this can create a certain bias in a person's mind. I'm not sure that's intended but it does come out in his writing. In the context of personal food choices and education about the rich co-evolutionary history of plants and humans, this isn't an issue. In fact, much of Pollan's writing on ethnobotany is delightful. But Pollan is the popular face of food activism. And when it comes to "food activism" and government policies with regard to food, this has become a huge problem. Since Pollan is so highly regarded and has such public appeal and charisma, people have been repeating his "eat mostly plant schtick" like it's going out of style. This dogma has most definitely overshadowed Pollan's defense of real foods. I see this arrogance and presumption a lot on the web, with many commenters in various internet venues claiming that people are fat and sick because they are eating too much meat. "Eat mostly plants. A little meat. Not too much. What is so hard to understand about that?" they preach. A lot of people read Pollan and end up not defending food, but attacking meat. This attitude wouldn't worry me too terribly except that there's an enormous politically motivated tendency toward vegetarianism in our society already -- with a strong basis in modern environmentalism, Malthusian ideas propagated by both environmentalists and biotech corporations, and grain-based nutritional dogma. It's pretty clear that most people without extraneous health issues need animal products in their diet as a source of EPA, DHA, vitamin B12, and fat soluble vitamins A, D, and K2 -- and who knows what else since nutrition science is definitely on the low end of the learning curve. But despite that Pollan too resists nutritional reductionism; despite Pollan's focus on our corn-based system of agriculture and the problems with HFCS and hydrogenated vegetable oils; despite Pollan's endorsement of Good Calories, Bad Calories, as "A vitally important book, destined to change the way we think about food" -- those aren't the messages that the public and the media are disseminating from Pollan's writing. The message that they are disseminating is that meat is bad. I'm not so sure this is entirely Pollan's fault rather than an effect that is combined with the result of decades of government propaganda. But even in his Farmer in Chief article, he suggests that the president and his family have a meatless day once per week. There's also little criticism of wheat being subsidized. Below are two prime examples of how the media pick up on and then selectively disseminate some of Pollan's ideas. First, this editorial in the New York Times by Nicholas Kristoff, in which he lauds Pollan's larger ideas about food and agriculture, but winds up with this little gem: We face an obesity crisis and a budget crisis, and we subsidize bacon? The implication is that obesity is caused by eating bacon. Bzzzzt. And another implication is that most of the ag money we are spending is to subsize meat. Bzzzzt. The first absurdity has been adequately dealt with elsewhere, but I feel compelled to point out that meat is not directly subsidized. The USDA's EQIP program that Kristoff criticizes, capped at $450,000 per feedlot, is to clean up manure pollution from feedlots. While it is not a valid government spending project, why doesn't Kristof point the gun at the grain and soy subsidies that are responsible for feeding animals this way -- and dumping cheap HFCS, corn oil, and soy on the market to boot? No, it's meat that takes the blame for obesity and government spending, even though meat doesn't make people fat and it is not directly subsidized. The amount of money spent on EQIP is miniscule in comparison to commodity crop subsidies, but does Kristoff criticize subsidized wheat? Of course not, because that's not where Pollan's focus is. We've all known for decades that wheat doesn't make people fat, right? And what is to criticize in corn and soy? Only the HFCS, the feeding of corn to cattle, and hydrogenated oils, Pollan's main focus in all of his writing. Here's the second media piece in the Boston Globe, which specifically discusses Pollan and speculates on what Obama's agricultural policies might look like. Here's an excerpt: Obama is the most healthy eater to enter the White House in a long time, unlike George H.W. Bush who castigated broccoli as he craved pork rinds.. Guess Derrick Z. Jackson didn't see this piece, where Michelle Obama proclaims, "We're bacon eaters." Good for her and her family... and for HW Bush. Don't expect the media to pick up on stuff like that, though. Do you see what I mean about how the media picks up on what they want to pick up on? "Plants good, meat bad." It's arrogant and ignorant. How much does Derrick Z. Jackson, the author of that article dissing pork rinds, actually know about dietary fat? Apparently, not much. Wait -- it gets better. Not too far down in the article, there's this little gem: Obama purchased peaches, pears, apples and nectarines from farmers markets on the campaign trail. Well, wonderful. It's a good thing Obama doesn't have Type II diabetes caused by a steady diet of commodity wheat, because all that modern fruit, bred for sugar and not even available 150 years ago, wouldn't help his insulin problem much. He'd be better off with the pork rinds in that case. These are just two examples of how the media get it so totally wrong with regard to nutrition, picking up on some of Pollan's ideas and selectively disseminating them, while the general public laps up this fodder like the non-thinkers they are. I couldn't say it better than Keith Norris of Theory to Practice: The frightening thing here, from my prospective, is the fact that there is so much of this that Kristof gets right — only to then tumble down the “fat is evil” rabbit hole. I can easily see a “fat tax” imposed, in the very near future, on suspect foodstuffs that the “informed government” will use as a carrot/stick (depending upon your point of view, I suppose) to wean us from the plethora of “unhealthy” foods. This tax would then be used, I’m guessing, to help support/promote the more “healthy” grain-based alternatives. ... No matter how in-vogue (and fun, I’ll have to admit) it may be, however, to bash on the government, it is really the actions of the collective citizenry that will turn the tides here. Unfortunately, I don’t have much confidence in the “collective citizenry” on this issue. For the vast majority at least, it seems as if health, fitness and diet (and independent research in these areas of concern) is just not worth their time. We are living collectively (and “paying” via ever-increasing health care premiums) with the ramifications of such apathy now. One thing I’ve never suffered well is willful ignorance; being forced to financially support the ramifications of another’s willful ignorance is enough to push me over the edge. Indeed. Keith and I are not the only ones to pick up on some of the perhaps unintended political effects of Pollan's writings. The Weston A Price Foundation released an excellent open letter to Michael Pollan two years ago, encouraging him to pursue a more objective approach to human diet. Here's an excerpt: What's so disappointing about your conclusions is the fact that after revealing the dark side of the industrial food system, and blasting the vegetarian argument out of the water, you end up dishing up the food industry's tired old anti-saturated fat, plant-based-diet propaganda. What you've done is present your health-conscious yuppie readers with the prudent diet dressed up in designer clothes and introduced your foodie readers to food Puritanism in a silk gown. She looks lovely and slim, she's popular with all the right people, but the shocking secret that emerges on the honeymoon is her frigidity; the girl in green turns out to be barren, unable to provide us with the thing we most desire—a healthy productive life. In retrospect, your inadequate prescription is not surprising because you actually show your hand right at the beginning of The Omnivore's Dilemma, where you tell us that foie gras and triple crème cheese are "demonstrably toxic substances" and that bread and pasta are "two of the most wholesome and uncontroversial foods known to man." You describe yourself as an investigative journalist, so we are justified in asking: have you found any science proving that foie gras and triple crème cheese are "demonstrably toxic?" These delicious traditional foods are not demonstrably toxic to the French, so why would they be toxic for us? And have you interviewed even one person among the millions suffering from carb addiction or celiac disease, or stood in the bread aisle and read the labels on what passes today for bread, the stuff made from plants that we are supposed to eat six to eleven servings of every day? Because you are such a persuasive writer, people believe you when you say that saturated fat is bad, that lean meat is healthier than fatty meat, and that vegetarians are healthier than meat eaters. You repeat these ideologies, these "shared but unexamined assumptions" as you call them, without examining them at all, passing on to your readers many of the malicious dietary falsehoods put together by the industry you claim to dissect. Your endorsement of the McGovern Committee recommendations—at least of its original recommendations to cut back on meat and dairy products—is truly perplexing given that a quick search of the internet reveals the former senator's marriage to corporate agriculture, a system that would much rather we consumed plants, especially processed plants, than animal foods. ... The omnivore's dilemma is not in fact a dilemma at all, but a construct of false nutritional doctrine. We need investigative journalists like you to help us clear away the misinformation. Please accept our invitation to a meal. I hope Pollan is getting the message and will start disseminating it. I'm still skeptical but somewhat hopeful that he will, since he's now read Good Calories, Bad Calories. His food activist followers, many of whom want to cram grains, vegetables and fruits down all our throats and deprive us all of meat through shifted subsidies, coercive laws, and government nutritional edicts, could certainly stand to hear it from him. Labels: Conventional Wisdom, Grains, Meat Myths, Modern Ignorance, Nutritional Guidelines, Subsidies E-mail Monica    PermaLink    11 Comments   Vitamin D, Vitamin K2, and the Power of Government Influence By Monica @ 7:37 AM I point you to four posts by Richard Nikoley of Free the Animal that just might revolutionize the way you think about the sun, and perhaps even change the course of your life: Epidemic Influenza and Vitamin D Vitamin D and Type I Diabetes Sunscreen Vitamin D Deficiency and Cancer Another great site with hours of reading on Vitamin D is the Vitamin D Council. After reading these you'll truly believe fact is stranger than fiction when it comes to the government's public service announcements. Dr. Eades has advised a much more rational approach toward sunscreen as well. In short, it may be very wise for you to revisit your relationship with the sun considering humans' evolutionary relationship with it. This doesn't mean you should sit around all day in the sun and get a severe sunburn. It means you need to understand the difference between UVA and UVB, which one is correlated to melanoma, which one is correlated to the prevention of all diseases of civilization, and which rays the sunscreens are actually blocking. In a timely and related post, Stephan of Whole Health Source charts the consumption of butter and margarine with heart disease mortality over the past 100 years. Real butter also contains vitamins D and K2, both fat-soluble vitamins. The entire post with charts should not be missed, but I can't help posting a good portion of the prose here: Was the shift from butter to margarine involved in the CHD epidemic? We can't make any firm conclusions from these data, because they're purely correlations. But there are nevertheless mechanisms that support a protective role for butter, and a detrimental one for margarine. Butter from pastured cows is one of the richest known sources of vitamin K2. Vitamin K2 plays a central role in protecting against arterial calcification, which is an integral part of arterial plaque and the best single predictor of cardiovascular death risk. In the early 20th century, butter was typically from pastured cows. (There's very old, as in 70 year old, evidence for this and its correlation to seasonal mortality from heart disease in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration. Mortality is highest in the winter when both of these vitamins, D and K2, are low in humans.) Stephan continues: Margarine is a major source of trans fat. Trans fat is typically found in vegetable oil that has been hydrogenated, rendering it solid at room temperature. Hydrogenation is a chemical reaction that is truly disgusting. It involves heat, oil, hydrogen gas and a metal catalyst. I hope you give a wide berth to any food that says "hydrogenated" anywhere in the ingredients. Some modern margarine is supposedly free of trans fats, but in the U.S., less than 0.5 grams per serving can be rounded down so the nutrition label is not a reliable guide. Only by looking at the ingredients can you be sure that the oils haven't been hydrogenated. Even if they aren't, I still don't recommend margarine, which is an industrially processed pseudo-food. One of the strongest explanations of CHD is the oxidized LDL hypothesis. The idea is that LDL lipoprotein particles ("LDL cholesterol") become oxidized and stick to the vessel walls, creating an inflammatory cascade that results in plaque formation.... Several things influence the amount of oxidized LDL in the blood, including the total amount of LDL in the blood, the antioxidant content of the particle, the polyunsaturated fat content of LDL (more PUFA = more oxidation), and the size of the LDL particles. Small LDL is considered more easily oxidized than large LDL. Small LDL is also associated with elevated CHD mortality. Trans fat shrinks your LDL compared to butter. In my opinion, it's likely that both the decrease in butter consumption and the increase in trans fat consumption contributed to the massive incidence of CHD seen in the U.S. and other industrial nations today. I think it's worth noting that France has the highest per-capita dairy fat consumption of any industrial nation, along with a comparatively low intake of hydrogenated fat, and also has the second-lowest rate of CHD, behind Japan. Funny, I thought it was the socialized healthcare system of the Japanese and the French that increased their lifespans (joking). Connect the dots. Diet is king. Not only do the French get lots of K2 and D in their dairy, which is raised more on grass than grain, but the Japanese have an intake of a different form of K2 in natto. The reasons for the health of foreigners with socialized medical systems has never been a secret to those "in the know" about nutrition. There is no paradox, let alone a "French paradox." Imagine how long they could live with a free market healthcare system that provided them with the best technology in a timely manner. Imagine how long Americans could live with our mixed economy healthcare system if it hadn't been for us getting a steady stream of nutritional information from the government for the past 40 years. Our government has been pumping out faulty nutritional advice to medical professional organizations and the public for decades, and it's worked hand in glove with farm policy. Our agricultural system is largely based on subsidized commodity wheat, corn and soy (and canola and cotton), thanks in part to the government's "public service" when it comes to nutrition, coupled with USDA farm "support" programs. The corn and soy don't even feed humans outside of providing some corn oil, high fructose corn syrup, soy oil, and some limited soy protein for tofu and baby formulas. Instead it is almost all fed to animals (with the exception of wheat. There goes the "feeding the world" myth -- are you seeing yet how this all fits together?). Is it any wonder that the government has been telling people to eat more vegetable oils (cottonseed, corn, soy, canola) and soy for "heart health"? They have to sell the stuff somehow. I've given you just a snippet of the reams of information available on the internet when it comes to these two vitamins and their crucial role in human health. Experts on vitamin D agree that the RDA for vitamin D (400 IU daily) is ten times too low and should be up around 5000 IU in wintertime -- echoing what Weston Price only told us in Nutrition and Physical Degeneration 70 years ago. Vitamin K2 is all but unknown to the medical community. As for the government propaganda that led to the ubiquity of those "heart healthy" margarines in our stores -- devoid of either fat soluble vitamin but full of trans fats originally promoted by George McGovern's dietary committee and Center for Science in the Public Interest, you can read all about the history here. The best I can say is that it's made butter in the stores dirt cheap, which is good for me. The grass-fed butter that Stephan talks about is only available from a farmer whose cows are fed on grass in summertime (I get this cream in the summertime and make butter with it). This butter is not even available in a store anymore because all the butter is made from grain-fed cows by an industrial process. It would be the highest source of vitamin K2 for those not eating fish eggs. It's nothing short of revolting that the government nutritional propaganda that has been fed to Americans in a steady diet stream of "public service" announcements has been shortening peoples' lifespans by the millions. Even worse, the end of such advice is nowhere in sight. And to think some folks want to nationalize it. Labels: Conventional Wisdom, Government Idiocy, Nutritional Guidelines, Subsidies, Vitamin D, Vitamin K2 E-mail Monica    PermaLink    3 Comments   Tuesday, December 30, 2008 "Safety" By Monica @ 9:08 AM Here’s the website of Colorado’s sole supplier of heritage turkey, Eastern Plains. (A heritage variety is a breed that was commonly grown during earlier periods in human history, but which is not used in modern large-scale agriculture.) It’s an interesting farm and it looks as if they sell all sorts of interesting heritage meats, including beef, pork, turkey, goose, duck, chicken, and lamb. I’ve never yet tasted any heritage meats but am quite eager to, particularly based on the taste tests done here. Unfortunately, Eastern Plains specifically mentions that the USDA processing adds to their cost. I'm sure there would be some increased cost to them just due to the fact that economies of scale producing grocery store food are more efficient, but just imagine how much cheaper their meats would be, even if more expensive than grocery store meats, if they didn't have to process in a USDA facility. Now imagine what would happen to this farm if the USDA slaughterhouse that they use in Colorado were to shut down or if they had increased transportation costs due to a shutdown in order to drive to an approved slaughterhouse further away. Either of those scenarios is entirely plausible given my previous writings on the matter. Requirements for slaughter in a government-approved facility are in the name of "Safety." I can say it no better than someone else I read recently: “Safety” is a word that stops all rational conversation in its tracks. "Safety" brooks no give-and-take. It is the trump card people play when they don't want to have to bother thinking a little harder about which rules really make sense, what effect they're having on us all, and who those rules are really protecting. I’m confident that meat inspection regulations are not about safety. It’s about adherence to a code that has ballooned out of any proportion to common sense. If it is really about safety it would be illegal to personally eat or to give away meat you’d slaughtered yourself, whether hunted or farmed. (Oh. As I write this I’m thinking I shouldn’t have put that last sentence up there for all to see and given the USDA any more nutty ideas.) These regulations don’t really protect consumers. How many outbreaks of food-borne illness have we had from mass-produced meats and vegetables in the past few years? A ton. And because of the scale of production, tht means that when there is an outbreak it’s enormous. Despite common germophobic beliefs to the contrary, no one is endangering their life from exposure to germs by killing and processing a chicken or a deer in their backyard: When a Virginia state inspector 12 years ago declared that the Polyface poultry slaughter area was unsanitary because it was not enclosed, Salatin fought that decision. A university lab conducted swab tests at Polyface and on government-inspected poultry purchased from a supermarket, and found that the supermarket birds averaged 10 times more bacteria than the Polyface samples. Salatin won the case. Michael Pollan, food journalist, has suggested that the USDA support local slaughterhouses rather than letting them be bought by large conglomerates and then shut down. I regret the shutdown of local slaughterhouses, too, but we need to question the premise that approved slaughterhouses are a valid type of government spending (read: theft from taxpayers) in the first place. And for what purpose, anyway? “Safety”? Would that be the “safety” of the USDA-inspected supermarket chicken with ten times more bacteria than the locally processed chicken not meeting government “safety” standards? We have to stop kidding ourselves, stop evading reality, and stop accepting the premise of government regulations and agencies as things that should be “reformed”, as opposed to abolishing them altogether. Sound radical? Maybe, until you consider the fact that somehow Americans survived for 130 years without federal inspection of meat. We have to start thinking about challenging everything we're up against. A society that encourages and rewards ridiculous lawsuits. A society that treats adults as if they are babies. A society that divorces people from their own rational judgment, incapable of making choices without a federal bureaucrat’s approval. And especially adults who throw around the word "Safety" more frequently than a 2-year-old uses the word "No!" Labels: "Safety", Conventional Wisdom, De-regulation, Government Idiocy, Meat Inspection, Rants and Whines, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Sunday, December 28, 2008 The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy on NAIS By Monica @ 5:39 PM The American Livestock Breeds Conservancy is an organization devoted to the conservation of rare and endangered livestock breeds. In perusing their most interesting site, I found the following statement on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS): For a variety of reasons, many of our country’s rare, endangered and heritage breeds of livestock and poultry are stewarded and maintained on small, independent farms and ranches. Thus, any regulations, policies or procedures that may prove sufficiently onerous or cumbersome will discourage a significant number of those farmers and ranchers currently breeding or contemplating raising such animals. The NAIS program could have serious, unintended, and unanticipated effects on the long-term viability of our nation’s livestock industry. ...we urge all NAIS decision and policy makers to be aware of the importance of conserving our national livestock genetic legacy and to be mindful that regulations and procedures designed specifically for agribusiness and large-scale production systems may have disproportionate impact on those currently maintaining these genetic resources. Policies, procedures, and regulations that inappropriately or unnecessarily discourage farmers and ranchers from considering or continuing to steward rare, endangered, or heritage agricultural animals could lead to the extinction or functional loss of the genetic resource these creatures represent. Such a loss would diminish our country’s genetic legacy, significantly reduce the capacity of present and future animal breeders to respond to new challenges and opportunities, and potentially compromise our nation’s food security. I'd never before considered the potential effect that NAIS could have in contributing to the extinction of rare livestock breeds. What is worse is that I'm sure the USDA hadn't, either. Labels: Government Idiocy, Heritage Varieties, NAIS, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Saturday, December 27, 2008 USDA Announces New Bureaucratic Branch By Monica @ 2:39 PM From Grainnet: Agriculture Secretary Ed Schafer announced Dec. 19, the intention to establish a new USDA Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets and the creation of a federal government-wide Conservation and Land Management Environmental Services Board to assist the Secretary of Agriculture in the development of new technical guidelines and science-based methods to assess environmental service benefits which will in turn promote markets for ecosystem services including carbon trading to mitigate climate change. "Our Nation's farms, ranches and forests provide goods and services that are vital to society - natural assets we call "ecosystem services," said Schafer. "The Office of Ecosystem Services and Markets will enable America's agriculture producers to better compete, trade their services around the world, and make significant contributions to help improve the environment." Agriculture producers provide many ecosystem services which have historically been viewed as free benefits to society - clean water and air, wildlife habitat, carbon storage, and scenic landscapes. Lacking a formal structure to market these services, farmers, ranchers and forest landowners are not generally compensated for providing these critical public benefits. Market-based approaches to conservation are proven to be a cost-effective method to achieve environmental goals and sustain working and natural landscapes. Without financial incentives, these ecosystem services may be lost as privately-owned lands are sold or converted to development. Earth to government, earth to government! Here's the real market-based approach the government could use: get out of agriculture. The USDA should not be setting up a new bureaucracy to pay farmers to do something sensible because it has been paying them to do something un-sensible for the past 90 years. It's the whole bailout nonsense all over again. This news is frustrating, because when you look at the history of the USDA it becomes clear that the policies it has supported in the past, which encouraged unsustainable agriculture, have clearly led to "conservation" incentives like EQIP and CRP. USDA policies have given rise to so many problems that we have today, including the depression of agricultural land prices that has spurred the sale of agricultural land for development -- which is now to be "offset" but this Office of Ecosystem Services! What else will need to be offset by the Office of Ecosystem Services? The USDA's biofuels boondoggle. The USDA is subsiziding ethanol to the tune of 50 cents on the dollar because corn-based ethanol (as opposed to cellulosic) is economically unsustainable on its own. What is the effect? Net CO2 released into the atmosphere (not sequestered as was originally thought and intended) and the promotion of ecologically unsustainable soil erosion and nutrient depletion as farmers for the first time ever plant corn on corn on corn. (And of course this is a violation of taxpayers' rights by stealing the wealth of all to provide gifts to corn farmers for a product that could not compete in a free market.) The logical solution is to eliminate the ethanol subsidies, eliminate the grain subsidies, and return to a sustainable system of agriculture with animals as the basis of healthy, fertile soil as we largely had before the Butz era. A lack of government intervention would honestly lead to more ecosystem services (and yes, it's a valid concept). This won't happen because Obama has appointed Tom Vilsack for Secretary of Agriculture, who is a true believer in biofuels and NAIS. It is going to be business as usual at the USDA, despite all of Obama's talk of "change". Now we will have an Office of Ecosystem Services to deal with the ethanol problem that largely rose in the Bush administration. Do you see how this works? There is no admission of a problem by the USDA. Even though they know biofuels is a boondoggle, they can't reverse ethanol spending too quickly because it would undermine their credibility (ethanol subsidies actually were reduced in the most recent Farm Bill, but the spending has only gone down by around 10%, around 5 cents on the dollar). No, instead the USDA will distract the public and spend more of their tax dollars on another new bureaucracy to pretend that it is actually doing something useful. It's all about job security for the folks at the USDA. Farmers periodically took their land out of production for millenia, all without a government directing them to do it, and they would have been doing so all along if the USDA hadn't interfered in the first place. We would have had more scenic landscapes, less water pollution, more wildlife habitat, and probably more carbon sequestration if the USDA hadn't been so busy trying to "feed the world" with grain subsidies for the past 40 years. Now we have a new bureaucracy designed to "fix" the "problems" it has created. Business as usual at the USDA. And the only "change" we will have is what little is left in our wallets at the end of the Obama administration. Labels: Global Warming, Government Idiocy, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   King Corn By Monica @ 12:56 PM I took out King Corn from my local library a couple of weeks ago at the suggestion of a friend. It is a documentary about the prevalence of corn in our society. The two twenty-something filmmakers move to Iowa for a year to document their life as it revolved around the planting of one acre of corn and to follow where that one acre of corn actually goes. King Corn is not a fraud like Supersize Me, but it’s not as informative as it could have been. On top of that, it has an annoying Napoleon Dynamite feel to it. What I mean by that is that there are long stretches of silence without any narration or musical score. Often these stretches are taking up by footage of the wind across a cornfield, or a bunch of people sitting or standing in cornfields staring at one another. Despite the propensity for more and more films to use this technique, I do not share the belief that this silence coupled with a lack of information is intellectually enlightening. However, if you don’t know anything about the agriculture of corn in this country, I’d recommend King Corn so long as you have a computer or book available to do something else while you’re waiting for the interesting points. If you know something about American agriculture already, you probably won’t learn too much. However, I’ll sum up the salient points of King Corn. First, we grow an incredible amount of corn in this country. Production capability has increased roughly 8-fold in 100 years, mostly through breeding to produce crowd-tolerant strains. There are some interesting shots of the filmmakers sliding down mountains of corn in the Midwest as one would slide down a snow-covered hill on a sled. These are piled up higher than salt and sand for road service in the northeast. It is quite an amazing spectacle! Because corn is a C4 plant, it fixes a higher ratio of C13 into sugar, as opposed to C3 plants. (I wasn’t really paying great attention at this point so I don’t know if they specifically explained this -- I just happen to know this as a previous instructor of botany.) Isotopic studies show that most Americans are made largely out of corn. If you were born after 1970, chances are you’ve never tasted grass-fed beef, and the carbon molecules in your body prove that a lot of your food (whether beef, corn oil, fructose syrup, etc.) is coming from corn if you eat a typical American diet. What corn is not made into cattle feed, ethanol, or oil is made into high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) – this is only about 5% of the corn although HFCS is in almost every sweetened item in the US. That gives you an idea of the immense amount of corn the United States produces. Because the filmmakers are not allowed into factories to view this process, they research the process and start from pure dent corn, going through the chemical extraction process of making HFCS. It’s mildly interesting but the process is performed too swiftly to figure out what all the reagents are. This is another example of why this film is less informative than it could have been. It’s important to realize that the vast majority of the corn is actually not eaten directly by humans except as food additives such as HFCS and corn oil. Roughly 55% of it is fed straight to cattle. Practically all beef in the United States is now finished on corn, in the feedlot. That grain-finishing time has greatly expanded in recent decades to up to a third of a cow’s life, not just the last few weeks as it used to be. This is a complete anomaly in the history of animal husbandry. Grain-finishing makes cattle sick and can quarter a cow’s lifespan. It also believed to have created at least one acid-resistant strain of E. coli not seen before 1980: E. coli O157:H7. Cows aren’t supposed to eat corn and soy: they are evolutionarily designed to eat grass. When they are fed grain it creates an acidotic state in their bodies, which makes them susceptible to bacterial infections, which then necessitates the routine feeding of antibiotics to all cattle in feedlots. What the film doesn’t tell you is that this also alters the omega fatty acid profile of the meat and dramatically increases the ratio of omega 6 to omega 3 fatty acids. The film also features Loren Cordain bashing the amount of saturated fat in hamburger (sigh). Personally I think this is not a concern and the problems with the “saturated fat is bad” argument may be found here, here, and here. Seeing how cattle are raised in feedlots was one of the more interesting points of the film. Not only are there resulting issues of animal welfare, but of pollution as well. The larger feedlots cause tremendous pollution in the form of enormous manure lagoons that pollute water supplies and create obnoxious odors for local residents, which many residents are now suing over. Because of the pollution created by feedlots (which are really exacerbated by corn subsidies, as enormous feedlots did not exist in such high quantities before subsidies), the USDA has had to create “conservation incentives” like EQIP to get these factories to clean up their waste, to the tune of $450,000 per feedlot. To call something like this a conservation incentive is a fraud. Would we call it a “conservation” incentive to get a city to clean up an enormous holding tank of human waste that spills over into rivers? This is another example of how a proper understanding of property rights (and a privatization of our waterways), rather than a government prop-up of a certain industry as “economically necessary”, would go a long way toward improving environmental quality. I’m not bashing meat. I love meat. But it’s a plain fact that most people in the cattle industry do not like this method of raising cattle. The older ones were around 40 years ago doing things differently and they know that what they are doing is intensely inhumane and polluting. However, the fact is that government subsidization of the corn itself and the pollution cleanup process have made the feedlot method cheaper than it otherwise would be. (I'm not convinced that such long grain-finishing times or feedlots would necessarily disappear under the free market but I do believe they'd largely return to some minimum level and a smaller scale.) A key point in the film is that it’s very difficult to make money as a Midwestern farmer, and that the subsidies have spurred a great deal of consolidation due to the lower prices for corn caused by the subsidies. The cost of the special herbicide-resistant seed and other inputs (fertilizer and herbicides) is very high. Farmers would simply not make money without the government subsidies. (Of course, if subsidies were immediately eliminated the prices would eventually adjust because the government wouldn’t be promoting overproduction with subsidies that drive down the price of corn.) Many farmers now rent their land rather than owning it. The filmmakers don’t discuss this too much but it’s obvious to me that there is less incentive for farmers to care about the long-term effects of what they are doing to the land when they are just renting it. Like the people raising cattle, the people producing corn aren’t all exactly proud of the product they are producing. However, they also know that’s what the government wants them to plant. Frankly, with its long periods of silence, roughly half the movie is devoid of any truly informational content. I think much more could have been revealed, including the rotation of soy with corn, how such intensive agriculture has led to soil fertility problems and the USDA’s CRP program, and the manufacture and effect of corn and soy products (including vegetable oils) on human health. The filmmakers spent a good deal of time on corn subsidies, high fructose corn syrup, and the feeding of corn to cattle, which are all worthy of attention but are the not the entire picture when it comes to corn. There are other aspects of corn production that deserve attention: the absurdity of subsidizing ethanol production, the pollution of waterways from soil runoff and the resulting soil fertility problems necessitating more expensive inputs, the displacement of third world farmers by the dumping of cheap grains onto the international market, and the deleterious effect of corn oil (not just HFCS) on the health of Americans. Others have pointed out the absurdity of subsidies for biofuels, and I couldn’t agree more. It makes no sense to sink money into something that is economically infeasible and make it artificially cheaper at taxpayer expense, not to mention that it’s a violation of an individual’s right to his or her own income. But those that agree that we shouldn’t be subsidizing ethanol agree that we shouldn’t be subsidizing any of the commodity crops, either – which means they would almost certainly be more expensive in a free market, as would the foods (corn oil, HFCS, meat, and all corn-, wheat-, and soy-based foods) made from them. The lack of emphasis in the film on these more subtle points is probably evidence itself of how influenced even the filmmakers are by media and other government information. There are simply many other indictments against corn that should also have been included to fill the sheer amount of silence in the film. The film concludes with the filmmakers deciding to plant their one acre the following year with wheat instead of corn, and a really visually interesting overhead shot of the two playing catch in a square acre plot of wheat grown within acres upon acres of corn. The take-home point is assumed to be that they decided to use their acre to grow something healthier. Ironically, what they may not realize is that it is not corn that is really directly king in the American diet, but wheat. King Wheat. Wheat, too, is also subsidized and is probably just as bad for human health as corn. Same for soy. Now that we have a film entitled King Corn, someone should perhaps make films entitled King Wheat and King Soy. Maybe the makers of these hypothetical films could conclude their works by sticking a cow on a square acre of grass that is surrounded by a wheatfield or a soyfield. To conclude, this little film was somewhat flimsily researched. The filmmakers lifted most of their ideas straight from Michael Pollan, who is an ardent critic of the corn-based system of agriculture. But I don’t want to be too hard on this little film because most of the public probably doesn’t know this information – and they should. But enough of my opinions. Has anyone else seen this film? If so, what did you think of it? Labels: corn, Government Idiocy, Grains, Nutritional Guidelines, Subsidies, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    6 Comments   Sunday, December 21, 2008 Pondering a Return of the Buffalo By Monica @ 7:30 PM I've been thinking about buffalo lately (I use the term "buffalo" loosely), partly because we've had some really amazing bison roasts in the past couple of weeks. We got them at Costco for about $5 per pound, a very reasonable price in my estimation. I prepare them in my slow cooker and they are amazingly tender and delicious. I would really love to eat some more bison -- particularly, different cuts besides roasts. If you love beef and you haven't tried bison, you're missing out. I believe I read somewhere that the fatty acid profile is better than beef as well. Considering that by 1900 there were only a few hundred bison left in the world, I'm very grateful that they've been brought back from the brink of extinction and that the herds have been preserved in great enough numbers to now eat. And of course, they're impressive animals to just observe as well. I've been pondering a return in the United States to a more grass-fed system of meat production, with Americans eating more meats instead of grains and sugars. While I'm sure a good portion of agricultural land will always be devoted to grains in America, I would personally welcome seeing more cattle and/or bison grazing on an open plain where soy and corn previously grew. That's just my personal preference -- but I do believe it would be much healthier for most Americans to eat more meat in place of soy and corn products. (It's not just a belief, the science is there.) And I certainly believe these more natural grazing systems replacing traditional monocultures in the midwest would be better for our environment and the health of the people living in the immediate area. Whether or not there would ever be a huge consumer demand for bison is questionable. However, one has to consider why the bison went to the brink of extinction in the first place. It's not that the meat wasn't any good or there wasn't economic value to be had there. It was just that Americans preferred their cattle, for obvious reasons, and there was a political incentive to slaughter all the bison to get rid of the Native Americans' food source. The same incentives to rid the plains of bison in the 1800s simply don't exist today. I've no doubt that ranching bison isn't the same as or as easy as ranching cattle -- but if my local Costco is any indication, their product line for bison seems to be expanding. I believe a more grass-fed system could be consumer-driven if corn subsidies were eliminated. Of course, it's another question as to whether beef consumption, grass-fed or not, will increase based on the decline in red meat consumption over the past 30-40 years. But the other question is : is this even possible, environmentally speaking? Can we actually produce as many cattle or bison in America on a grass-fed model? I believe it is possible but it would appear to require more land: Cattle industry statistics [U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) 2008] show that, in 2007, the United States used 2 billion bushels of corn to produce 22.16 billion lb finished grain-fed beef (17.3 million head steers and 10.2 million head heifers at average dressed weights of 830.2 and 764.8 lb, respectively). At 150 bushels/acre corn, this means we used 13.3 million acres to produce the feed grains. Converting all beef production to grass-based finishing would require at least an additional 26.6 million acres of pasture/grass to produce 2007 U.S. beef output. I agree that grass-fed beef takes more land than grain-fed beef, but I think there's something fishy about these numbers. I really believe we'd only need twice as much land to finish, at most. In other words, an additional 13.3 million acres, not an additional 26.6 million. Stay with me... If we have 27.5 million head of cattle being slaughtered for grain-fed beef yearly, finished on grains from 13.3 million acres, and we estimate that 1 acre of grass per head is needed for pastured, grass-fed techniques instead of the approximately 0.5 acres per head needed for grain finishing, we only come up with a total of 27.5 million acres total needed for 27.5 million head. In any case, it would take twice as much land to finish these cattle grass-fed, but since most cattle are not raised their entire life in a feedlot (only the last year or so), I don't actually believe the total amount of land to raise all cattle on grass for their entire lives would actually raise significantly. In fact, since we have around 100 million head of cattle in the United States, assuming only 27 million or so are being finished on grain at any given time, that means about 73 million head are on pasture -- and that already requires roughly 73 million acres. So, we'd be looking at a total of 100 million acres for grass raising and finishing as opposed to approximately 86 million acres for grass raising and grain finishing. That's not really a very significant difference in land volume. The reason it's such a profitable system is because of corn subsidies and because corn fattens cows more quickly. (If these numbers look funny or you have further comments, please let me know, but I think I have it about right.) This is especially interesting in consideration of where our corn is going. About 35% of it is used for ethanol (some of the byproduct is then used for cattle feed). About 55% is used for cattle feed. And only 5% of it is used for producing high fructose corn syrup. Wow. So, in other words, if we dumped corn subsidies altogether, and corn-based ethanol were to go by the wayside because it is economically unsustainable on its own, it would free up a whole lot of land for pasture right there. Wishful thinking, I know! And incidentally, the problems of increased cost of corn faced by those raising animals has recently been discussed here. I'm not prepared to say what corn should cost, but I certainly think it would be more expensive without subsidies in any case. Now consider how many bison roamed in North America, in their original range from the western plains to as far east as Ohio and Georgia, before they were eliminated by government policies. Estimates are between 50-100 million ... and bison weigh somewhat more than cows. I'm not sure we'll ever see significant numbers of bison on former corn- and soy-fields in the United States in our lifetime, or even cattle for that matter. But it's food for thought. Labels: Bison, Buffalo, Grass-fed, Pastured E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Saturday, December 20, 2008 Government Nutritional Guidelines, aka Pure Bunk By Monica @ 8:02 AM Here at FA/RM our mission statement says, "The group, Free Agriculture - Restore Markets (FA/RM), advocates agricultural and health policies based solely on the principles of individual rights." What is meant by that? What are "health policies based in individual rights"? So far I've mostly discussed farming on the FA/RM blog, not health policies. In part, that is because there are already excellent advocacy groups fighting for individual rights in medicine, such as FIRM. Yet the government does have health policies -- more specifically, nutritional policies -- that are intertwined with the government's agricultural policies, and most Americans are following them to a greater extent than they realize, because these policies have been adopted by most medical professional organizations and thus, medical professionals. These nutritional policies are outlined in the USDA food pyramid and include the avoidance of saturated fat, the adoption of vegetable oils such as canola oil as "heart healthy", an increase in lean meats, fruits, vegetables, and whole grain consumption, and a substitution of skim milk for whole milk. The existence of nutritional guidelines from the USDA would appear to be a conflict of interest. Why does a government agency dictating farm policy dictate nutrition as well? Unfortunately, nutritional guidelines and programs are now over 60% of the USDA Farm Bill Budget. Grain subsidies? Roughly 33%. Talk about a conflict of interest. First, let's get one thing straight. Here are FA/RM we believe people should be able to freely consume whatever they so choose. If that means a certain individual's reliance on deep fried Twinkies for 90% of his or her daily sustenance, we would support that individual's decision -- while advocating at the same time that that must pay for his or her own healthcare and pay for the true cost of these foods (and that is too often not the case today). In principle, even if the government guidelines were 100% accurate, we wouldn't support them being forced on the American public by the coerced taking of all of our money (i.e. taxation). It is not the government's job to foster a healthy population, grow an abundance of food, turn most of America's farmers into other types of laborers, or any other such nonsense. It is the government's job to protect individual rights. Individuals must decide, based on their own unique circumstances, what is good for them to eat. This diet might differ radically depending on whether one is a long-distance runner, a body builder, or has terminal cancer with less than three weeks to live. Diet is also simply not a matter of health in many instances. It is a matter of a balance short term interests, such as pleasure, and the long term interests of vibrant health and longevity. No government bureaucrat has the right to interfere with an individual's decision-making process or value hierarchy. If a person decides to eat trans fats or smoke cigarettes -- both with documented health risks -- they should have the right to do so. Such decisions violate no one else's rights in a free market in which certain foods are not subsidized and in which healthcare is paid for by the recipient. But leaving the principle of individual rights aside for a moment, and recognizing that it is the most crucial principle in determining what we should eat, let's turn to those nutritional guidelines and consider the simple question, "Are these guidelines scientific? Are they making Americans healthier?" This is an issue of fundamental importance to all Americans, to the extent that they wittingly or unwittingly follow these guidelines. It's also become a crucial matter of health oversees as subsidized grains are dumped onto the world market, putting farmers in other countries out of business, and making eating across the globe potentially less healthful. The USDA guidelines, which have been in place in one form or another since the mid-1970s, are government policies that determine how 1/6 of the American population is fed daily: the recipients of Food Stamps, schoolchildren in public schools eating the School Lunch Program's foods, and members of our military. These are also the guidelines adopted by practically every doctor, researcher, and spokesman for the Food and Drug Administration, the American Medical Association, the American Dietetic Association, the American Diabetic Association, the National Institutes of Health, the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institutes, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Cancer Society, and the American Heart Association. These guidelines call for the majority of calories to be ingested as carbohydrate -- particularly from whole grains, fruits, and vegetables which all collectively form the base of the pyramid -- with limited meat and dairy. A limited amount of oils are to be used, but these should be the "heart healthy" vegetable oils, not the "heart unhealthy" saturated fats such as lard, butter, or coconut oil. What has been the result of the implementation of these guidelines? Were they followed? Either consciously or not, the answer is a resounding "yes." While Americans are eating more calories per day, more of those calories are coming from carbohydrate and less of them are coming from fats and saturated fats. There has been an increase, not a decrease, in vegetable and fruit consumption, an increase in lean meat consumption and a decline in red meat consumption, an increase in grain, high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) and industrial vegetable oil consumption, and a decrease in whole milk consumption. Apart from the intake of HFCS, Americans in greater and greater numbers are doing exactly as the government recommends. What has been the result of more Americans following these guidelines? Almost immediately as the guidelines went into effect, more Americans got fatter. There has been an enormous increase in obesity and overweight since the 1970s, at the same time that self-reported physical activity has increased. This should lead us to seriously question whether exercise alone is sufficient at reducing weight. Indeed, Gary Taubes shows in his epic work of investigative journalism of the peer-reviewed literature, Good Calories, Bad Calories, that this belief is completely unscientific. There is now very strong evidence that the dietary guidelines for the United States are making Americans more ill by the decade. Is the government reversing course? Not a chance. I know that this sounds like a conspiracy theory. But it's not a conspiracy. It's simply a matter of fact that these guidelines were politically motivated, and that once a government behemoth sets forth at full speed ahead with the "public service" announcements, the tenor of those announcements have a great deal of inertia. In part, this is intentional since any drastic changes in recommendation undermine the agency's authority. Most of our government officials, and sorry to say, medical professionals doling out nutritional advice, have never been to the primary, peer-reviewed literature to investigate the government's claims of what is a healthy diet. Most of them would be shocked and dismayed to find that there is practically no evidence for most of the USDA nutritional guidelines. Practically everything Americans have been taught about nutrition has no basis in science whatsoever: the healthiness of whole grains and vegetable oils, the avoidance of red meat and full fat dairy, and an increase in fruits and vegetables as a necessary (rather than optional) part of the human diet. The avoidance of saturated fat in particular is based solely in Ancel Keys' 1950s research, which has now been completely discredited. And when viewed through the lens of evolution -- in which many primitive, completely carnivorous cultures such as the Inuit and Maasai that have been documented to attain spectacular health and a lack of heart disease on a diet of almost pure red meat,without any vegetables or grains in their diet whatsoever -- the USDA food pyramid makes even less sense. However, before we jump on the vegetarian-bashing bandwagon, let's consider some crucial points that are sometimes not considered in the "low carb" community. Apparently there are some very healthy primitive groups that get a majority of their caloric intake from carbohydrates from tubers and fruits -- the Kuna and the Kitavans, for instance. So we must seriously question whether it's just carbohydrates that are making Americans ill -- giving them diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and so on (and there is some spectacular evidence for this in Taubes' review of the literature) -- or whether it is a specific type of carbohydrate. Indeed, Gary Taubes calls for such controlled studies of the carbohydrate hypothesis at the conclusion of his book. At the same time, we must recognize that the Kuna are not vegetarian, that they have significant saturated fat intake from coconut oil, and that they eat 8 oz fish per day. What are the main differences in the diet of the Kuna as compared with a standard American diet? A lack of grains, refined sugars, and vegetable oils high in omega 6 fatty acids. With the exception of refined sugar, these are things that Americans are told to eat more of, not less of. Let's also consider the McDougall diet, which is a vegan diet. It has been very successful at eliminating inflammation for some people. While I personally believe that a 100% vegan diet (and even the standard American diet including meat) is often deficient in vitamins A, D, and K2, I do believe it is possible with vitamin supplementation made possible by modern technology and/or the right genetic makeup and/or dental health services (which are simply proved to be almost completely unnecessary with the proper diet) that such a diet could work for some people. What does the McDougall diet have in common with the diet of the Kuna, also in direct contrast to the standard American diet? The McDougall diet also lacks grains and refined sugar. (I'm not familiar with Dr. McDougall's stance on vegetable oils, but I suspect due to his avoidance of grains that perhaps there are also strong differences in vegetable oil consumption with the standard American diet as well.) Correction: the McDougall diet only sometimes lacks grains and avoids refined vegetable oils -- see the comments. Whatever the differences between the "low carbers", the "paleo" dieters, the Weston A Price followers, and the McDougall-style vegans (and there are many differences between all of these diets!), all of these groups have very significant departures from the grain-based Food Pyramid (and far more science behind them to boot). They either do not eat grains or they eat them sprouted and soaked. (Notably, none of the 14 cultures documented by Weston A Price as achieving optimum health ate wheat. Only two of these 14 cultures ate grains -- oatmeal or rye, always sprouted and always with significant amounts of animal products.) They do not eat refined sugar. They also do not rely heavily on omega-6 heavy vegetable oils. All of these foods have dramatic effects on the biochemistry of the human system. I understand some of them, I'm understanding more of them, but I'm not going to delve into them in this post. Click on the links, buy the books, and read about it yourself. What is even more insidious is that at almost the same time that the McGovern committee outlined these grain-based dietary guidelines for the good of the American public on scanty and now thoroughly discredited evidence, American agriculture was shifting in the same direction. The mainstream nutritional community was working hand in glove with mainstream agriculture. During the time when Earl Butz was Secretary of Agriculture, the stated goal of American agriculture became to produce as much food as cheaply as possible, but more specifically, certain types of food were to be promoted. Farmers were encouraged to plant fencerow to fencerow of grains. This era of subsidies for so-called "commodity crops", which continues to this day, spurred an era of a glut of grain products on American and foreign markets. What was to be done with all this extra product? Feed it to cattle and pigs. (The grain-based Food Pyramid being foisted on Americans as "heart healthy" is nearly identical to the diet used to rapidly fatten animals in a feedlot. A coincidence?) Something else had to be done with the rest of the grains, though -- and the soy. Such intensive agriculture -- in which maximum production was pushed at the cost of the American taxpayer -- depleted the soil, necessitating subsidization, through various conservation incentives, of letting soil lie fallow. Letting soil lie fallow was something farmers across the globe have known to be necessary for millenia, but since the government had been paying them not to do it they now had to be paid to do it. A rotation of soy to restore soil nitrogen (rather than other legumes like vetch) also became commonplace. What was to be done with this excess of corn and soy? What could not be fed to animals or the third world would now be made into tofu, high fructose corn syrup and vegetable oil (particularly corn, soy, and canola oils) and then marketed by the government and industries as healthy. Prior to the 1970s, high fructose corn syrup was practically unheard of in any American food. Today it is increasingly under attack and there is a massive marketing campaign, directed at the public and at doctors, to convince Americans that HFCS is healthy. Same for corn oil and soy oil, though Americans are more willing to buy into the marketing propaganda of these products. Canola, an even more recent invention, has had spectacular success, however. It was not granted "generally recognized as safe" food status in the United States until the 1980s, when it had been bred for low erucic acid content in Canada and then imported and grown here. Here is how those modern, "heart healthy" vegetable oils, including canola, are made: You've eaten corn, so you know it's not an oily seed. Same with soybeans. So how to they get the oil out of them? They use a combination of heat and petroleum solvents. Then, they chemically bleach and deodorize the oil, and sometimes partially hydrogenate it to make it more shelf-stable. Hungry yet? This is true of all the common colorless oils, and anything labeled "vegetable oil". HFCS and industrial vegetable oils are foods with literally NO evolutionary history in the human diet, and yet they are being touted by health authorities as healthy. Of course, something without any evolutionary basis could be healthy with the proper evidence, but there is none. (Grains also have little evolutionary history with humans, but they have been around significantly longer that HFCS and vegetable oils, depending on one's genetic background. Despite that, wheat in particular is generally very destructive to human health.) Companies have a right to try to sell whatever they want to the American public, but not at the public's expense through subsidies and taxation. It's especially insidious that these products are harming taxpayer health in addition to being paid for with our coerced tax dollars. Strong evidence is emerging that vegetables oils are quite bad for our health as well. In a series of well-researched and erudite posts, Stephan of the continually enlightening Whole Health Source outlines the case against vegetable oils for us. Take heed: vegetable oils might just make you dumber, fatter, and sicker. Don't expect the government to tell you that, though, while it is busy subsidizing the vegetable oil industry with billions yearly and telling medical organizations to tell their doctors to tell their patients to eat more of it. I've learned over the past year or so that diet is a very inflammatory subject. I can honestly say that a year ago I was literally steeped in the low-fat, grain-based, vegetable oil dictates of the Food Pyramid. Most people have strong ideas about what constitutes a healthy diet, and often react violently when someone challenges their assumptions (I certainly did). If you have not thought critically about what constitutes a healthy diet, or if you believe that a healthy diet consists of eating a little bit of "everything in moderation", you owe it to yourself to investigate the issue more deeply and re-examine your long-held assumptions. It is not an exaggeration to say that the length and quality of your life may depend on it. I don't harp on the issue of diet because I want to force my values on others. I do it because I believe an issue so important and fundamental to the mental and physical health and well-being of all humans deserves careful consideration by all, because it is an outrage that people should have to become experts in molecular biology and physiology to figure out what is healthy for them to eat, and because I believe there has been no greater health scam in the entire history of humanity than this grain-based nutritional nonsense. A reading of Good Calories, Bad Calories and Nutrition and Physical Degeneration (together they are the "Atlas Shrugged" of nutrition) clearly illustrates the major problems with America's Dietary Guidelines. These guidelines, coupled with the lack of critical thinking and often blind acceptance of industry- and government-based nutritional information on the part of the medical profession, have led us to where we are today: record amounts of cancer, diabetes, and obesity. What is even more infuriating is that the case against refined grains, refined sugars, and industrial vegetable oils are not recent revelations. Price's book, which implicates all in the degeneration of health, was published in 1939. While it's critical to avoid nationalizing our healthcare industry for all kinds of practical reasons (in addition to the most important reason, which is that it would violate individual rights), the nutritional aspect is perhaps one of the strongest, if not the strongest practical evidence against "universal" healthcare. Today, the government and the medical profession are together advocating nutritional guidelines that are killing people with cancer, heart disease and diabetes -- diseases of civilization unknown to many pre-industrial cultures. I know how difficult this is to swallow -- as trained as we are to believe that everything we have in a post-industrialized world must be superior -- but it is true. Investigate it for yourself. Now medical professionals are attempting to "fix" these problems with a high level of technology, without understanding their source. If we nationalized healthcare, we would universalize the same pseudoscientific nutritional guidelines that cause these diseases, and the only difference is that government would then attempt to fix these problems with less abundant, more costly, inferior technology -- rather than the high level of abundant, superior, and cheap technology that we would have had if medicine had remained free. We must fight tooth and nail against the government's nutritional dictations being nationalized through universal "healthcare". This advice, unquestioningly adopted by most medical professionals across the country for the past 40 years, is literally killing millions of people. There are a great many wonderful things that technology has brought us, including much medical technology. While it is tempting to defend the agricultural technology that has brought us an abundance of cheap food, there is little evidence that most of this food is healthier for us than what our pre-agricultural ancestors ate: fibrous vegetables, grass-fed meats or seafoods with appropriate ratios of omega fatty acids, full fat dairy, nuts and berries. We are living longer lives despite what we are eating, not because of it -- and Americans deserve to know it. We need to redirect agricultural and nutritional policies in America toward what is best for the consumer, and it needs to be redirected by the consumer dollar as uninfluenced by the government's pseudoscientific guidelines. This is very crucial today, as local and regional slaughterhouses shut down under government financial pressure, as farmers continue ecologically unsound farming practices which pollute our environment and food and deplete our soils, as more and more farmers grow more and more corn for biofuels at the direction of government, and as the grain-based vegetarian "diet for a healthy planet" ideas gain more traction in our culture -- with an already unfortunately and firm basis in the USDA Food Pyramid, unlikely to change anytime soon. It is not a diet for a healthy planet. It's a diet for an unhealthy environment and for many unhealthy humans, as I've written before. The government needs to get out of the business of medicine, and the business of farming and nutrition as well. Our lives really do depend on it. Labels: Conventional Wisdom, Government Idiocy, Nutritional Guidelines, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    10 Comments   Thursday, December 18, 2008 Another Update on Manna Storehouse Raid By Monica @ 9:26 PM David Hansen, president of the Buckeye Institute, stopped by and left a note here on my blog that he will be representing the Stowers family in court. Thousands of dollars worth of private property, including $10,000 in food, was stolen by the government. The Buckeye Institute's entire press release may be found here: The Buckeye Institute argues the right to buy food directly from local farmers; distribute locally-grown food to neighbors; and pool resources to purchase food in bulk are rights that do not require a license. In addition, the right of peaceful citizens to be free from paramilitary police raids, searches and seizures is guaranteed under the Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution and Section 14, Article 1 of the Ohio Constitution. "The Stowers' constitutional rights were violated over grass-fed cattle, pastured chickens and pesticide-free produce," Buckeye Institute 1851 Center of Constitutional Law Director Maurice Thompson said. "Ohioans do not need a government permission slip to run a family farm and co-op, and should not be subjected to raids when they do not have one. This legal action will ensure the ODA understands and respects Ohioans' rights." On the morning of December 1, 2008, law enforcement officers forcefully entered the Stowers' residence, without first announcing they were police or stating the purpose of the visit. With guns drawn, officers swiftly and immediately moved to the upstairs of the home, finding ten children in the middle of a home-schooling lesson. Officers then moved Jacqueline Stowers and her children to their living room where they were held for more than six hours. This is pure evil. We cannot allow the government to turn this country into Stalinist Russia, seizing peoples' very sustenance because of minor code infractions! The government is supposed to work for us, not the other way around. No one even complained or got ill from anything the Stowers' were distributing. But that's so typical of all these farm raids -- no one got sick from Mark Nolt's raw cheese, or Michael Schmidt's raw milk, or Bean and Rinaldi's pastured pork. These people are simply doing what people have only been doing for millenia now. You know, that "growing and selling food" thing. I just don't know how humans survived for millions of years without a government to dictate to them what not to eat. How long until the government decides we can't grow our own vegetables for "environmental" and "safety" reasons? Let's work to make sure that day never happens. Labels: De-regulation, Farm Raids, Government Idiocy, Rants and Whines E-mail Monica    PermaLink    1 Comments   Abolishing USDA Inspection Laws By Monica @ 9:12 PM Actually, I should have entitled the post, "Abolishing USDA-Approved Slaughterhouse Requirements" because it's not as if a USDA official is standing over every animal as it is slaughtered and making sure it is done right. In this post I discussed the costly nature of requiring animals to be processed in such facilities. Well, I did a little digging and found out just how expensive. It's very expensive. And for very ridiculous reasons having nothing to do with food safety: Jenny Drake was a Virginia state health inspector until five years ago, when she and her husband moved to rural Tennessee and started Peaceful Pastures, a small livestock farm. They raise free-range beef, pork, turkey, veal, lamb, goat, duck, and chicken -- without jacking the animals up with hormones and antibiotics, as is common practice at factory farms. Their meat goes through a USDA processing facility, as government regulations require -- all except the poultry. And because of those chickens, the Peaceful Pastures have been troubled. Therein lies a tale about government regulation, the decline in food quality, and the end of family farming in America. "The state says no bird in Tennessee can be sold without USDA inspection of the processing facilities," says Drake. "Here's what kills all of us small poultry farmers: There are no USDA custom-kill processing plants in the entire Southeast." Drake says she looked into building a small processing facility on her farm, but the cost of meeting government standards made it impossible. If all she had to do were to construct facilities strictly for meat processing, Drake figures she could have done so for $20,000; but as the law stands now, a building that met minimal federal guidelines would cost about $150,000. "The Americans with Disabilities Act, for example, means a small producer has to put in restrooms that are handicapped-accessible," Drake says. "I'd have to build an office for the inspector. That office has to have its own phone line. I'd have to put in a paved parking lot. We have to meet the same physical standards as a Tyson's, and we just can't do it." In the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia, Joel Salatin and his family run Polyface Farms, a highly regarded small producer of meats raised according to traditional farming practices ("like God intended," says the evangelical Christian farmer). Salatin tells a similar story of battling regulators."The code said we had to have bathrooms for our employees. I told them we were 50 feet away from two houses with bathrooms, and besides, we're a family operation: We don't have employees. It didn't matter to them. Then they said we had to have twelve changing-lockers for employees -- even if we didn't have employees." "See, this is bureaucracy in action," he says. "It has nothing to do with the quality of our meat. They just want to follow the code. This is happening all over the country. A lot of it is being done under the guise of protecting the general welfare and guaranteeing clean food. But what it really does is protect big agribusiness from rural independent competition." Utterly absurd. Labels: De-regulation, Government Idiocy, Rants and Whines, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Yet Another Reason to Oppose NAIS By Monica @ 9:08 PM Data thieves are targeting the USDA, which has lax security standards: A computer hacker may have stolen "personal identity information" for 26,000 current and former U.S. Department of Agriculture headquarters employees, agency officials said. The USDA announced the security breach shortly before midnight on Wednesday, nearly three weeks after it occurred. It offered one year of free credit-monitoring services to the potentially affected employees. The agency said that its computer systems were illegally accessed during the first weekend of June. Officials said that at first they thought the personal information was still protected, but now they are not sure the data is safe. At risk are the names, Social Security numbers and photos of USDA headquarters employees and contractors. The 26,000 names represent one-fourth of the USDA's workforce. The information was in the same database as work site information that is open to the public. Great. What if data thieves could paw through all the private property information of every animal owner in the United States? Labels: NAIS, Rants and Whines, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Whole Foods -- A Monopoly? By Monica @ 8:42 PM I don't think so. But the Federal Trade Commission does. Ryan Puzycki of The Undercurrent writes: In 2007, Whole Foods, the popular purveyor of natural foods, sought to expand its business by acquiring rival grocer Wild Oats. However, the Federal Trade Commission claimed that the merger would violate antitrust laws by creating a natural foods monopoly. Although federal judges approved the deal, the FTC won an appeal a year later, after the merger was well under way, and now the case is set to go to trial in February. The company has already spent $17 million cooperating with the FTC and faces millions more in legal fees should the trial proceed. This is so dumb. And just on a practical level -- Whole Foods a "natural foods" monopoly? What is a "natural foods monopoly"? It's absurd. Even regular grocery stores have a wider array of natural foods now. And hasn't the government heard of farmer's markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSAs)? Oh, wait, I almost forgot! The government wants to shut those down too! You cannot buy much besides vegetables at farmer's markets anymore, due to food safety regulations that prevent direct sales of anything produced in a home kitchen. Forget buying that loaf of Granny's bread. It could kill you, you know. Honestly. If Whole Foods has to go out of business because of this nonsense, I'll be seriously pissed. Whole Foods is the only place that I can get the following items: Greek yogurt, olive oil that is not a fraud, coconut oil, palm oil, sprouted bread, raw milk cheeses, and non-preserved meats (except those from my farm, but demand is so high they are often sold out). Those are just the items I can think of right now. Labels: De-regulation, Government Idiocy, Rants and Whines E-mail Monica    PermaLink    1 Comments   Wednesday, December 17, 2008 What NLIS Has Done to the Australian Cattle Industry By Monica @ 6:09 PM We have a bit of a case study of what NAIS in the United States might do to cattle producers, since Australia already has a similar system, called National Livestock Identification System (NLIS). Australian ranchers are not happy about NLIS -- nor other government regulations. American cattle producers should sit up and take notice: We have been told for years that we lead the World with MSA and NLIS. We have continually told in the media that our cattle prices are good. After a 40 cent price drop (from a low base) on a falling dollar, in a month, I am not amused. Why, when we are paying the highest levies and using the most expensive QA and Trace-back systems in the World are we getting the lowest true prices in the developed world? Is our “Best beef in the World”, really the worst in the developed world? Must we face the fact that we produce a third world product? Is it possible that we have been led by idiots who can’t see beyond their ivory tower? One has to love the no-nonsense of the folks down under. I don't claim to know much about the Australian cattle industry, but the author of the article appears to point to at least a few more regulatory problems. FYI, MSA is a government meat grading program (referred to above and below) and from what I can see, looks to be an extreme waste of Australian taxpayer money, as does NLIS: There is now no viable export abattoir in two thirds of our Continent, west of a line from Adelaide to Townsville; - there were once eight. Western Australians are trucking cattle over the Nullabor, or just moving out of the industry. It is a terrible indictment on industry and Ministerial leadership. We are leading the world into vegetarianism, as our cattlemen are squeezed out of business by the highest regulatory costs, the toughest retail duopoly, one of the highest interest rates in the World, on top of trying to produce in one of the toughest environments. What to do? We must change direction – fast; - cut our costs. Forget about complicated systems like NLIS, MSA, Breed plan and our expensive levy. They have taken us down the path to oblivion. Unfortunately, there are similar parallels in the United States. I would guess the lack of abbatoirs has to do with the cost of federal inspection, as it does here in the United States. Off the top of my head, I remember reading today that there were 500 or more federally approved slaughterhouses in the United States about 10 years ago. Today? 350. And only four of those slaughterhouses handle a whopping 90% of the meat produced in the United States. Since USDA approved slaughter is a requirement of selling your meat to others, this is an enormous problem. All such government programs and regulations, including NAIS and requirements for federally approved slaughter for sale to consumers, must be abolished. It is absurd to believe that USDA approved slaughterhouses that probably look worse that the ones Upton Sinclair observed in the early 1900s (who would know? no one is allowed into them!) produce safer meat than local, small scale operations, such as this one below. The following operation is federally inspected (otherwise the owners would have to give the meat away and it would be illegal to sell it) but I can scarcely believe the regulations affect their practices much. I'm sure it costs them a lot, though. (Warning, it's slightly graphic after the first few moments): HT for Australian cattle article: Walter Jeffries Labels: De-regulation, NAIS E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   USDA Motions to Dismiss Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund Suit By Monica @ 5:52 PM The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund has filed a suit with the U.S. District Court – District of Columbia requesting an injunction to stop the implementation of NAIS by states or the feds. If successful, the suit would halt the program nationwide. (Yes!) Despite the fact that the USDA has said that NAIS is a voluntary program, there are various mandatory implementations in a few states, namely Wisconsin, Indiana, North Carolina, Tennessee and Colorado. Unsurprisingly, the USDA has now filed a motion to dismiss the suit: Motions filed by the U.S. and Michigan Departments of Agriculture seeking to dismiss the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund suit to stop the implementation of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), incorrectly claim that NAIS is a voluntary program. “Even as the agencies try to deny the clear facts of what they have done in Michigan, the USDA recently issued a memo that confirms what the Fund has stated in its lawsuit: NAIS is not voluntary,” said Pete Kennedy, interim president of the Fund. Kennedy cited Veterinary Services Memorandum No. 575.19 addressed to USDA's "Veterinary Services Management Team" that requires NAIS premises registration for various disease program activities. “The memo includes activities such as vaccinations, testing, and applying official ear tags for programs for every livestock species, ranging from brucellosis to scrapies to equine infectious anemia,” Kennedy noted. “One of the most important aspects of this memo is that people who refuse to have their farms registered will be registered against their will. Thus, USDA has officially abandoned the supposed ‘voluntary’ nature of NAIS.” Oh, but that's typical of so many "voluntary" government programs that then become mandatory or expanded beyond belief. Hopefully the FTCLDF will make a strong response, and I'm very glad to see them taking the offensive position on this. Too often, as in the Faillace family's case, the courts simply defer to the USDA. We need to reign in these rogue agencies. Ultimately, the USDA needs to be completely dismantled. Labels: Government Idiocy, NAIS E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Tuesday, December 16, 2008 Review of "Mad Sheep" By Monica @ 5:26 PM In a recent search at my local library for readings on the history of agriculture in the United States, I came across a potentially interesting book entitled Mad Sheep, with the subtitle, “The true story behind the USDA’s war on a family farm.” The cover and dramatic red lettering made me think that this book might be a typical leftist rant against corporate agriculture. Never judge a book by its cover, they say. This book should be required reading of anyone wanting to know more about USDA and agricultural policy. It chronicles the extraordinary story of an entrepreneurial family of Vermont farmers that did years of research and sought to establish a new type of sheep farming industry in the United States. Their story is unforgettable. Unfortunately, its ending is far from happy. In the 1990s, two scientists named Larry and Linda Faillace returned to the United States from a research stint in Britain, in anticipation of starting an entirely new sheep farming industry that had not been carried out in the United States before. Typical American sheep only give 100 pounds of milk per year, while the breeds the Faillaces wanted to import averaged 10 times as much, thus for the first time promising a viable sheep milk and cheese industry in the United States. After several years of research and international travel, the Faillaces arranged, with the assistance and approval of the USDA, to import three different breeds of sheep into the United States – breeds that had never been raised in the US before. The genetics and feeding history of the sheep had been tirelessly researched over several years before arranging their importation into the US. As scientists, the Faillaces were educated about and had done research on transmissible spongiform encephalopathies (TSEs), and made every effort to minimize the risk of bringing these infectious diseases into the country. One of the breeds they chose had never had a single case of scrapie, a known TSE which is already endemic in the US. They also made significant effort to show, before importation, that the animals had never been fed meat or bonemeal of any species, which is the most widely believed cause of TSEs, though this was not a USDA concern at the time. After three years of research and work with the USDA, their chosen flock successfully completed USDA quarantine and were given an inspection that stated the animals were free of any infectious disease or exposure to infectious disease. Two years later in 1998, they were approached by a USDA bureaucrat, Detweiler, and asked to surrender their animals based on “new research that sheep could be susceptible to BSE.” BSE is a TSE, but BSE is mad cow disease, and no sheep in the world had ever naturally contracted BSE. Further, the Faillaces could document that their sheep had never been fed animal products. The USDA officials would not release any “scientific” information leading to their request, but under duress admitted to the Faillaces that their request to “depopulate” the farm was based not only on this secret scientific information, but on political pressure as well. Political pressure from whom? The USDA wouldn’t say, but Linda Faillace speculates: Was this retaliation for the EU not accepting US hormone-treated beef? Was someone in the sheep industry angry over our importation? Was the dairy industry feeling threatened? And what was the political pressure Detweiler referred to? The National Cattleman’s Beef Association? The pharmaceutical industries? The last thing drug companies in the United States would want was BSE, because bovine by-products are used in a wide variety of pharmaceutical and cosmetic products – everything from insulin to bovine placenta for estrogen and anti-wrinkle creams. And if a country finds BSE, they are no longer able to source their products form the native cattle population. (p. 70) The USDA could provide no proof that the Faillace’s sheep were infected with TSEs, and it was obvious to Detweiler after meeting the Faillaces that she wasn’t going to be able to pull the wool over their eyes on the science. These were not just a bunch of country bumpkins. They knew their stuff and they refused to surrender their animals, although they did agree to turn over any sheep that they decided to kill. Another farmer who had previously obtained sheep from the Faillaces also surrendered a few sheep to the USDA for testing, and these sheep were determined to have “a foreign TSE of unknown origin.” When the USDA revealed a portion of the test results of the Western blot (which is the least reliable test for TSEs), it was clear that the samples had undergone degradation and that there was an absence of negative controls and molecular weight markers – both necessary for at least preliminary proof that the sheep has a TSE. The data were a mess. Positive control lanes were negative, samples that were supposed to be negative tested positive, and one of the USDA’s own scientists who developed the test admitted privately to them that it was unvalidated and should not be used in court. When the Faillaces requested the original samples to do independent testing and carry out “gold standard” testing, namely immunohistochemistry and histopathology, they were told the samples had been inadvertently discarded. The laboratory director also lied under oath about testing the samples blindly. After the Faillaces filed for all of the testing information to be released from the USDA under the Freedom of Information Act, the USDA’s documents revealed four hundred negative test results from the Faillace animals and other animals originating from their farm. After four years, the USDA could still provide no evidence that there was anything wrong with the sheep, while repeatedly pressuring the Faillaces to turn over their herd. At this point, more TSE tests had been run on the Faillace herd of 125 sheep than the entire cattle herd of the United States, in a vain search for mad cow disease in sheep. The animals had been under quarantine for two years. Regardless of the feed records and negative test results, the USDA Secretary ordered the animals destroyed, a decision ultimately upheld by a judge in court. The Faillaces filed for an appeal, and although the federal appeals court expedited the hearing, the court admitted that it did not have the right to stop the USDA from seizing the animals should they decide to do so before the appeal date. After months of dealing with tapped phones and constant surveillance of their property, in late March 2001 only two weeks before the hearing in the appeals court on April 10, 2001, 27 armed federal agents and 13 USDA officials arrived at the Faillace farm, seized all their animals, and sent them to Iowa to be destroyed. The USDA also confiscated their sheep semen so that they would not be able to rebuild their herd by crossbreeding with American sheep. Despite a USDA promise to pay “fair market value” for the herd, and despite the Faillace’s estimate of a profit of $11.3 million had the herd not been quarantined and sales of lambs not restricted for nearly three years, the USDA paid the Faillaces a measly $250k for five years of hassle and lost income. After the Faillaces lost their sheep, the laboratory that had conducted the original Western blot tests was shut down due to negligence. A USDA-appointed panel concluded upon seeing the condition of the laboratory that the accuracy of the TSE work in the Faillace case had to be questioned. Unfortunately, it was too late. And even so, tests conducted on every single destroyed animal in the Faillace herd were negative by IHC and histopathology – the gold standard tests for determining whether an animal has a TSE. Nearly a decade of the Faillaces’ work had been destroyed – for nothing. The lack of conclusive proof of any TSE in the destroyed Faillace herd (it took the USDA over a year to release the test results, and they kept testing and re-testing in vain for a year in order to try to obtain positives) also didn’t convince the USDA not to enforce a five year quarantine that didn’t end until 2006. This quarantine prevented them from keeping hooved animals, and much of their farm equipment was ordered destroyed by incineration in an incinerator in Massuchusetts. When Larry Faillace followed the dump truck that was removing the materials from their farm for supposed incineration on USDA order, he found and documented with photographs that the materials actually went to a landfill in north Vermont. So much for the threat of mad cow disease in sheep --- it was a complete ruse the USDA was going through to maintain public confidence in their decisions. The Faillaces had had enough. They sued the USDA for fraud so that the quarantine would be lifted. Their case was not heard years later until three weeks before the quarantine ended. The judge ruled in favor of the USDA that the quarantine was legal. There you have it. The USDA carried out a war on various sheep farmers and other imported animals for five years under the fantasy that imported sheep (documented to have never been fed meat meal!) might transmit mad cow disease to cows or humans. In the meantime, the USDA allowed actual mad cow disease (BSE) to emerge in cattle the United States. A year after the first emergence of BSE in the US in 2003, the USDA ordered decreased testing of BSE to approximately one tenth of a percent of animals in 2004 – a 32% decrease in testing. (Wouldn’t the emergence of BSE in the United States logically call for more testing?) When a single case of BSE was also found in a dairy herd of 4000 cattle in Washington, the herd was quarantined for one month. Only 131 other animals were slaughtered and tested before the USDA proclaimed the BSE to be an “isolated case”, lifted this one month quarantine and milk sales were resumed. Contrast that with the Faillace experience. The Faillace farm underwent a five year quarantine following destruction of the animals, and their entire herd was destroyed with no evidence of a TSE at all, let alone that it could have spread to cows and caused mad cow disease. The mad cow coverup doesn’t stop there. The legal battle between the USDA and Creekstone Farms has gone on for three years now, as I’ve recently written, with the most recent court ruling in 2008 in favor of the USDA’s position to deny Creekstone Farms the right to test for mad cow disease. This story beggars belief, doesn’t it? Massive corruption in our government agencies and the courts, both of them obstructing justice and truth. But wait – it gets worse. In 1998, preliminary unpublished results from a study in Britain showed that sheep thought to have scrapie (a TSE that is already widespread in the United States) actually had BSE. Only a few scientists were privy to these results. Detwiler, the USDA bureaucrat who instigated of the quarantine of the Faillace’s farm in 1998 (probably partly as a result of this unpublished research), had been one of these few scientists. But in 2001, just months after the Faillace herd had been destroyed, an independent audit did DNA testing of the brain samples used in that study. 100% of the tissue was of cow origin. The supposed sheep brains being investigated for BSE (mad cow disease) were actually cow brains. File that story under the “duh” category. Mad Sheep is nothing short of stunning. It is required reading for anyone interested in the government violation of individual rights when it comes to agriculture. Most people do not think of the USDA as a corrupt agency in comparison to other government agencies. Unfortunately, an honest review of the facts indicate otherwise. Labels: Farm Raids, Government Idiocy, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    3 Comments   Exemption to Cow Fart Tax in the Works By Monica @ 9:10 AM From MadisoNet.com: An aide to Sen. John Thune says Thune's bill to exempt livestock from the Clean Air Act has been filed with the clerk of the U.S. Senate. ... The Environmental Protection Agency has denied it is targeting livestock as a potential tax source. ... Last month, the American Farm Bureau Federation said it is convinced the EPA's proposal to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act will result in new taxes on livestock operations. The farm group cited U.S. Department of Agriculture figures and said any farm or ranch with more than 25 dairy cows, 50 beef cattle or 200 hogs emits more than 100 tons of carbon equivalent per year. Therefore, the Farm Bureau says, those operations -- making up more than 90 percent of U.S. dairy, beef and pork production -- would have to get a permit under the proposed EPA rules. The Farm Bureau says the fees would mean annual assessments of more than $100 per dairy cow, $87.50 per head of cattle and $20 per hog. As usual, the bureaucrats back down and deny everything when their evil plans are exposed. I'm glad the lawmakers are sitting up and taking notice on this one. Plans for a cow fart tax under the Clean Air Act emerged only a few weeks ago, mostly in obscure local newspapers, online sources, and only one source which I would consider mainstream (Yahoo news). However, there was an enormous stink about this in the blogosphere and farming communities who contacted their lawmakers, which I'm sure had an effect. (This is yet another reason why it is so important to keep the government's slimy hands off the internet, too!) This goes to show that putting up a stink to protect our rights will work but it has to happen early on -- before the bureaucratic nonsense begins. Constant vigilance! Labels: EPA Tyranny, Global Warming, Government Idiocy E-mail Monica    PermaLink    1 Comments   Monday, December 15, 2008 Will NAIS Make Food Safer? By Monica @ 9:44 AM From NoNAIS: In Ireland industrial oil contaminated the pig feed at a major commercial feed supplier resulting in 200 times the acceptable levels if dioxins in the pork. As a result 100,000 pigs face depopulation as the government likes to euphamistically puts their killing sprees. The result is a total worldwide recall of Irish pork products which will hurt farmers, workers, retailers and consumers. It also leaves in question the safety of beef, poultry and lamb that may have been fed tainted food from that same supplier. This disaster points to the problems with centralization, consolidation of Big Ag both in the single source of feed and the small number of large pork producers. Indeed. Imagine a top down centrally planned system in which all auto makers in the United States are encouraged and supported through "auto subsidies" from the United States Department of Automobiles (USDA) to make only 2-3 types of vehicles. The consolidation of these companies is supported through government handouts over the course of a century, because the government has decided that auto makers will be far more efficient if there are fewer of them and if they each concentrate their efforts on 2-3 types of automobiles rather than 20 or so. Billions of taxpayer dollars are spent in an effort to encourage the auto makers to produce as many autos as possible, regardless of consumer demand. When problems of quality, efficiency and safety arise, regulations are piled on top of regulations to "ensure" the safety of both the autos and the products used to make these autos, under various programs under the United States Department of Automobiles (USDA). A number of new, small auto makers wish to sell their autos, for which there is great demand. However, the USDA is concerned about these uninspected automobiles. A few defective autos from these smaller auto makers result in a public outcry for the USDA to start regulating the smaller auto makers as well, regardless of the fact that the USDA-approved manufacturers are pumping out a higher proportion of defective products. The USDA comes to the obvious conclusion based on this public outcry. It must outlaw the direct sale of any automobile not made in a USDA-approved plant. Despite the slightly higher production costs to produce their product in a USDA approved facility, the smaller companies operating without USDA subsidies and outside of the USDA approved supply system see their market share continue to grow due to increased demand by a minority of informed consumers. Because of regulations outlawing the sale of these autos in ordinary establishments, they work directly with consumers to establish CSAs, or Community Supported Auto companies, in which consumers will buy autos directly from the manufacturers in an attempt to escape the costly USDA regulations. These CSAs are so successful that they see their market share grow from $1 billion to $12 billion over the course of a decade. Nevertheless, this new arrangement is branded as uncapitalistic and an obvious communist threat to free enterprise. Quality continues to decline in USDA approved facilities. Massive recalls of millions of autos result, so the USDA does the obvious. It attempts to avoid disaster by providing more "auto subsidies" to the subsidized auto makers so that they can improve quality and safety. All at the USDA agree that consumer confidence in the socialized auto market, which they insist is an example not of socialism but of free enterprise, must be upheld. Unfortunately, over time, recalls of the USDA-approved items keep getting larger as the USDA-supported consolidation continues. The USDA can no longer ignore these problems. The USDA comes to the obvious conclusion that the current regulations are insufficient to ensure the safety of the public. A new system of safety must obviously be drawn up. After all, the majority of the public is crying for the USDA to “do something”. Many important people at the USDA, together with the USDA approved manufacturers, get together and brainstorm a system that might once and for all finally ensure the safety of autos everywhere. They call the system NAIS, the National Auto Identification System. They propose that all autos be tagged with radio frequency identification chips so that any auto with a problem can be traced back to one of the four auto making plants in the United States, all of which rely on 1-2 auto parts supply companies for their raw materials. Most of the larger, USDA subsidized auto makers sign up for the program. When problems are found either in one of the four auto plants or one of the two parts suppliers, the tracking system is hailed as a marvelous success at determining the source of the safety problems. Although this does nothing to actually make autos safer, it does determine the source of the safety problems so that yet more regulations can be applied to the few remaining producers to ensure safety. The government responds to this success at tracking safety problems with the only obvious solution. New regulations must be drafted that mandate the tagging system be used and paid for by all auto makers, not just those not using USDA certified suppliers or USDA manufacturing plants. After all, how will people who buy their car directly from a particular auto maker through a CSA know where the safety problem originated? More safety problems emerge under producers compliant with NAIS. The solution is obvious. The NAIS tagging system must now obviously be required of all those producing autos for their own use, even if they do not sell their autos to anyone else. After all, public safety and confidence in the USDA must be upheld! Shortly after the enforcement of NAIS for every automobile in the United States, all transportation production becomes controlled by the USDA. Home-produced autos and even bicycles not inspected in a USDA facility or bearing a USDA RFID chip are outlawed as an obvious threat to public safety. Under the Auto Patriot Act, anyone questioning the lawfulness or utility of the USDA’s NAIS system is branded as unpatriotic. The Bill of Rights is discarded and the US Constitution is re-written. Shortly thereafter, the NAIS information is handed over to the EPA so that the EPA can collect emissions taxes. What a handy system at monitoring exactly who owns how many automobiles! That wasn't the original intent of NAIS, but it sure became convenient once the EPA got their slimy hands on the information! Now the USDA, in concert with the EPA, can mandate the total number of automobiles a person is allowed to have. The EPA continues to draw new and lower threshholds of the number of autos per person as the decades pass. Eventually the mission of the USDA is transformed over the course of a century from the regulation of auto safety to bicycle redistribution and education through the Bicycle Stamp Program and the Bicycle School Transportation Program. (See any similarities to the previous post yet?) Labels: Government Idiocy, NAIS, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   FDR's Farm Policies By Monica @ 8:13 AM Those of you who've read my short history of the USDA know that the agency expanded greatly under FDR's administration. I also make brief reference in the same document to FDR's bungled attempts to reduce crop and animal production, but here are some more details from Ari Armstrong's FreeColorado, in which Armstrong writes about Burton Folsom Jr.'s New Deal or Raw Deal? Here's the basic story. Hoover with his Smoot-Hawley Tarriff destroyed American agricultural exports. Then, with the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933, Roosevelt paid farmers with tax dollars to stop growing crops on some of their land, artificially propped up the prices of various (politically selected) agricultural products, and unleashed thousands of bureaucrats to enforce the Byzantine controls. The bureaucrats were, of course, paid to reduce agricultural output and increase prices through taxes on food processors that were passed along to consumers. And yet some people continue to praise FDR as an enlightened, "progressive" president, despite the profound harm of his stunningly stupid programs. Folsom notes on page 67, "In 1933, the U.S. was plowing under 10 million acres of cotton and killing 6 million piglets; in 1935, the U.S. was importing 36 million (bales) of cotton and 2 million pounds of ham and bacon." What is less well known is that we are still subsidizing agricultural overproduction, though in somewhat different ways now. This overproduction is ironically spurred (as it was in the decades preceding the FDR era) by the some of the USDA's own research, so that we are paying for both the creation of the problem and the "solution" to the problem. How do we pay for this overproduction? Through "commodity crop" subsidization and storage of surplus crops, which cost the taxpayer roughly $10 billion yearly from 2002-2006. Under various conservation incentives, Farm Bill money is also used to pay farmers to not plant crops periodically in order to enhance soil fertility because of past policies that encouraged the overproduction and encouraged unwise agricultural practices in the first place. Farmers have let fields lie fallow for thousands of years as a wise agricultural practice to enhance soil fertility. Now we are paying farmers to do it because the government has, for decades, paid farmers to produce too much. A prime example of how government intervention spurs unwise agricultural policies is the subsidization of corn for ethanol. Instead of planting corn on beans, farmers will for the first time ever plant corn on corn, which would be against their long term interest in a truly free market. Planting legumes such as beans results in higher soil nitrogen due to nitrogen fixation. Now that farmers will not be replenishing soil nitrogen through this ancient method, more inputs will be needed which will further raise the price of corn. This will almost undoubtedly lead to the need for more "conservation incentives" to "solve" the soil fertility problems caused by the ethanol subsidies in the first place. Today, approximately 95%-96% of the USDA annual Farm Bill Budget goes toward programs not devised until the FDR era, approximately 70 years after the inception of the USDA. These are the School Lunch Program, Food Stamps, and the various "farm support" programs described above. Labels: Government Idiocy, Subsidies, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Friday, December 12, 2008 What Will Obama's Agricultural Policies Look Like? By Monica @ 12:19 PM The short answer is, "No one knows." But at The Complete Patient, David Gumpert speculates about Obama's general philosophy on the regulation of food. If Obama's statements on raw milk are any indication, we may in trouble: “...The potential risks presented by disease-causing bacteria, from E.coli to salmonella, raise serious concerns about raw milk's viability in commercial markets. I understand your distaste for unnecessary federal regulations. At the same time, the FDA has a responsibility to provide consumer protection.” ... All Obama’s statements and all his appointments thus far suggest he’s a big-government guy. We can’t allow the American auto industry to fail, he says. Why not? We just can’t. Same for the banking industry, the insurance industry, the mortgage industry, and every big industry that comes hat in hand seeking a multibillion dollar handout. The President-elect may even be a super-big-government guy. There’s a movement afoot in Europe for a “world government” to tackle the big problems of climate change and financial collapse. According to a senior correspondent at the Financial Times, Barack Obama is favorably disposed. If you think the FDA and USDA are tough, I suspect they’d look downright soft and cuddly next to a world government making decisions about what we can, and can’t, eat. I hate to be super negative about this guy before he takes office, and I’m sure he will push constructive initiatives on energy and a few other areas. His predisposition to favor the regulators... isn’t encouraging. Unfortunately, I would agree. Watch for the nanny aspects of the state to expand greatly under an Obama administration. Roughly a week ago there were hints that Salazar was going to be the Secretary of Agriculture. As someone who grew up on a Colorado ranch, I was hoping we could see some more sensible agricultural policies from Obama than we saw under the Bush (though they'd obviously still be far from ideal). But now, with hints that Salazar will be taking a different post, there are rumors in one of the comments lines over at NoNais that the head of Pennsylvania's Department of Agriculture Dennis Wolff might be on the short list for the Secretary of Ag. job. Yikes. Wolff is an obvious opponent of freedom of choice and free speech. And the Pennsylvania Department of Agriculture has been carrying out an all-out war on raw milk in recent years under his direction. If it is true, we'll just have to work extra hard at rallying the troops! Labels: De-regulation, Government Idiocy, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    2 Comments   Tuesday, December 9, 2008 Update on SWAT Raid on Manna Storehouse By Monica @ 10:14 PM Here is an excerpt from an email that Manna storehouse sent to their co-op customers. I wrote about the SWAT raid on the Stowers family here. I will leave them an email about the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund but it occurred to me that some of my readers might be able to help if so inclined. In short, if you have experience with the Ohio Department Agriculture, the Health Department, or books on criminal law in Ohio, you may be able to help the Stowers family. If you would like to help with these things, their contact information is available at their storefront website. However, please don't overwhelm them with supportive emails, as their computers have been confiscated. "Hi everyone. First of all, we would like to thank everyone for the phenomenal support and encouragement you have given us during this very difficult time for our family. We have been unbelievably overwhelmed with the outpouring of love and concern from many, many people. At this point, we still have not been charged with anything, so we are devoting most of our time to research. We are trying to prepare ourselves for what lies ahead. Many people have asked how they can help. Here are a few things that we are in need of. *Anyone who has any information or experience with the ODA or the Health Department - we would love to hear about it! We are trying to learn the ORC laws regarding these agencies, their administrative procedure, etc... We will gladly talk with anyone who has information, advice or experiences to share. *Books on criminal law in Ohio. We would love to borrow any legal books of this nature that anyone might have. *Computers - We need to borrow 2 computers with the capability to recognize a wireless connection, preferably with Microsoft Excel. This is imperative for us in the research we are doing and would only be until we can get our property back. Labels: Activism Opportunities, Farm Raids E-mail Monica    PermaLink    2 Comments   Ontario Raw Milk Farmer Fined $55k, American Academy of Pediatrics Addresses Raw Milk Safety By Monica @ 10:45 AM Michael Schmidt says he won't pay and he'll continue to sell the milk to boot. Good for him! Individual rights win when people make a principled defense. The fact that some people are choosing to disobey the law and choose food that the government doesn't approve of is driving some people nuts (just see the first comment on the article.) Here is a video documenting the raid on Schmidt's farm earlier this year. All I can say is that at least in Canada these raids aren't conducted with SWAT teams and semiautomatic weapons trained on children. Ignore the annoying music but watch the whole thing to see the massive amount of confiscation of private property there was. Further, raw milk must be becoming such a big issue that the American Academy of Pediatrics has addressed it. Of course, the AAP has determined that raw milk is dangerous, but consider the source. These are the folks who want to put 8 year olds on statins and give 1% milk to babies to prevent obesity and cholesterol problems. Labels: De-regulation, Government Idiocy, Raw Milk E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Monday, December 8, 2008 Head Tracking! By Monica @ 8:00 PM Make no mistake, this is an activist blog. But now and then we are going to need some farm humor around here, given the serious nature of the posts below! Here is a very interesting video about an interesting physiological phenomenon in chickens. Enjoy! Hat tip: Urban Chickens Labels: Fun, Humor E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   What is NAIS? By Monica @ 4:15 PM This USDA program, the National Animal Identification Program (NAIS), is currently "voluntary" but will probably become required within a year if it doesn't receive strong opposition. So what is it? Many farmers have been registered under NAIS without their knowledge and against their will or consent. The supposed aim of this program is to protect Americans from bacteria and terrorism by tracking animals with radio frequency identification chips. Similar aims are touted for Bush's RealID program, which would put RFID chips in driver's licenses at the state's expense and then require a RealID of every person in order to open a bank account or enter a Federal Building. (The RealID program was passed in Congress as part of a military appropriations bill. This is also a program deserving strong opposition from supporters of individual rights, but it is beyond the scope of FA/RM.) If you eat animal products, NAIS affects you. From Northern Express: Its goal is to track every animal from birth to death, and all the movements in between, with the radio frequency IDs that look like white buttons. Supporters say that tagging animals with a 15-digit ID will make the food supply safer. The USDA aims to register all meat producers by January of 2009. The idea of the NAIS—voluntary in most states—is to quickly identify the source of an infected animal and to protect citizens from terrorists who contaminate the food supply. Farmers will have to log in every "event" of an animal's life, such as going to a fair, trucking them to another farm, or participating in a rodeo. Not just cattle, but also pet ponies, 4-H animals, and backyard chickens (not fish, though). The passage above is somewhat consistent with what is already happening. Here in Colorado, a child wanting to enter their animal in the Colorado State Fair has to be part of the "voluntary" NAIS system. So, technically, it's not voluntary if states require it. Both Michigan and Indiana have mandatory NAIS. Texas, however, has successfully fought against implementation of this system. Go Texas. This is the government website from APHIS (the USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service) explaining NAIS. The problem is that the goals of NAIS appear to conflict. The website indicates that NAIS is about disease control. Yet the USDA has recently issued letters assuring farmers that NAIS will not be used for disease control. This makes no sense. Here is what I know about NAIS after months of research. Every farm animal will be monitored with RFID chips as it is moved from location to location, only small or backyard farms will be required to tag every animal, and larger corporate farms that move animals in groups will only be required to purchase one tag per lot of hundreds of animals. (Obviously, at $5-$20 per tag, that's going to create a huge distortion in the market favoring the large farmer.) Large farming corporations designed and are supportive of this NAIS effort, because it will allow them greater access to the international market (not to mention eliminating domestic competition because of the disproportionate costs borne by the small farmer). That is unfortunate but it should be no surprise to anyone who knows anything about agriculture. APHIS would like premises registration and animal identification to become mandatory by January 2008, and enforcement of the reporting of animal movements to be mandatory by January 2009. Thankfully the NAIS program has not met these timelines, but we must still act to prevent further implementation, because it appears that APHIS has just made NAIS mandatory for interstate commerce. To make matters worse, legislators have tried to link NAIS with the School Lunch Program (both are USDA programs), making premises registration under NAIS a requirement of producers selling food that will be used in the School Lunch Program. (I am uncertain as to whether this requirement was actually passed in the agriculture appropriations for 2009 but if it wasn’t, we can certainly expect it to rear its ugly head again in the next Farm Bill omnibus legislation). To summarize, NAIS is a violation of the first, fourth, fifth, and fourteenth amendments. Besides the fact that this program is an obvious violation of individual rights, let’s examine some of the other pragmatic reasons that NAIS is a bad idea. First, it will eliminate small producers. This will further marginalize safety which will then likely lead to further government regulatory mandates to clean up dirty food (such as irradiation) rather than making sure it is clean in the first place. Eliminating smaller producers will also largely erase any vestige of humane treatment in the production of animal foods. (I realize many people don’t care about either of these things, but I do.) Second, it will allow the government unprecedented access to private property information. When considering the proposed EPA animal taxes to control CO2 production and the increased communication we have seen between federal agencies under the Bush administration, this is a very bad thing. We do not need the USDA reporting private property information to the EPA so that the EPA can collect taxes on cow farts. Third, owners will be required to report birthdates of animals, lost tags, and slaughter/death/missing animals. Such events will be required to be reported within 24 hours, with massive fines if they do not cooperate. Fourth, veterinarians will be required to report sightings of untagged animals and register the animals with the USDA (involuntary registration is already happening without the will or consent of farmers by state employees). Fifth, it is unprecedented for the US government to conduct surveillance of citizens simply because they own a specific type of property. The exceptions are motor vehicles and guns, but these are registered at the state level. NAIS would subject all owners of farm animals to federal surveillance and control. What can you do? First, visit Barack Obama’s site at http://change.gov/pages/rural_agenda/ and tell him what you think of NAIS. You can also post comments at http://www.change.org/ideas/view/stop_nais and vote to move anti-NAIS higher onto Obama's agenda (I have done this and you should see my comment there). Save your comments and also consider writing your representatives to tell them that you oppose NAIS. Third, use those comments to write the House Committee on Agriculture at agriculture@mail.house.gov. Spread the word to family and friends. Consider writing op-eds and letters to the editor. Also, visit stopanimalid.org and nonais.org for more reading and information. Labels: De-regulation, EPA Tyranny, Government Idiocy, NAIS, School Lunch Program, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Cow Fart Tax Coming Your Way By Monica @ 4:06 PM If someone had told me five years ago that the EPA would start taxing farting cows to control greenhouse gas emissions, I would have laughed in their face. It is now happening. The flatheads at the EPA are going to tax flatulence. But first, a bit of history. This summer, Dr. John Lewis published a timely call to action: In July the federal Environmental Protection Agency issued an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which details their plan to force Americans to reduce emissions of CO2 and other so-called “greenhouse gases.” This follows on an Executive Order signed by President Bush, which was made possible by a U.S. Supreme Court decisions ruling that CO2 is a “pollutant.” (!) This plan will strip the American people of their freedom, and place them under the control of a single, all-powerful, federal agency. Industrial permits, furnace regulations, auto emissions testing, building permits, transportation, and food production—all will fall under the boot of the EPA. Environmentalists will use lawsuits to pressure the EPA to tighten an ever-shrinking noose around the neck of every American. The EPA's document starts with a clear warning that using the Clean Air Act to regulate CO2 will lead to uncontrollable growth of the agency’s power: "EPA’s analyses leading up to this ANPR have increasingly raised questions of such importance that the scope of the agency’s task has continued to expand. For instance, it has become clear that if EPA were to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from motor vehicles under the Clean Air Act, then regulation of smaller stationary sources that also emit GHGs [Greenhouse Gases] – such as apartment buildings, large homes, schools, and hospitals – could also be triggered. One point is clear: the potential regulation of greenhouse gases under any portion of the Clean Air Act could result in an unprecedented expansion of EPA authority that would have a profound effect on virtually every sector of the economy and touch every household in the land." (ANPR p. 5) The ANPR also includes the following, in a comment by the Department of Agriculture: "many of the emissions are the result of natural biological processes that are as old as agriculture itself. For instance, technology does not currently exist to prevent the methane produced by enteric fermentation associated with the digestive processes in cows and the cultivation of rice crops; the nitrous oxide produced from the tillage of soils used to grow crops; and the carbon dioxide produced by soil and animal agricultural respiratory processes. The only means of controlling such emissions would be through limiting production, which would result in decreased food supply and radical changes in human diets." (ANPR pp. 66-67) To the many who believe that these excerpts from the EPA's document are exaggeration, recent events have proven otherwise. The EPA has not lost any time in calculating how much to tax agriculture under its new plan to cut CO2 emissions, according to NoNAIS: In a massive power grab the EPA is attempting to tax all sources of greenhouse gasses. If your cow farts they want your money. Same goes for your pigs. Your house. Anything.... If the USDA EPA has their way it would impose an annual tax of $20 per pig and $87.50 per cow. Who knows how much they’ll tax your home or wood stove but you can bet once they get their slimy claws into your life they’ll never let go. (link inserted by me) Moreover, as explained by the blog author, Jeffries: In the Federal Registry the USDA comments discuss: If GHG emissions from agricultural sources are regulated under the CAA, numerous farming operations that currently are not subject to the costly and time-consuming Title V permitting process would, for the first time, become covered entities. Even very small agricultural operations would meet a 100-tons-per-year emissions threshold. For example, dairy facilities with over 25 cows, beef cattle operations of over 50 cattle, swine operations with over 200 hogs, and farms with over 500 acres of corn may need to get a Title V permit. It is neither efficient nor practical to require permitting and reporting of GHG emissions from farms of this size. Excluding only the 200,000 largest commercial farms, our agricultural landscape is comprised of 1.9 million farms with an average value of production of $25,589 on 271 acres. These operations simply could not bear the regulatory compliance costs that would be involved. Jeffries explains that presumably, the cost per animal is calculated through the Title V regulations. This has become more widely substantiated through other press releases and independent associations (you can simply google for other news reports if you desire). It is crucial for everyone to understand that the proposed tax on livestock is just the beginning. The underlying premise here is a tax on greenhouse gas emissions. According to EPA documents, they will have the authority to regulate any emissions of so-called greenhouse gases. This means the rest of agriculture as well (tilling the soil releases CO2), your woodstove, your barbeque grill, etc. The predictable result is that massive amounts of farmers would go out of business, consumer food prices would be driven through the stratosphere, and the EPA will continue to expand its powers as they draw new minimum thresholds of greenhouse gases. Jeffries further notes: You will have to make your house meet EPA standards, pay fees to get it inspected and approved or have it condemned. Want to talk housing crisis? Very few homes in America will meet the standards. This means all those homes will get dumped on the market for pennies on the dollar. That will create a new round of foreclosures and depress real estate prices further. The EPA is throwing gas on the fire. Having just read Harvest of Sorrow about the dekulakization of towns in Russia, I can’t help but notice the similarities between Soviet Russia and what our future situation might look like in the United States if we don't act and speak out. The result would be mass unemployment and an even greater reliance on foreign countries for our food. If these rules were to be strictly enforced, the ultimate result would be famine, death, and waves of people being hauled off to prison camps for minor infractions of agricultural codes, such as keeping a few extra chickens. In the end, it would be the downfall of the United States. It is all there in the government documents above. Unfortunately, both NAIS (see the post above) and the EPA taxes would dovetail to create disastrous government controls over our food, because the USDA would have the knowledge about all premises in the country where animals are raised and could simply pass this information to the EPA so they can collect their taxes. Many farmers are already being enrolled in the USDA’s “voluntary” NAIS program without their knowledge or consent. Both of these programs must be stopped before they are started. What can you do? First, you can speak up to the coming Obama administration about your views on such matters. Visit http://change.gov/agenda/energy_and_environment_agenda/ and http://change.gov/pages/rural_agenda/ and leave your comments about such matters as the USDA’s NAIS and EPA taxes on agricultural greenhouse gas emissions. Second, you can look at my proposal on Obama's site and vote for it, here: http://www.change.org/ideas/view/stop_the_proposed_epa_taxes_under_anpr 158 more votes to get it to first place in the category of Global Warming! Come on, activists, let's overwhelm them with votes! Second, save the comments you submit to the Obama change.gov site and write your representatives and officials for office about your views. Write op-eds or letters to the editor. It is also of vital importance to simply spread the news to others. Alert your friends and family to these proposals by pointing them to our website and blog so that they can remain updated. Labels: EPA Tyranny, Global Warming, Government Idiocy, NAIS E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   USDA Actively Blocks Testing of Mad Cow Disease By Monica @ 4:00 PM How would you feel if a government agency, with a century-long mission to inspect the food supply for safety, refused to allow testing for food-borne diseases? Sound too absurd to be true? Read about it here and here. Here are the basics. Creekstone Farms spent $500k to test for mad cow disease (BSE) so that they could sell beef to Japan in order to meet Japan's strict importation standards after the mad cow scare. Here’s the hitch. The USDA controls access to test kits for mad cow disease. When Creekstone Farms requested the kits, it was denied by the USDA the ability to test for the disease. Why? Because the USDA caved to special interest pressure of groups such as the National Cattlemen’s Association, who were afraid that the testing of every cow might become the standard for all slaughterhouses for domestic sales as well. In other words, it might have revealed an actual problem with the safety of the US beef supply or allowed a competitor greater market share due to increased quality and consumer demand. And goodness knows, we can't allow the free market to work in order to reveal safety problems and meet customer demand! Perhaps there are many people in the United States who wouldn’t care whether every head of cattle is tested for BSE or not. But why not let the free market give it a try? Is it reasonable to assume that some individuals would pay only $.20 more per pound for beef that is BSE-free? Yes. Creekstone Farms filed a lawsuit challenging the USDA’s decision. The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that Creekstone had to be allowed to buy the test kits. Unfortunately, the USDA appealed the decision. A three judge panel of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit (“DC Circuit”) reversed the decision. They ruled that the USDA now has legal authority to prevent the use of BSE tests by Creekstone Farms. You can read the DC circuit’s lengthy decision here. You can also read this insightful piece about how the USDA probably wouldn’t have won this appeal without the occurrence of a previously existing regulation called the Virus-Serum-Toxin Act (VSTA). Remember and tell this story the next time someone hits you over the head with their nonsense about the need for government “safety” standards and regulations. The free market can do it better, if our government would allow it. Labels: Conventional Wisdom, De-regulation, Government Idiocy, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   When Antibiotic-Treated Means Antibiotic-Free By Monica @ 3:54 PM Tyson Chicken labels its chicken as free of antibiotics and growth hormones. But it turns out that Tyson Chicken has been caught injecting pre-hatched chicks 2-3 days before hatching, with antibiotics. However, they continue to label the chickens they sell as "raised without antibiotics." The USDA told them to stop using the "antibiotic free" label after Tyson lost a suit brought by competitors for false labeling. Now Tyson Chicken is suing the USDA to keep using the term. Why? For a completely understandable reason. The previous USDA rules said that any antibiotic treatments given before the chick is two days old don't actually count when it comes to labeling. The USDA is not your friend. This story needs to spread far and wide to those who believe that USDA regulations assure quality, safety, and truth in the marketplace. This story is part of the reason why I don't trust USDA labels, why I want the USDA's ability to regulate food abolished, and why I am moving toward buying all my meat and eggs from producers that I can verify as honest. I don't need any more government-approved fraudulent labels on my food. Last year, Tyson Chicken was completely within its legal rights (as defined by the USDA) to label antibiotic-treated chickens as raised without antibiotics. That is, until the USDA decided to change its tune following the suit brought against Tyson. Here is what we need. We need a truly free market in food, which in part means abolishing the USDA's ability to sponsor lies. The USDA should not have any authority to regulate food inspection or to prevent the local production, local slaughter, or direct farm to consumer sales of completely healthy foods. For them to be able to do so is a violation of an individual's right to trade freely to mutual benefit and even makes our food system demonstrably less safe. We need companies to start telling the truth and to suffer the full consequences of not doing so. It is notable that without the previous USDA regulations that supported Tyson Chicken's fraudulent labeling, Tyson would probably have already stopped using the "antibiotic free" label by now due to the lawsuit brought by competitors and the subsequent court order. We won't have justice so long as companies can then turn around and sue a government agency that supported their fraud in the first place. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, consumers need to stop believing everything they read. Consumers have a misplaced confidence in the USDA and other government agencies to "protect" them. Ultimately, fraud will only come to some minimum level when the public stops supporting it with their dollars and starts being personally responsible enough to verify claims, either directly or indirectly through independent certification. Labels: De-regulation, Government Idiocy, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Diet for an UNhealthy Planet By Monica @ 3:45 PM One often hears in environmentalist circles that meat eating will destroy the planet, that the earth doesn’t have enough carrying capacity to provide meat for everyone, and that a “diet for a healthy planet” includes only plant products or at most, limited animal products. Indeed, this is a strong basis for many people to adopt veganism. But is it true? Not only are these statements annoying for those of us who eat animal products, they’re scientifically baseless. This little post will give you some intellectual ammunition to deal with these assertions. Until roughly 50-60 years ago, animals were the basis of a healthy farm with fertile soils. While I don’t agree with some of these political solutions proposed to our current agricultural problems, here is a portion of an excellent article that explains in greater detail why the meat myths in the first paragraph are untrue. Let’s look at some other facts as well. The tiny country of New Zealand provides enough grass fed lamb to feed itself and much of the rest of the western world that eats lamb. 70% of its land is devoted to farming. Lamb from Australia and New Zealand runs around $5-6 per pound. (By the way, New Zealand is free of farming subsidies and the farmers there are much better off for it!) As far as the United States goes, you can get a whole side of grass fed beef for about $5.00 per pound, in bulk directly from the producer, with a range of everything from hamburger to prime steaks. That’s a very good price considering grocery store prices. Even grass-fed meat in the grocery store is affordable. I can get grass fed buffalo roasts in Costco for $5 per pound. Isn't it funny how this grassfed system is economically sustainable all on its own with no subsidies when massive amounts of money are poured into the feedlot system yearly? This money is in the form of grain subsidies, government loans for farmers using grain as collateral, and pollution control money for feedlots under the USDA's EQIP program. Marvelous, isn't it? Provide research money to increase commodity crop production, subsidy money for grain feed, government loans because farmers produced too much of this feed, spurred by the subsidies and the government research, and finally, provide government money to clean up the pollution that these cheap, concentrated grain feeding systems cause (known as Confined Animal Feeding Operations, or CAFOs). Most of the criticisms of eating meat are criticisms of the modern feedlot system, not meat eating as it was for thousands of years of human evolutionary history. Some of these arguments are valid objections to the US's feedlot system, which is certainly an absurd waste of taxpayer dollars. But these facts are not a case against meat eating. Even food journalist Michael Pollan is disappointingly deluded on this point and somehow thinks meat would become more expensive if it were all grassfed. What is the basis for this assertion? Grassfed meat is affordable when it is bought directly from the producer. I suspect Pollan's conclusion is not rationally but emotionally based, because he thinks it is a health and environmental problem that some of us are eating so much as 8 oz. steak per day. He wants meat to be more expensive, so he then asserts it would become so. From where I stand, I see no basis for this statement. The fact that most cattle and hogs in the United States are grainfed in feedlots is not evidence that that system is efficient or economically viable on its own. It is a system spurred by massive government intervention. Consider that all kinds of marginal grassland could be used to feed livestock, in the United States and elsewhere. There is a great deal of land in this country not suited to growing traditional crops, but it would be wonderful as rangeland and would yield its fruit as fatted animals. We can thus dismiss the environmentalist myths that meat would become more expensive under a grass-fed or free market system. But what about those other Malthusians (biotechnology companies) claiming that without their special technology, there will not be enough food to go around, and only they can solve world hunger problems? It's absurd. There is an enormous amount of land in the United States that could yet be converted to food production. Millions of backyards in America could theoretically be used to grow a vegetable garden and feed the inhabitants for an entire year. Now, surely not everyone wants their lawn turned into a garden, but the fact remains that this has been done twice in the nation's history with so-called "Victory Gardens" planted in millions of American backyards in both World Wars to increase food production. According to Michael Pollan, 40% of America's produce by the end of WW II was produced by home gardens. It would actually be profitable to rent one's yard to someone who wants to garden it, and a good profit could be made off of such gardening. This would decrease prices for store produce due to decreased demand, thus spurring even greater production efficiency for larger growing operations. From my own personal experience I know that a 7500 sq. ft. garden can probably yield around $2000 in produce in one summer. If we had a rational immigration policy that did not prevent Mexicans from working here, such free market options could become a greater reality. I'm just thinking off the top of my head here, but imagine a system in which a Mexican family were hired as part of a community cooperative agreement to garden and sell produce from a set number of backyards, with the landowners getting some portion of the profit from the produce. (But then, if we had never had farm subsidies, so many Mexican farmers wouldn't have been pushed out of their jobs and across the American border in the first place.) It is a complete myth -- whether propagated by environmentalists or CEO's -- that we somehow don’t have enough land to produce enough food for everyone on the planet, and that we must either decrease meat consumption or massively increase grain production through more research. I'm not against biotechnology (breeding hybrids of all kinds of plants has been wildly successful), but the myths propagated by both of these groups are absurd. If the commodity crop subsidies were eliminated, at least two things would happen. Farming in the United States would mostly return to pastured livestock which eat a more diverse diet, and subsidized grains would not be dumped on the US or world market. As a result, poorer foreign nations would also see a return to more natural systems of farming and reduce their reliance on the west. Some biotechnological research would probably divert away from grain production to other crops. The proposed EPA taxes on animal farming are designed to move Americans toward a grain-based diet that is supposedly healthier for the planet. This type of diet is not healthier for humans or the planet. It is ecologically and economically unsustainable, not to mention unhealthy. The government should not force people toward a grain-based diet that promotes chronic dental disease, obesity, heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and Alzheimer's disease, particularly when advocting a universal healthcare system that would require more taxpayer money and more advocacy of more grain-based nutritional nonsense that will make Americans even sicker. A grain-based monocultural agricultural system not only promotes chronic illness, it creates soil erosion and depletion of nutrients, which results in a large hypoxic "dead zone" in the Gulf of Mexico, making commercial fishing there impossible. This system could not survive under a laissez-faire capitalist system with a proper application of property rights. It is UNsustainable and UNhealthy. Labels: Conventional Wisdom, Meat Myths, Modern Ignorance E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Truth in Advertising Opposed by Lobbyists (and Some Government Officials) By Monica @ 3:35 PM Unfortunately, these days we are seeing a collusion between business and government in all sectors of the economy: the financial bailout, GM’s request of a government “loan”, and insurance companies, in their short-sightedeness and contrary to the long-term interest, now salivating at the government welfare trough advocating universal healthcare. Unfortunately, such actions on the part of business owners extend to agriculture and have the same root causes: too much government regulation that then fuels lobbying and special favors to special interests. To eliminate the “revolving door” between government and business that the political left so often speaks of, we need to eliminate the door itself. More regulation means only one thing: that the revolving door will spin even faster. Here is one example of what I am talking about. About five years ago, Monsanto sued Oakhurst dairy in Maine for labeling its milk growth-hormone free. (Monsanto owns the growth hormone, rBGH). They lost the case, but Monsanto didn’t learn its lesson about trying to use the courts to suppress free speech. Their lawsuit in Maine didn't work so now they're trying to get state bans on non-rBGH labeling enacted by going directly to state bureaucrats to get bans enacted directly. They found a friend in Pennsylvania secretary of agriculture Wolff, former conventional dairy farmer and true believer of FDA research. Monsanto was able to get a labeling ban scheduled in Pennsylvania, which was (thankfully) overturned by the governor earlier this year. Monsanto’s complaints are that when another milk company labels its milk as not containing rBGH, it makes their product look inferior. So: Leslie Zuck, executive director of Pennsylvania Certified Organic, ... offers a sensible compromise. Instead of banning the labels, why couldn’t dairy farmers who use the artificial growth hormone use their own labels? Ms. Zuck suggests this: “We use rBGH and it’s great stuff!” Exactly. I realize that rBGH has been banned in practically every country except the United States, and I don't support those bans. However, I do support the right to any voluntary labeling by any company, so long as it's accurate. If Monsanto believes in its product, why don’t they just stick up for it? Likely because they already feel they are under attack by regulators across the globe. I'd like to think Monsanto's actions are just a response to the irrationalism of food bans. But I also wish they would just grow up, make a principled case for a free market, and stop trying to use political pressure to squelch their competitors and further obfuscate consumer knowledge about the food supply. More importantly, I wish our elected representatives would read the First Amendment. Labels: De-regulation, Government Idiocy E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Government Regulation of Raw Milk By Monica @ 3:27 PM If you’ve read my other blog or Diana’s blog, you might be asking yourself, “Raw milk, raw milk. What’s the deal with raw milk?” Well, I don’t consider FA/RM to be the place to advocate raw milk. For that you can visit realmilk.com and get much more information that I can provide. We drink raw milk in our household, as do about 5 other Objectivists I know, and I believe it is a far superior product in taste and nutritional quality. There are valid scientific reasons to drink the stuff but I won’t get into that in detail here. One of the purposes of this blog is to advocate that people become educated about their own food, whatever choices they ultimately make. Whether you are a raw milk drinker or not, individual rights in food production and consumption is what we’re about. That includes unpasteurized products if consumers so choose. The FDA disagrees. They say, “...raw milk, no matter how carefully produced, may be unsafe.” Yes, that's true. Substitute almost any food product for the words "raw milk", and you'll get a much better picture of the false sense of security about food that the FDA is trying to provide. Let's see.... Pasteurized milk was responsible for 2 food borne illness outbreaks in 1997. (And now, most milk is ultrapasteurized because of the evolution of heat resistant strains of bacteria. Next time you buy milk check the label.) Eggs? 3 outbreaks. Chicken? 9 outbreaks. Fruits and vegetables? 15 outbreaks. Salads? 21 outbreaks. The salad outbreak affected 1104 people. Let’s not forget the outbreaks of salmonella on alfalfa sprouts and tomatoes recently, not to mention the numerous E. coli outbreaks in beef leading to massive recalls last year. The real questions are these. First, “Does the government have the right to deny people a product that they want to buy, for whatever reason?” The answer is “no” so long as that purchase does not violate anyone else’s rights – and it doesn’t. The second question that must also be asked is, “How dangerous is raw milk compared to other foods?” The answer to this one is more difficult. There don't seem to be very reliable statistics on how many raw milk drinkers there are in the United States, which is unsurprising given the government harassment of raw milk producers. The drinking of raw milk is uncommon but is likely to be higher than any government report would indicate, since many people are probably drinking it illegally. Even so, if a 2003 joint report by the FDA, CDC, and USDA can be believed (and that's a big if), that report indicates that deli meats and hot dogs are about 10 times more dangerous on a per serving basis than raw milk. According the FDA's, the CDC's, and the USDA's own document, these inspected products currently sold retail are 10 times as likely to cause food borne illness than raw milk – a product that is largely illegal and if not illegal, usually greatly restricted. So why all the fuss about raw milk? This is not about food safety. It's about the fact that once government gets control of something, they don't give it up easily. And control of the milk industry (in the form of pasteurization and price controls) have been around for a very long time. Raw milk is still illegal in about half of the states in the US. However, raw milk drinkers are making progress at de-regulating raw milk. See here for information about your state. Labels: De-regulation, Government Idiocy, Raw Milk E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   For Farmers -- How to Survive a Farm Raid By Monica @ 3:26 PM The Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund has some advice to farmers for surviving a farm raid. Go check out the entire page and their list of resources. For starters: You can call the Emergency Hot Line Directly, or call the office during regular business hours. The lawyer on call will be paged to call you back. To help you remember the numbers, we send out a free magnet with your membership packet. Call us if you didn’t get one or lost it. Office: 1-703-208-FARM (3276) Emergency 1-800-867-5891 If you aren’t a member yet, consider joining now. Labels: Farm Raids E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Farm Raids (II) By Monica @ 3:23 PM From Campaign for Liberty comes this disturbing story: On Monday, December 1, a SWAT team with semi-automatic rifles entered the private home of the Stowers family in LaGrange, Ohio, herded the family onto the couches in the living room, and kept guns trained on parents, children, infants and toddlers, from approximately 11 AM to 8 PM. The team was aggressive and belligerent. The children were quite traumatized. At some point, the “bad cop” SWAT team was relieved by another team, a “good cop” team that tried to befriend the family. The Stowers family has run a very large, well-known food cooperative called Manna Storehouse on the western side of the greater Cleveland area for many years. So what was the problem? Apparently, a Department of Agriculture official had been notified that a local college group had obtained some uninspected beef from Manna Storehouse. The consequence: Agents began rifling through all of the family’s possessions, a task that lasted hours and resulted in a complete upheaval of every private area in the home. Many items were taken that were not listed on the search warrant. The family was not permitted a phone call, and they were not told what crime they were being charged with. They were not read their rights. Over ten thousand dollars worth of food was taken, including the family’s personal stock of food for the coming year. All of their computers, and all of their cell phones were taken, as well as phone and contact records. The food cooperative was virtually shut down. There was no rational explanation, nor justification, for this extreme violation of Constitutional rights. Presumably Manna Storehouse might eventually be charged with running a retail establishment without a license. Why then the Gestapo-type interrogation for a 3rd degree misdemeanor charge? This incident has raised the ominous specter of a restrictive new era in State regulation and enforcement over the nation’s private food supply. Unfortunately, this report of yet another farm raid bears all too common similarities to the two other raids I’ve written about recently. You may read about more examples of government confiscation of private property and entrapment here. Update: stories about this event are popping up all over the web. Here is a report from The Complete Patient. Labels: Farm Raids E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Farm Raids By Monica @ 8:42 AM State and federal agencies are violating individual rights. Consider the following two tales of government confiscation or destruction of private property and unreasonable searches in the name of “protecting consumers”: the farm raids of Mark Nolt and Rinaldi and Bean. In two separate raids, one in August 2007 and one in April 2008, Mark Nolt's farm in Pennsylvania was raided for his refusal to apply for a state permit to sell raw milk. The first raid seized over $25,000 worth of cheese, despite no complaint of food borne illness and no proof of any danger posed by the cheese. In the second raid, six police cars and five unmarked cars descended onto his property, preventing neighbors or family from coming onto the property by threatening their arrest, seizing $30,000 worth of cheese, leading Nolt away in handcuffs, and seizing irreplaceable parts to his dairy equipment so that he could no longer make cheese even for his family, let alone consumers. The director of food safety also stole a book off his shelf, which was entitled Everything I Ever Wanted to Do is Illegal, by Joel Salatin. The current, more stringent permitting process in Pennsylvania no longer allows a farmer to sell raw cream or butter, which would significantly add to farm income. To add insult to the injury of all of his lost income, Nolt has recently been ordered to pay over $4000 in fines due to his noncompliance. He is appealing the decision. Last September two farmers in Virginia, Rinaldi and Bean, were arrested for labeling their pork products incorrectly. While waiting for new tags to come in the mail, they used price tags that said "Certified Organic" but their pork was not Certified Organic by the USDA. 10 state agriculture officials and 2 policemen arrived at their door. They were handcuffed, their computers seized, and they were placed in separate vehicles and taken to jail. Their pork was destroyed by pouring bleach on it -- meat that had in no way been proven unsafe to eat. No consumer complained or got sick from this pork. Rinaldi believes that this heavy handedness was not actually due to the labeling, but the fact that Rinaldi and Bean were slaughtering their own pork. Processing in an inspected facility was costing the farmers as much as $1300 for four pigs, and transporting uninspected pork, goat, and sheep products is illegal in Virginia. Though we do not approve of the use of USDA Certified Organic stickers on non-USDA certified products, this type of police state response is completely inappropriate for a labeling infraction. When SWAT teams carry out the destruction and confiscation of private property for minor code infractions, it resembles the actions of a Soviet Politburo central planning office against the "kulaks", not the founders' vision of the United States of America. These are just two of many examples where governments used force against US citizens and violated their Constitutional rights even though they had not harmed or threatened a single person. These actions are all too common in the small farming community, particularly among the Amish and Mennonite communities. Labels: Farm Raids E-mail Monica    PermaLink    2 Comments