Thoughts on the Environmental Effects of Carnivory and Veganism By Monica @ 5:24 PM
The popular press is awash with stories these days of how meat contributes to global warming and how many people are turning to veganism to reduce their "carbon footprint". There is even a proposed EPA tax on emissions from farm animals. From Scientific American articles, change.org pieces, and statements like this from respected nutritionists: "The more rice, corn, potatoes, sweet potatoes, and beans you eat, the trimmer and healthier you will be – and with those same food choices you will help save the Planet Earth too", environmentalists, vegans, and animal rights activists are attacking any and all methods of raising animals -- whether for meat, dairy, or any other use -- as contributing to "climate change." But is it true?
Before I deal with actual truth or falsehood of such statements, I'd like to state my position on "climate change" so that I can be as transparent as possible here. First, I do believe the globe is probably warming, and that it might be happening at least partly from human activities. I honestly don't know. However, I don't believe that this in any way justifies the political "solutions" being proposed to "climate change" (cap and trade, coercive laws, etc.). I haven't actually investigated the global warming issue seriously from a scientific standpoint and don't really have time to do so right now. I used to be a dyed in the wool member of the global warming camp and have gone back and forth on the issue over the past, but the fact is that wherever the truth lies, my knowing it would make very little difference in my day to day activities, and thus, it ranks pretty low on my list of self-education priorities. If that disqualifies me in your mind from commenting on the issue of carnivory vs. veganism as it relates to "climate change", so be it. I believe peoples' actual arguments, and whether they are logical or not, are the things that we should be dealing with.
Now that we have that out of the way, let's consider the issue.
First, let's be honest. Vegans and vegetarians raise a number of valid points when it comes to meat production. Some of these are actual problems and some may not be problems but the facts remain: feedlots often contribute to waterway pollution, cattle release methane, and that the way in which the animals are raised (indoors, confined, unsanitary conditions, fed antibiotics as a routine measure because of the immense crowding and wrong food which both foster illness) is, by and large, inhumane. I've blogged on each of these points before, including the absurdity and wastefulness of subsidizing this inefficient method of raising animals through the EQIPprogram.
Further, it is absolutely true that as we increase in each level of the food chain from primary producer (plants, algae) to primary consumers eating primary producers, to secondary consumers (animals that eat primary consumers), to tertiary consumers (this last category are the top predators in any ecosystem and eat both primary and secondary consumers: wild cats, dogs, humans, eagles, etc. are examples) about 90% of the energy ingested as food is lost as heat and only 10% is converted to biomass. There are some variations in those numbers, but those are the basics: lots of energy lost as heat or waste products as you go up in the food chain/food web. This all makes perfect sense from the standpoint of physics and basic physiology/metabolism. It's so well-documented in the literature that I see no reason to provide references. No one disputes that most of the energy from the fuel in the internal combustion engine is lost as heat rather than converted into mechanical power. It's the same principle in living organisms.
This is the reason that in any given ecosystem, there's an immense amount of biomass of primary producers and hardly any biomass, comparatively speaking, of tertiary consumers, i.e. top predators. This is also the basis for claiming that meat contributes to global warming. After all, if you are running grass or grain through an animal before that animal food gets to a human, lots of the energy is lost as heat or waste. Waste products of respiration are CO2 and water (or CO2 and ethanol or lactic acid if you're a fermenter). One of the waste products of the bacteria in ruminants is methane. Of course, we all know that CO2 and methane are the alleged "bad actors" of "climate change." The logic of the vegan argument is that if you bypass eating the ruminants (or any other animal, for that matter) you are more efficient at converting the calories of primary production (plants) into biomass and you avoid the energy "wastage" and extra CO2 and methane production.
But there are just a few problems with this very simplistic line of argumentation. Let's address them.
First, the assertion that humans evolved as vegetarians, or that their most recent common ancestor was vegetarian, has been blown out of the water. Personally, I think a good vegan diet with proper supplementation and avoidance of processed food is probably head and shoulders about even the standard American diet. But that's not the point. The point is, should people have the right to eat the diet they are designed evolutionarily to eat, the diet that is in their own best interest? Or should they eat a vegan diet to "save the planet", in the words of Dr. McDougall? It's a valid question. If you believe a vegan diet is optimal, that's fine for you, but there are serious issues with the scientific basis of such an argument from an evolutionary and nutritional standpoint. And certainly such a diet shouldn't be foisted on humans everywhere for political reasons if the point of morality is to teach us how to enjoy life to its fullest (as opposed to sacrificing for someone or something else, ultimately suffering or dying sooner than necessary).
Let's take the issue of energy loss. Yes, it's true that lots of food energy is lost as heat when we eat animals. However, there are more subtle points to consider. How does the caloric intake differ between vegans and carnivores or even vegans and meat-heavy omnivores? If Good Calories, Bad Calories is any indication, those with carb-heavy (read: plant-heavy) diets are driven to ingest more calories. I've certainly found this to be true in my own experience. A meat-heavy diet, at least as far as my own personal experience, results in spontaneously reduced caloric intake of as much as 800 calories daily. That's something that is never accounted for in the "carbon footprint" calculations. And honestly, what quantity of greenhouse gases are produced by grain- and legume-fed vegetarians? Beans, beans, the musical fruit, the more you eat the more you toot. Seriously, eating high-carb plant foods causes the production of more intestinal gas. I'm not sure what the chemical composition of that gas is, but the presence of the gas is something everyone who has switched from a high carb to a low carb diet, or spends a lot of time around bean-eating vegetarians, can amply attest to.
Moving on. Is most of the world's land arable and suitable for crop production? It is not. I've blogged about that before. In fact, this is considered a major problem of plant biotechnologists who develop breeding programs to develop crops for less than optimal conditions. Lots of the earth's land, however, is rangeland and quite suitable for animal production.
Another problem is the simplistic assumption about modern-day vs. ancient production of CO2 and methane from cattle. Actually, I'm not even sure the vegan "climate change" activists or their followers want to consider this. There are currently about 100 million head of cattle in the United States. Most of our cattle are grain-fed for at least part of their lives and grain-fed cattle produce about twice as much methane as grass-fed cows. However, they are not grain-fed their entire lives. My best estimate is that at any given point, around 25 million head are being fed this way. Estimates of the number of bison present in pre-settlement times is also as high as 100 million head, with bison being about twice as big as cows. I'm sure many people find it difficult to believe that the American continent could foster twice as much ruminant biomass as it currently does, but the fact is that the Americans plains soil was extremely fertile before modern grain- and soy-based agriculture washed much of it into the ocean, with enormous amounts of primary production (much of it underground in the form of prairie grass). I'm not sure how many head of bison were turned over yearly to predation or hunting. Today, approximately 1/4 of the national herd of cattle makes its way into the food chain yearly. But assuming that grass-fed bison produce similar amounts of methane to grass-fed cows, and that there could have been twice as much bison biomass as current cattle biomass, that means there were probably very similar amounts of methane being produced all along and that this hasn't changed much historically. This pretty much blows away the argument that we should consider cattle per se a significant problem when it comes to global warming.
Finally, let's consider the darling of the environmentalist/vegan movement: soy.
Let's be fair -- soy is a nitrogen fixing plant, meaning it can pull useless nitrogen gas from the air and turn it to valuable, fertilizing ammonia with the aid of bacterial endosymbionts in the root tissue. Even Thomas Jefferson recognized the value of using legume crops such as vetch to restore fertility to depleted soil. Still, soy is a plant with a shallow root system that results in soil erosion when grown in monoculture. Soy is often shipped up from South America, grown on land where rainforests once grew. Then, if the pure soybeans aren't eaten, and they usually aren't, they are processed in an extruder. Here is a picture of a soy extruder:
Hint: that puppy doesn't work on solar or wind power.
Now let's consider the grain-based diet that the vegans want us to go on. Any crop grown in the US today post-1950s in the era of subsidy-powered commodity agriculture requires vast amounts of ammonia fertilizer input through the Haber process. Animals could provide a much more balanced source of fertilizer, and played an important role in agriculture besides meat production prior to the 1950s. Long-term, there is simply no way to completely amend soil without farm animals if we want optimal plant (and thus, human) nutrition. These are the very animals many vegan activists would like to see eliminated to solve "climate change". Even that is absurd. Let's consider the Haber process, shall we? It is responsible for 1/4 of the world's nitrogen fixation and works by burning nitrogen and hydrogen gas through four rounds of heating to between 300-550 degrees C, to produce NH3.
Hint: the fuel for the Haber process does not come from solar or wind power.
OK, vegan activists for climate change. Please tell me which of the two options you think uses more fossil fuel: 1) The Haber process and the fuel required to transport the products of the Haber process to the fields? Or 2) locally raised animals depositing their dung directly on the fields, with all the necessary nutrients (not just nitrogen), as they did 50 years ago and as they still do on many family farms in the United States?
I hope I have demolished the idea that you have any idea how much carnivory vs. veganism truly contributes to "climate change" or "greenhouse gas" production without doing a lot more in-depth calculation in all of the areas mentioned above. Personally, I think my locally raised real bacon is a lot more environmentally friendly than the soy-based Smart Bacon grown with Haber-produced ammonia, shipped to the US, and then processed in an extruder which uses petroleum products. Here are the ingredients in Smart Bacon: Water, soy protein isolate, wheat gluten, soybean oil, textured soy protein concentrate, textured wheat gluten, less than 2% of: natural smoke flavor, natural flavor (from vegetable sources), grill flavor (from sunflower oil), carrageenan, evaporated cane juice, paprika oleoresin (for flavor & color), potassium chloride, sesame oil, spice extractives, fermented rice flour, tapioca dextrin, citric acid, salt. Look at the amount of processing involved. Many of the substances in bold are produced or extracted through an industrial process. How much fossil fuel is used to produce "environmentally friendly" products like Smart Bacon vs. real bacon? Want to bet?
Having fallen prey to "meat is bad for the environment" arguments myself in the past, it disturbs me to see these arguments advance. More and more people are adopting the idea that they will "save the planet" through veganism, often at the expense of their own health. It's fine if their choices stop with them, but ten years ago "cap and trade" would been inconceivable to most people. Today it's being offered up as an actual political "solution", and not a voluntary one. If someone had told me five years ago that the EPA would even consider taxing emissions from farm animals, I'd have laughed in your face.
In light of that, ask yourself whether any of the following is truly an exaggeration:
How long before our animal protein is rationed for the sake of "saving the planet"?
How long after that before vegans, animal rights activists, and environmentalists seriously push to limit or forbid raising livestock in the name of protecting the environment?
And how long after that before we're all forced to be vegan?
In my practical experience, many of the followers of the vegan movement who do so for environmental reasons are, for whatever reason, unable to understand or investigate the science behind the claims for their action. They are simply woefully ignorant. They aren't actually evil people. But the originators of such claims (PETA and others), those who can understand science and who either knowingly start or perpetuate lies for their own ideological ends at the expense of the truth, are hopelessly corrupt.
These lies need to be exposed. More than the simple truth is at stake. For some of us, our very sustenance depends on it.
WHAT: Congressional Hearing on NAIS (National Animal Identification System) WHEN: Wednesday, March 11 WHERE: Washington, DC
The U.S. House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry will hold a hearing on NAIS on March 11, 2009. Bills to enact NAIS into law, HR875 and HR814, are being pushed through Congress, as well as an enormous "Appropriations Bill", i.e. massive spendulus program, with funding for NAIS which passed in the House and is now awaiting in the Senate.
This House hearing is critical to blocking mandatory NAIS. Blocking passage of the appropriations bill, 1105, is also critical.
Here is the first one HR 814 - the bottom line is that the Dept of Ag can:
1. Make all farmers who bring an animal to a USDA slaughterhouse participate in this program or the USDA slaughterhouse can refuse them (regardless of whether you are selling your meat in state or across state lines).
2. Farms will need a premise ID to ensure traceability from farm to consumer in order to comply with this bill.
3. The Dept of Ag can send a rep out to your farm to inspect and copy your records for each animal.
HR 814 -TRACE ACT of 2009
This Act may be cited as the `Tracing and Recalling Agricultural Contamination Everywhere Act of 2009′ or `TRACE Act of 2009′.
SEC. 414A. TRACEABILITY OF FOOD.
(a) Establishment of System- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this section, the Secretary shall establish a traceability system described in subsection (b) for all stages of manufacturing, processing, packaging, and distribution of food.
(b) Description of System- The traceability system required by subsection (a) shall require each article of food shipped in interstate commerce to be identified in a manner that enables the Secretary to retrieve the history, use, and location of the article through a recordkeeping and audit system or registered identification.
SEC. 26. TRACEABILITY OF LIVESTOCK, MEAT, AND MEAT PRODUCTS.
(a) Definition of Traceability- In this section, the term `traceability’ means the ability to retrieve the history, use, and location of an article through a recordkeeping and audit system or registered identification.
(b) Requirements-
(1) IN GENERAL- Cattle, sheep, swine, goats, and horses, mules, and other equines presented for slaughter for human food purposes, and the carcasses or parts of carcasses and the meat and meat food products of those animals, shipped in interstate commerce shall be identified in a manner that enables the Secretary to trace–
(A) each animal to any premises or other location at which the animal was held at any time before slaughter; and
(B) each carcass or part of a carcass and meat and meat food product of such animals forward from slaughter through processing and distribution to the ultimate consumer.
(2) TRACEABILITY SYSTEM- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this section, the Secretary shall establish a traceability system for all stages of production, processing, and distribution of meat and meat food products that are produced through the slaughter of animals described in paragraph (1).
(c) Prohibition or Restriction on Entry- The Secretary may prohibit or restrict entry into any slaughtering establishment inspected under this Act of any cattle, sheep, swine, goats, or horses, mules, or other equines not identified as prescribed by the Secretary under subsection (b).
——————————-
The second bill establishes NAIS via the newly created Food and Safety Administration, run by the “Administrator” - whoever that is….
HR 875 - ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FOOD SAFETY ADMINISTRATION
SEC. 210. TRACEBACK REQUIREMENTS.
(a) In General- The Administrator, in order to protect the public health, shall establish a national traceability system that enables the Administrator to retrieve the history, use, and location of an article of food through all stages of its production, processing, and distribution.
b) Applicability - Traceability requirements under this section shall apply to food from food production facilities (FARMS), food establishments, and foreign food establishments.
ACTION: Please call and fax all members of the subcommittee (below).
1. When you call, ask to speak to the legislative aide for agriculture.
2. Please send this to everyone you know, ESPECIALLY to people in the states with members on the subcommittee. Members need to hear from their constituents- -the people who vote them into office. It's important that residents of Colorado and Connecticut call in. The representatives sponsoring these atrocious bills are Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT).
Also, email Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. His e-mail address is AgSec@usda.gov.
Finally, contact your Senators and tell them NOT to support HR1105.
The message is simple: We don't want, nor will we comply with, the National Animal Identification System in any form.
It doesn't matter that there is ever more consumer demand for locally raised animal products. The government could kill small farming with these bills.
If you are a farmer, take action or lose your right to raise animals.
If you are not a farmer and you plan on raising animals in your backyard, take action or lose the right to raise these animals. How easy/cheap do you think it will be to order a few chicks by mail order from a hatchery when the whole process will require traceability by a bloated government organization?
If you are a consumer of locally raised meat, take action or lose the right to eat the food you want. This isn't an exaggeration. Most people think the choices in our supermarkets are greater than ever before, but this is mostly true for produce and processed foods. Check out the meat products available in London in the mid-1800s. Ask yourself how many of those species and cuts of meat are available in your supermarket today in 2009. Some of this is simply a result of consumer choice, but a good deal of it is regulation. Try finding brain, for instance. It's loaded with DHA and perfectly safe if it comes from grass-fed animals, but the regulators have banned access to it.
The government/Big Ag juggernaut wants to shut down our freedom of choice for their short-term goals. Remember, NAIS is a program invented by Cargill, etc. to gain access to the export market, which requires traceability. They are not content to form a voluntary program on their own; they are the ones who presented the idea to the USDA; they would rather have small farmers pay for the program so that they can benefit (every animal tagged vs. one tag for hundreds of animals for the corporate farm).
If we don't act, small farmers will be forced out of business and we will be faced with one species of chicken raised in a few "approved" warehouses in the United States where the animals are packed in like sardines. Same for every other farm species, of which over 30 will be tracked by this proposed program. Not only is this a violation of our rights, it will further consolidate and endanger our food supply. Any thinking person who understand the principles of disease control could tell you that this is an epidemiologic nightmare waiting to happen -- and the results would be the exact opposite of the supposedly beneficial intentions of this tracking program.
It's that simple. Your sustenance is in peril. Don't think if you are a vegetarian or a vegan that regulation of food "safety" doesn't affect you. "Safety" is just an excuse for ever greater control over our food supply -- whether it is forced regulation /safety /pasteurization / irradiation mandates for meat, milk, or vegetables.
LOW-CARB FOOD STAMP DIET A SUCCESS Week's Diet Proves Good Nutrition Possible on Low Budget
Ari Armstrong ate nutritious food February 4-10 for less than food stamps provide. For the week, he ate only meat, dairy, eggs, olive oil, vegetables, fruit, walnuts, chocolate, tea, and spices. He did not eat any grains, vegetable oils, hydrogenated fat, potatoes, or processed sugar.
For compete details about the diet, including receipts and photographs of select meals, see http://tinyurl.com/a9l7z3.
Armstrong spent $33.07 for the week, or $4.72 per day. (He added 78 cents of bananas to preliminary figures.) However, he had around $5.30 worth of food left at the end of the week, bringing the daily total to around $4. Food stamps provide $5.68 per day to a single individual -- see http://www.fns.usda.gov/FSP/faqs.htm.
Armstrong said, "With this diet, I wanted to prove again that eating well on a low budget is possible. I also wanted to protest increases in the food-stamp budget. People should not be forced to fund the unhealthy food-stamp program. Instead, I favor voluntarily funded food banks, which are better able to offer nutritious food to those in need."
Ari and his wife Jennifer spend a month in 2007 eating a higher-carb -- but still nutritious -- diet for $2.57 per day each.
Comedian (and former health writer) Tom Naughton replies to the blame-McDonald's crowd by losing weight on a fat-laden fast-food diet while demonstrating that nearly everything we've been told about obesity and healthy eating is wrong. Along with some delicious parody of Super Size Me Naughton serves up plenty of no-bologna facts that will stun most viewers, such as: The obesity "epidemic" has been wildly exaggerated by the CDC. People the government classifies as "overweight" have longer lifespans than people classified as "normal weight." Having low cholesterol is unhealthy. Lowfat diets can lead to depression and type II diabetes. Saturated fat doesn't cause heart disease -- but sugars, starches and processed vegetable oils do.
Q: What inspired you to make a film challenging Super Size Me?
...I thought Super Size Me was very well done and very amusing, but at the same time a couple of things about it really bugged me. One was the overall premise, that it’s McDonald’s fault people are getting fatter. That’s ridiculous. Ronald McDonald can’t force you to eat anything, and most people eat at McDonald’s once in awhile, not everyday.
But what really bugged me was when I realized Spurlock’s math didn’t add up. I spent a good part of my adult life as a serial dieter, so I have a pretty good idea what the calorie counts are at McDonald’s. When Spurlock’s nutritionist told him he was consuming 5000 calories per day, alarm bells went off in my head. There’s no way you can consume that many calories at McDonald’s if you’re following his supposed rules.
Q: So in your opinion, Super Size Me is essentially dishonest.
A: Yes, it’s dishonest. Long before I saw it, I heard people talk about how Super Size Me shows what would happen if you just ate three meals per day at McDonald’s. But that’s not what it shows. It shows what would happen if you decided to stuff yourself like crazy so you could gain weight and make a movie about it. You could stuff yourself at a vegan restaurant and gain just as much weight, if that was your goal.
Q: You did exactly the opposite: you ate nothing but fast food for a month and lost weight. How did you manage that?
A: I did it by intentionally ignoring the standard-issue nutrition advice.My doctor of course warned me that if I was going to live on fast food, I should eat as many salads and grilled chicken breasts as I could so I wouldn’t consume too much fat. But I knew better. I ate a lot of fat, because fat is what keeps you feeling full and satisfied. But I did limit my carbohydrates to about 100 per day, because that’s the real key to losing weight, at least for me.
I appreciate Naughton's stance on individual rights. He's exactly right. No one is forcing anyone to eat at fast food restaurants, and it's really none of the government's (or anyone else's) business whether McDonald's wants to sell me an entire bucket of french fries for fifty cents:
This summer when I was on the road for 6 weeks, I ate at McDonald's several times. It usually wasn't my first choice because I consider it a pretty expensive place to eat. My diet was uber-low carb at the time, so I opted for pre-packaged hard boiled eggs, cheeses, and meats at the grocery store most of the time, which I would store in my small cooler in my car. (It's pretty easy to find a grocery store when traveling on road trips.) Yet despite eating and McDonald's about 1o-15 times during the course of that six weeks, I lost several pounds.
Just yesterday, my fiance and I went to McDonald's for a quick lunch and I ordered two double cheeseburgers. I probably got some minimal amount of high fructose corn syrup from the ketchup and who knows what in the processed cheese but I otherwise did very well for less than $2.50. I pulled off the buns and threw them away. I also could have avoided the cheese by ordering a different burger or even asking them to withhold the cheese. That was my choice, and it's really not anyone else's business. Anyone could make a similar or better choice and come away with a relatively healthy meal. Some of us could make even better choices at McDonald's if political pressure of the McGovern dietary committee hadn't influenced them, and farm subsidies hadn't made it cheaper to start using vegetable oils for their French fries. I'd enjoy some fries at McDonald's if they'd return to frying them in beef tallow.
Personally, I think the least offending items to health at McDonald's are the burgers. Naughton shows in Fat Head that if you eat a lot of fat, even at fast food restaurants, your lipid profile will improve and you might even lose weight. That certainly mirrors my own experience. Just call me Fat Girl!
Fat Head appears to be a great expose of the government's role in perpetuating the nutritional myths that were displayed in SuperSize Me, too:
Check out the rest of the clips from the film at Fat Head the Movie. You can order Fat Headhere.
What Can You Buy on Food Stamps? By Monica @ 7:41 AM
Last year, Colorado resident and blogger Ari Armstrong set out to show the types of purchases one could make on the government's food stamp budget at less than $3 per person per day with his FoodEconomyChallenge. Ari is at it again! He will now show how it's possible to eat a "low carb" diet -- generally heavy in nutrient dense foods and often claimed to be too expensive for the poor -- on the government's new food stamp allotment of $4.74 per person per day:
MEDIA RELEASE
ACTIVIST PLANS LOW-CARB DIET ON FOOD STAMP BUDGET New Diet Protests Food Stamp Increases
A healthy diet is achievable on a food stamp budget, and Ari Armstrong plans to prove it, again. Armstrong, who previously spent a month eating for $2.57 per day -- see http://tinyurl.com/c35e8q -- will spend February 4-10 eating a highly nutritious, low-carb diet for less than food stamps provide.
Armstrong said, "Not only has Congress increased the food stamp budget since my $2.57 per day diet, but the so-called 'stimulus' package calls for additional food-stamp funds. Enough is enough. I oppose any increases to the food stamp budget, and call for the program to be replaced with voluntarily funded food banks, which offer more nutritious food at lower cost."
Armstrong's new diet, unlike his previous one, will be low-carb, roughly following the advice of such writers as Gary Taubes and similar to "paleo" or "cave-man" diets. The diet will consist of meat, dairy, eggs, vegetables, fruit, nuts, olive oil, chocolate, and spices. It will not contain any grains, vegetable oils, hydrogenated fat, potatoes, or processed sugar.
Armstrong will limit his daily budget to $4.74 per day, less than food stamps provide to a single individual. The Department of Agriculture -- see http://www.fns.usda.gov/FSP/faqs.htm -- offers a family of four $588 per month, or $4.74 per person per day. (The food stamp allotment is reduced for those deemed able to fund some of their own food.) Armstrong will not accept any free food, and he will shop only at nearby regular grocery stores. He will track all his purchases and receipts at FreeColorado.com.
"With the previous diet, my goal was to minimize daily expenses. With the new diet my goal is to show that a very healthy diet is possible on a limited budget. The cost of my diet will actually be inflated, not only because I'll be eating no free food, but because a week's diet is not able to take advantage of bulk purchases of sales items," Armstrong pointed out. "I've been known to purchase 40 pounds of bananas, a dozen squash, or twenty pounds of meat when they're on sale; obviously that's not possible for a single week."
Part of the motivation to track the new diet was a recent CNN report -- see http://tinyurl.com/d2lb5g -- in which a woman on food stamps complains, "We get like the mac and cheese, which is dehydrated cheese -- basically food that's no good for you health wise... Everything is high in sodium and trans fats... and that's all we basically can afford. There's not enough assistance to eat healthy and maintain a healthy weight."
Armstrong replied, "That's nonsense, and I'm prepared to prove it. I'm frankly irritated that some food stamp recipients waste our tax dollars on overpriced junk food, then complain about their grocery budget. I'll make the following offer. For anybody on food stamps who complains that they can't afford good food, I'll be more than happy to evaluate your entire monthly budget, including your grocery budget, and recommend judicious cuts, limited to the first five people who reply."
This ought to provide some wonderful evidence to contradict the claims of those suggesting that a food stamp budget doesn't allow them to eat healthily. Kudos to Ari for initiating the new Food Stamp Challenge!
"People Should Not Be Allowed to Eat Eggs" By Monica @ 11:39 AM
Sounds ridiculous, doesn't it? It's not a huge step from a government saying "eggs are unwise" to "eggs should be banned." Yet this is the absurd reality of part of the British government's socialized healthcare program to fight what it views as unhealthy behaviors, according to an article by Paul Hsieh entitled "Universal Healthcare and the Waistline Police." Get a load of this:
Other countries with universal healthcare are already restricting individual freedoms in the name of controlling health costs. For example, the British government has banned some television ads for eggs on the grounds that they were promoting an unhealthy lifestyle. (my emphasis in italics added)
Believe it or not, even more terrible ideas have been proposed in the United States. What is worse is that the egg advice makes no sense whatsoever in the context of evolution or even in the context of good science. Many people now recognize that as far as diet is concerned, the government has made a good many wrong answers into almost inflexible dogma. Once public policy becomes set, reversing it becomes incredibly difficult.
I worry very much about an increasing nanny state with respect to our food. When the animal rights activists and environmentalists team up with nutritionists who have fallen down the "fat is evil" rabbit-hole, it's pretty clear that next they'll be coming after our steak. Even if this particular view was scientific it would be politically wrong from the standpoint of the proper purpose of government which is the protection of individual rights -- as Dr. Hsieh's article makes completely clear. But far too often, the proposed "public health" policies would actually be -- and have turned out to be -- a complete disaster to public health. Here is a good example. We don't need any more such wrongheaded ideas made into nutritional dogma through government policy that take literally decades to overturn, with millions of needless early deaths as the result.
Dr. Hsieh's article defending our right to eat as we choose, without advice or force from a government nanny, did not sit well with some members of the public -- particularly this commenter in the Ithaca Journal:
Health care column off mark
Where did the doctor who derided the nanny state go to medical school, and does he see patients ("Waistline police may come with universal health care," Jan. 12)? A doctor's training emphasizes the first responsibility is to do no harm. Paul Hsieh blasts medical and societal activism to promote health, instead leaving people to make choices based on free will rather than common sense and proven facts.A nanny state would totally outlaw tobacco, a known killer for 50 years. I have more sympathy for the opium growers in Afghanistan with limited choices than for tobacco growers and Philip Morris in America, who could have stopped killing us in the 1950's. Raising prices cuts down smoking, and taxing junk pop will cut down on obesity.
Rampant capitalism may stop this, despite near universal advice from nutritionists, epidemiologists, and sensible doctors, who know the relation between obesity and heart disease, diabetes, hypertension and the excess morbidity and mortality. Steps taken by doctors and an enlightened society should outweigh freewill and company profits.
I'm not a bean counter, but I'll bet the health costs for obesity, COPD, diabetes and other self-inflicted pathology costs more than the taxes on company profits of pop makers and tobacco companies pay our governments.
He stated that if one were only harming oneself, it is OK. No serious, chronic illness ever affects only the patient. It impacts family, friends and the health costs. Get real, doctor. Accept controls, either self-imposed or enforced.
Jud Kilgore Ithaca
(my emphasis in italics added)
This comment sends chills down my spine.
First, there's little evidence that in the context of a nutrient dense diet that smoking poses any serious health hazard at all. This is discussed here with regard to the Masai warriors and in Weston A Price's work Nutrition and Physical Degeneration on his chapter discussing the Gaelics in the Outer Hebrides. Their houses were absolutely filled with smoke loaded with dioxins. I do some medical needs assessment on COPD so I happen to know a bit about the disease. Only about 15%-20% of smokers get COPD, and I don't have any hard evidence yet, but I strongly suspect that onset of the disease is probably multifactorial and linked to nutritional status. I believe that's why we see COPD rates continuing to rise with poorer and poorer vitamin D status, although smoking rates have been declining for decades. I think a strong case could be made that smoking is actually not problematic in the context of a nutrient dense diet -- the very nutrients that do-gooders like Jud Kilgore likely want to eliminate from our diet in the name of "public health" and "the common good."
The acceptance of the idea of forced control of others for "their own good" and the second-handed and blind acceptance of the advice of "doctors and an enlightened society" should strike fear into the heart of any individual who thinks even remotely independently. It is downright Orwellian. There is always more to learn, and that one major problem with public policy. Public policy is based on consensus. Science is not done by consensus!
Diana Hsieh, PhD candidate in philosophy, stated in a section of a personal email (reproduced with her permission):
What I find so interesting about it -- and I've seen this elsewhere -- is the open defense of the nanny state. Defenders of universal health care don't seem deny his central claim -- that universal health care would create a nanny state on steroids. Instead, they argue that such a nanny state is necessary and proper.
That's a sad indicator of our cultural decline -- but at least the choice between freedom and statism is more clear than ever.
In short, I'm optimistic that freedom to choose the food we like, as well our freedom to choose healthcare, will prevail over statism. However, I hope that such comments as Jud Kilgore's make it abundantly clear that a veritable army of arrogant and ignorant "do-gooders" -- definitely increasing in their numbers in the past 50 or so years -- could wreak absolute havoc on not only freedom, but the health of the American people if they are allowed to force their views on everyone else through law. And far too often their views are not thoughtful or objective but average fodder for non-thinkers, also known as "conventional wisdom," "proven facts," and "common sense."
Given our societal trends, I definitely don't think freedom is going to prevail by sitting back on our fannies and hoping for the best. Everyone concerned about their health and the future of food should ask themselves a critical question: "If you think it's good that the government is banning trans fats and taxing sugary drinks, do you accept the premise that it's also appropriate for them to take your hamburger, raw milk, and fois gras away in the name of "public health"?" Do you really trust self-appointed government dictators to make such decisions for you, or to make such decisions objectively? I certainly don't.
On that note, what are you doing to up your game with regard to making sure you remain free to eat what you want?
The Real JunkFoodScience By Monica @ 10:18 PM
A silly article about raw milk has been recently published in Clinical Infectious Diseases that ends with a completely inappropriate threat to medical professionals:
"...physicians, veterinarians, and dairy farmers who promote, or even condone, the human consumption of unpasteurized milk and dairy products may be at risk for subsequent legal action."
Every few years Clin Infect Dis publishes an article like this. I think such articles and news pieces will become more frequent as raw milk becomes more popular. The acknowledgments to this particular article thank none other than John Sheehan, BSc, Jd and FDA head of safety for milk and eggs and a raw milk foe, "for valuable discussions on the subject during the preparation of the manuscript."
I don't believe crediting a government regulatory agent is necessarily proof of ignorance or corruption. I am sure there are many honest people who work for regulatory agencies and I don't believe every piece of research produced or funded by government is evidence of corruption. However, the Weston A Price Foundation has already, point by point, rebutted Sheehan's Powerpoint slides on raw milk in a 71 page PDF file. It's quite a read and anyone interested in the whole "controversy" around raw milk should take a look.
Oftentimes bias it is not evident in news media pieces or peer-reviewed articles. This is the case with the current Clin Infect Dis article. It appears to be well-written and most of the points are likely true in the context of grain-fed confinement cows. But the authors of the article make several mistakes, so that the article winds up reading more a like a political position paper than an honest evaluation of the science. Let's go through the major points.
First, they don't really understand the microbial ecology of a milk product in the context of grass feeding. For instance, Listeria monocytogenes is relatively fragile in the face of other protective factors in unpasteurized milk such as lactoferrin and beneficial coliforms that outcompete pathogens. These factors are destroyed by pasteurization and sometimes allow remaining L. monocytogenes to take off. This is why the FDA has considered making ultrapasteurization mandatory. Heat resistant strains have evolved and regular pasteurization is no longer good enough. Almost all organic milk on the retail market is now ultrapasteurized.
Second, the authors are mired in the reductionistic pseudoscience of nutrition that ignores the effect of pasteurization on the function of various proteins in the milk (lactase, phosphatase, immunoglobulins). Good science is timeless, and these authors haven't gone to older papers demonstrating the benefits. Many people anecdotally report reductions in asthma, allergies, and lactose intolerance on raw milk vs. pasteurized milk. Actually, it's not even so much that the mainstream doesn't recognize the existence of these proteins. They do, because the pasteurization test is a negative phosphatase test. Instead, they simply claim that these proteins aren't necessary and don't add any value to the consumer, nutritive or otherwise. This is paternalism on steroids.
No mention is made of the difference in grass-fed milk and grain-fed milk with respect to vitamin content, particularly a vitamin first discovered by Weston Price in the thirties, now believed to be vitamin K2 M-4. Price showed that K2 M-4 was dependent on the method of feeding and was highest in the dairy produced from cows on rapidly growing spring grass. This is widely known among those knowledgeable about pastured methods of raising animals but it still relatively unacknowledged or unknown in medical and government circles (though not unknown in the medical literature at this point).
The authors also ignore the significant difference between milk from Holsteins used for all pasteurized grocery store milk and milk from other older breeds usually used for raw milk. The latter has higher butterfat content, and thus, fat-soluble vitamins. "Milk is milk and it all comes from cows" is the FDA's position. That's demonstrably wrong.
Finally, they ignore that while there may be more outbreaks from raw milk, such outbreaks are small and easily identifiable, unlike food-borne illness outbreaks from pasteurized milk. They also don't discuss the relative risks of various foods, and give the impression that raw milk on a per serving basis is more dangerous than pasteurized milk. I don't believe we really know what the relative risks are, but my understanding is that they are about the same on a per serving basis. The WAP Foundation presents some interesting numbers on this in their two rebuttals, linked above and below.
The Weston A. Price Foundation has recently released a rebuttal to the recent Clin Infect Dis article. Unfortunately, people like Sandy Szwarc at JunkFoodScience obviously haven't seen the rebuttal. Ms. Szwarc's piece is simply a point by point regurgitation of the Clin Infect Dis article. This is curious because from what I can see of her blog she usually looks for an opposing view and does not buy into hysteria. I think this speaks to the power of conventional wisdom in creating a bias in a person's mind.
"Sound science" is not a conspiracy, Ms. Szwarc says. Most science often isn't a conspiracy, but that's really irrelevant to evaluating whether the science is actually sound and unpoliticized. The "science" used by the mainstream researchers to justify their biased thoughts about many aspects of our food is not sound. It is based on faulty assumptions that have since been disproven either in the medical literature or by simple logic and/or it is too reductionistic. Most seriously, it is almost always performed outside the context of evolutionary biology or even the history of food science in the past century. Most nutritional science simply does not operate within an evolutionary framework. It's bad science. Ms. Szwarc's readers deserve a more critical analysis than the one she says she is providing in her blog header.
In the most recent Clin Infect Dis article, the authors state that raw milk consumers "unconsciously process information in a biased manner." They encourage public health officials and physicians to speak with one unified voice against raw milk, repeating the message over and over clearly until the consumer gets it.
In other words, the raw milk consumers are knuckleheads nearly unreachable by reason, while the conventional view is based in reason and science. As I've indicated above, the situation is more complex than the authors would like health professionals to believe. At the very least, the authors and health experts ought to be recommending that people source raw milk and heat it, or that the dairy industry ought to at least convert to grass-feeding to increase fat-soluble vitamin content so critical for development of children and continuing robust health into adulthood.
The authors suggest that unlike consumers with strongly held opinions, "experts" with strongly held opinions do not selectively seek out information supportive of their views or process it in a biased fashion, yet they themselves choose to discuss the ability of pasteurization to kill pathogens without acknowledging the ability of grass-feeding to prevent contamination; they themselves choose to discuss illnesses attributed to raw milk without admitting that more illnesses have been attributed to pasteurized milk; they themselves choose to discuss modern assays with little to no destruction of vitamins without accounting for older feeding studies showing dramatic reduction in their biological activity; and they themselves choose to conclude by threatening experts who do not select information and unconsciously process it exactly as they do with the heavy hand of the law.There is a word for this kind of double standard and it is called hypocrisy.
Kendall also discusses the nature of government interference in agriculture and how it differs from other industries -- and thus, makes reference to Archer Daniels Midland at the end of his post. ADM makes corn sweetener and lobbies to keep sugar price supports and tariffs in place (because sugar might replace corn sweetener in products if operating in a free market, as Kendall shows). ADM is a huge recipient of government welfare programs, which John Stossel has written about and which Dr. Eades has also commented on several times invariousposts.
I'll leave you with this priceless little exchange between Stossel and the chairman of Archer Daniels Midland:
(Stossel) I foolishly thought I could get him to admit he was a rich guy milking the system. I thought he’d at least act embarrassed about it. Fuggeddaboutit. He was unfazed.
John Stossel: Mother Jones [magazine] pictured you as a pig. You’re a pig feeding at the welfare trough.
When things rumble and bump in our economy, due to natural causes or government-made ones, shortages like our gas situation are going to occur. Big bumps, big problems. In my more paranoid moments, I wonder what will happen if the economy goes boom! I shouldn't take it for granted that I'll be able to find gasoline. Or insulin. How hard will that be to find in an emergency, with the government "helping" with price ceilings and regulations that will shackle the very people who make it and the people who need it. It's very scary to contemplate showing up at the pharmacy and facing an insulin shortage. Because you just expect it to be there, just like you expect gasoline to be at the gas station. Damn.
That's right. And we shouldn't take it for granted that we'll be able to find anything, including food.
It's disturbing to me that economists at the USDA control the futures market for major crops. In doing so and in controlling production with subsidies, the USDA essentially controls supply and demand. I worry because farmers do not necessarily have the knowledge or equipment to go back to less fuel intensive methods of farming now. Fifty years ago farmers all knew how to produce 20 different commodities on their farm. Today, they largely produce only two: soy and corn. It is almost all dependent on soy and corn, and depends on quite a bit of fossil fuel to boot. Farmers can't just put animals back on pasture right away in order to cut fuel costs. They would need to convert those fields to different crops: hay, wheat, or some mixture of native grasses. They don't necessarily have the equipment for that anymore nor do they even own any animals. It would require some sort of partnership between farmers and feedlot owners, I suppose.
I'm not an economist so I can't say how things would pan out in a depression if one were to occur. I honestly don't know. However, our food system is incredibly centralized and dependent on foreign oil. That's not reassuring to me. For that reason, I feel the need to secure my food supply before anything like this happens. I've bought a lot of open pollinated plants to attempt a garden this summer, and I'm starting to buy more and more from local producers in an attempt to escape a food system that might collapse one day. Sounds scary, I know -- and it's not a bullet-proof plan, of course. Luckily, I live in an area where I can get a lot of locally produced items relatively cheaply direct from the farm, including bison, beef, elk, venison, vegetables, eggs, and milk. I could probably produce a considerable amount of eggs, honey, and vegetables on my own property. If you, too are concerned about such matters you may wish to check out where to obtain locally produced goods.
I've produced and maintained home gardens with a reasonable amount of effort with friends -- enough to supply two people for a year on about 5000 square feet or so. I also fondly remember my grandparent's garden when I was growing up. In the two world wars, backyard gardening played a much more important role in American society, according to Michael Pollan. I find it interesting that in WWII such "Victory Gardens" were supplying 40% of America's produce. That's pretty impressive, but not too surprising from my perspective since I know first hand what a moderate-sized garden can produce in a good year. It's also not surprising to hear Pollan say that the USDA opposed such Victory gardens, because of course the USDA makes no sense whatsoever most of the time.
I'm certainly not hoping for a depression. I'm just speculating and trying to be secure. I don't have the same obstacles as many people, thank goodness. I imagine that in an economic meltdown, homeowner's associations aren't really going to care whether you dig up your front and back yards for vegetable gardens or not. I'm pretty sure they would have some pretty nasty restrictions about it officially on the books, though. One of my friends is restricted in the type of trees she can plant in her own backyard. It's really quite absurd. It's her property and really not any of her neighbors' business. It bothers me that HOAs have grown into sort of quasi-governmental organizations restricting such basic freedoms as the right to plant a tree on one's own property because of a few seed pods that might blow into someone's yard. For people who belong to HOAs, I think it might be wise to start raising such issues if you know there are rules on the books restricting your freedoms.
There is another growing trend that does relate to real governmental organizations, and that is keeping chickens in one's backyard for eggs. (Of course, I'm not advocating roosters -- that would be a complete nuisance to neighbors.) Hens are not loud and with a fence no one really notices them. This site, Urban Chickens, often discusses urban chicken ordinances and the efforts in getting them overturned. It appears that people all around the country are looking into keeping chickens in their backyards, and where such ordinances exist they are seeking to overturn them, often with success. The benefits, of course, would be yummy eggs, pest control, and fertilizer for your lawn!
Such freedoms might be particularly important in the future. Those who are concerned about their local ordinances should get involved in trying to get the rules changed. And, of course, we need to keep a very close eye on the USDA's onerous National Animal Identification System. Such a program will protect no one from terrorism or disease, and we all know what it is really about: more government control over our food. We honestly don't need the USDA or the EPA coming around and collecting taxes on chicken farts.
Join me in a future post as I discuss the soil fertility benefits of animal-based agriculture. Yes, even in your own backyard!
The group, Free Agriculture - Restore Markets (FA/RM), advocates agricultural and health policies based solely on the principles of individual rights.
The protection of a person's basic rights to growing, producing, selling, buying, and eating the food of his or her choice -- which are applications of the fundamental rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness -- require a separation of economy and state. We support the right of producers and consumers to grow, sell, manufacture, and trade food supplies to mutual benefit without government interference. Based on objective fraud and tort laws, the courts can adjudicate cases of harm to consumers due to negligence or fraud.
This is not anarchy. This is free-market capitalism.
Because we defend free-market capitalism, I feel that it’s important to write a few educational posts now and then on some of the shenanigans that are going on in our food supply, as Diana has recently done.She also made the excellent point in the comments line to her post that too many businesses have now sold out their own long-term interests for shorter ones, which is often an unintended effect of government regulations and/or the faulty epistemology so prevalent in our society today. That's particularly true for agriculture. I'll be writing on this issue of short- vs. long-term interests with regard to soil fertility in the future.
Educational posts about food are useful to free-market activism to the extent that such information reveals that people can't just sit back and hope that all businessmen will behave morally in the marketplace -- particularly those in foreign countries like China where corruption is rampant and universally accepted as the normal way to do business.
People shouldn't assume -- with or without the existence of government regulations -- that every food product one can buy is safe or healthy. Furthermore, recognizing that some businessmen will cut corners for a quick buck -- and then criticizing them when they do it and adjusting purchasing accordingly -- isn't anti-capitalist. As a friend of mine recently wrote to me in an email, “Objectivists certainly ought to speak out about bad behavior on the part of businesses -- particularly fraud and negligence. We aren't pro-business; we're pro-capitalism and pro-freedom.”
Though I loved Michael Pollan’s “The Omnivore’s Dilemma”, I avoided reading his latest book “In Defense of Food”, mainly because I was turned off by the mantra “Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Sounded like the usual dogmatic nonsense to me.
I modified it a little: “Meat food, Not too lean, Mostly leaf plants”
I think you can see where this is going. Now this, from yet another person in the same thread:
“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” Sounds like a living hell to me. If you don’t live forever it will certainly feel like it. Someone–I think it was MSNBC–ran a contest for viewers to come up with their own 2-3-2 guide to eating. Winner: “Ate plants. Lots of them. Still hungry.”
These comments above are telling. I, too, expressed concerns in a previous piece that this "eat mostly plants" schtick seems to be the take-home message of Pollan's work, rather than the other excellent points he so often makes.
There's a reason I spend so much time on the nutritional myths of meat on this blog, and that is because there are various motivations to attack meat in our society. No one out there wants to outlaw vegetable eating for the sake of vegetable rights, human health, or the environment. There are definitely problems with the way meat is produced. Dr. Eades has pointed that out himself on at least one occasion, and he echoes my own thoughts on the industrial production of meat. However, recognizing those problems and unpleasantries doesn't mean we have to fall down the "fat is evil" rabbit hole or become vegans. That's why I spend a lot of time on the meat issue, and would likely still do so apart from my personal dietary preferences.
I've tried to treat the issue of meat eating and meat production objectively on this blog. I firmly believe that humans need meat for optimal nutrition but also believe they should be completely free to avoid it if they so choose. Unfortunately, that's not the view of so many vegetarians, vegans, animal rights activists, and environmentalists who want to force their select foods on others through the law by outlawing meat. This article, written by a farmer, is a good analysis of such concerns.
Defending meat doesn't mean defending ignorance or even widespread practices. In fact, people should be fully aware of what is required to produce their food and far too many are ignorant about it, willfully or not. However, there's a crucial distinction between revealing the truth about meat production in the United States today and claiming that it's a universal ethical issue. Food choices are particularly not a completely free will choice so long as the government influences farm and food policy, makes unhealthy products of all types cheaper, and restricts access to certain foods through various methods.
That shouldn't be taken as any kind of support for Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) that result in sick animals, bacterial resistance, and obnoxious odors and water pollution for local residents. Diana wrote an excellent article about feedlot production yesterday and some of the potential free market solutions to this problem. Personally, I think feedlots would remain with us even in a free market if consumer demand doesn't shift, but I think there would be a natural tendency for them to be smaller without the EQIP program. Spending on EQIP has risen dramatically each year since the program's inception in 1996.
If a resident sues a local CAFO, all the owner has to do is apply for an EQIP grant to clean up the pollution. That's morally wrong. It's also an indication that the current cost of grain-fed feedlot beef does not reflect what the true market price should be. I don't believe that means that grass-fed meats would be excessively more expensive in a free market, though. USDA inspection regulations are much more costly to smaller producers that are producing grass fed meat. Those regulations, too, need to go. They would dramatically cut the cost of locally and humanely raised meats.
Michael Pollan largely agrees that CAFOs should bear the cleanup costs themselves without being propped up by taxpayers. But here's where he goes wildly wrong:
The government should also throw its support behind putting a second bar code on all food products that, when scanned either in the store or at home (or with a cellphone), brings up on a screen the whole story and pictures of how that product was produced: in the case of crops, images of the farm and lists of agrochemicals used in its production; in the case of meat and dairy, descriptions of the animals’ diet and drug regimen, as well as live video feeds of the CAFO where they live and, yes, the slaughterhouse where they die. The very length and complexity of the modern food chain breeds a culture of ignorance and indifference among eaters. Shortening the food chain is one way to create more conscious consumers, but deploying technology to pierce the veil is another.
It's very frustrating to see someone like Pollan nail the problem (government interference in agriculture) and call for a "solution" of yet more government interference. It's particularly frustrating since he is so widely read and people then bandy about these ideas without thinking critically about them. I simply cannot agree to the "deployment of technology", which means the deployment of my money, which means the deployment of legalized theft, to "educate" other consumers about their food. Too many Americans agree with this erroneous line of reasoning that yet more government programs are the solution to all of our ills.
I don't like feedlot practices, either. That's why I attempt to sponsor local producers so that I know exactly how my food was produced and where it came from. I certainly don't need a "live video feed" to tell me about the local farm I've visited or the local slaughterhouse where the animal is killed. To force me to pay for an incredibly expensive system in an attempt to educate others about their food is morally wrong.
In any case, can acknowledgment of the reality of meat production really be forced on an individual? It cannot, no matter how much money is spent. Evasion of reality is morally wrongbut no one can force a mind, and too often such "public education" projects designed to do just that only result in indifference and resentment rather than the desired "educational" goals. People either wish to be educated about their food or they do not -- besides the more fundamental point that it's not the government's job to do so. If consumers do wish to be informed, there are far better sources of education than an expensive government program.
Further, a picture is not an argument. Should the Type II diabetic in the middle of Windsock, Nebraska -- with only one grocery store around for miles on end -- feel guilty at the cash register for choosing feedlot bacon over pasta when he sees a live video feed of a slaughterhouse? Morality is contextual. This reader over at Eades' blog hits it straight on:
At the end of this work (Omnivore's Dilemma) he moralizes extensively after shooting a feral pig. Absent was any recognition that killing is sometimes a necessity. He would have felt differently if he had to feed a hungry family.
While I don't agree with everything said in this essay, this statement from Garrett Hardin in Tragedy of the Commons is appropriate:
In passing, it is worth noting that the morality of an act cannot be determined from a photograph. One does not know whether a man killing an elephant or setting fire to the grassland is harming others until one knows the total system in which his act appears. "One picture is worth a thousand words," said an ancient Chinese; but it may take ten thousand words to validate it. It is as tempting to ecologists as it is to reformers in general to try to persuade others by way of the photographic shortcut. But the essence of an argument cannot be photographed: it must be presented rationally -- in words.
Update:12PM, fixed some typographical errors and added a link.
Anyone wishing to make a donation to the Stowers' legal fund is encouraged to make it to the Buckeye Institute. The Buckeye Institute is an independent research and education group and does not perform contract work or accept government grants: "To maintain the highest degree of intellectual integrity, we need the support of the people whose lives we're seeking to improve through sound public policy. We thank you in advance for your support. "
I received an email requesting people to write letters, especially to the Governor of Ohio, the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Lorain County Health Department. If anyone has experienced a similar tale of government abuse, please leave it here in the comments and I will forward it to the Stowers', as they would like to hear about it.
Will you please join me in writing these three government offices? We need to send a clear message to the officials in Ohio -- and other government agencies in the country no doubt following this case closely -- that these types of actions are completely unconstitutional and unacceptable. Here is my letter. Feel free to adapt it to your needs.
Dear __________,
I am extremely disturbed at the strong-arm tactics displayed in the raid on the Stowers home in late 2008. Not one complaint of illness has been made against Manna Storehouse, nor has any evidence been offered that the products of the Stowers farm are dangerous. Would this type of action have been acceptable in America in 1808 or even 1908? No. Then why is it acceptable in 2008? It is not.
People have a constitutional right to enter into contractual agreements that harm no one, and they have a right to do so without government permission slips. For too long now, a government official has been responsible for deciding what is healthy. The current regulatory scheme drastically decreases choices available to consumers and forces them to buy food products as the government sees fit -- regardless of their own judgment or unique circumstances. This is a complete anomaly in human history. For thousands of years, even well into the history of the United States, humans have survived and lived perfectly healthy lives without a government dictating their food choices.
The members of the Manna Storehouse coop are informed consumers. As for the possibility of food-borne illness, there are no guarantees of safety even from federally inspected items, including pasteurizedmilk, beef, chicken, tomatoes, sausage, spinach, and alfalfa sprouts -- despite what government agencies would like us to believe. All Americans need to be more informed about their food choices -- not lulled into a false sense of complacency about a particular product simply because it is deemed "safe" by a state or federal health agency. Americans must have the right to eat the food they choose. Should situations of harm to consumers arise, Americans will always have a recourse: the courts.
Yet there wasn't even a case of food poisoning as an excuse for this raid. No one complained or became ill from purchases from the Manna Storehouse coop. No one's rights were violated until the Stowers home was forcibly entered. Why was there a need to raid the Stowers home and confiscate thousands of dollars worth of food, including private supplies as well? This type of action resembles something out of a Soviet Politburo handbook. It is most certainly not our founders' vision of the United States. The Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Lorain County Health Department should be ashamed of themselves.
Ohioans, indeed all Americans, should be allowed to to make their own decisions about the food put into their bodies -- without any government interference whatsoever. The government should not be able to unlawfully seize peoples' very sustenance because of minor code infractions. Government agencies appear to need continual reminders that it is they who serve American citizens -- not the other way around. This outrageous action against the Stowers family is a clear violation of the fourth and fifth amendments of the Constitution of the United States, and all such raids need to come to an end.
Raw Milk Knuckleheads and the Constitution By Monica @ 10:51 PM
David Gumpert writes about a recent article I saw that has been flying around in the mainstream media, one which I hadn't yet had a chance to comment on. As usual, with anything raw milk related, he's beaten me to it. The article is about the "inherent unsafety" of raw milk these days. Apparently the number of food-borne illness outbreaks from raw milk has gone from around 2.5 to 5. I honestly can't remember what the time interval is but I think it was over a 5 year span. It might have been yearly, I'm not exactly sure. Funny how the regulators aren't writing press pieces on the inherent danger of burritos due to that listeria outbreak in sausage last week!
So what are the regulators and scientists to do about these crazy raw milk knuckleheads that just won't take "no" lying down? David writes:
The authors then repeat a number of lies—for example, “Raw milk advocates suggest that unpasteurized milk products are completely safe...” and “Scientific evidence to substantiate the assertions of the health benefits of unpasteurized milk is generally lacking.”
It's true. I don't know any raw milk advocates claiming that upasteurized milk is completely safe. That would be absurd, particularly depending on the source of the milk and whether or not it was inspected! The assertion isn't about the science, it's about rights. These people don't get the concept of rights. David continues:
What interests me, though, is their conclusion about how to cope with “raw-milk advocates”: “When the public is presented with a large body of conflicting information, their decision-making process does not always yield the same results as that of experts. This problem is particularly complicated by the fact that individuals with established attitudes not only seek information that is supportive of their views but also unconsciously process information in a biased fashion. That results in a population that is not easily persuaded by informational messages alone.”
So, what do you do about knuckleheads who just don't "get it"? “...message clarity, message repetition, and source credibility.” In other words, keep repeating your points, regardless of what “raw-milk advocates” say.
And if that doesn’t work? Resort to old-fashioned threats, even against your colleagues who may sympathize with the knuckleheads, as the article concludes: “...physicians, veterinarians and dairy farmers who promote, or even condone, the human consumption of unpasteurized milk and dairy products may be at risk for subsequent legal action.”
The notion of fundamental human rights being at stake and an informed group of people making informed choices (and accepting the slight possibility that they or their children could become ill), isn't really important to these self-appointed dictators. Just keep hitting the idiots over the head with "the facts" and they'll come around. Maybe the regulators, scientists, and doctors need some refresher history and government courses.
Boy, do they ever. Unfortunately, too many Americans agree with this type of erroneous thinking, that public policy ought to be based in the decisions of "experts".
There's also apparently been a discussion on a food poisoning trial lawyer's blog about at what point it becomes appropriate to respond with force to government initiatory force. Yikes. David again writes:
This is a discussion that can quickly become highly charged. Mark alludes to the “tipping point,” but suggests quite appropriately that he doesn’t know exactly where it is. Nor do any of us. But wherever it lies out there, our government enforcers seem to be moving closer to it as they raid farms of peaceful families while waiving firearms.
It is also important to remember that our founders had experienced the abuses of an authoritarian government directly from the British, and considered armed resistance important enough to be made a key component of our constitution.
Mark is just giving expression to that, reminding us of the New Hampshire license plate’s admonition: “Live free or die.”
Indeed. Just about everyone in this country could really use a refresher course on the Constitution at this point -- most notably lawyers, judges, and Supreme Court Justices. Oh, let's throw in Congresspeople and the President and his cabinet to boot! After they all get done reading it for the first time since whenever, they could all stand to read Man's Rights as well.
