Home   ||   FA/RM Blog   ||   Goals   ||   Individual Rights   ||   Activism   ||   Contact FA/RM

Bloggers Monica Hughes Guy Adamson Diana Hsieh Blog Links RSS Feed RSS by E-Mail Blogroll Archives December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 September 2009

Thursday, June 25, 2009 Farm Policy Article in The Objective Standard By Monica @ 1:39 PM What's at the root of tens of billions of dollars of taxpayer-funded corporate welfare yearly, the unhealthy diet of many Americans, the demise of the family farm, and taxpayer-subsidized confined animal feeding operation (CAFO) waste? The USDA. Read all about it in my recent article published in The Objective Standard. Labels: Government Idiocy, Subsidies, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Wednesday, March 25, 2009 Positive Personal Improvements in Type II Diabetes By Monica @ 8:00 AM Crossposted from Spark a Synapse: A couple of weeks ago I dropped a note on Dr. Eades' blog about my frustration with my grandfather's situation. He's 78 and has been a Type II diabetic for 25 years. He managed his condition relatively well without insulin for at least a decade. However, years of slamming himself with too high of a carbohydrate intake (although probably relatively low compared to most Americans) hasn't helped, and his kidneys recently started to fail. At my wits end (and knowing that low carb would definitely help my grandfather), I sent him Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution last week at Dr. Eades' suggestion. My grandfather had been ordered on a low potassium diet for awhile by his doc around a month ago. Incidentally, it seems this is a slightly carb limiting diet as well, although he can still have one piece of white bread daily. He is not allowed to have bananas and a lot of other carb-heavy stuff so I suspected he is incidentally controlling his blood glucose in addition to ridding the body of potassium, although that is not the intention of the diet. He has now read Diabetes Solution almost in entirety and told me he’s learned a ton. Here are the results of 3-4 weeks on the low potassium diet (which is a semi-low-carb diet, although I’m honestly not sure exactly how many grams he’s eating daily) and after just 1 week of reading Dr. Bernstein’s Diabetes Solution and incorporating some dietary suggestions from that book as well: 25 lbs. weight loss in approximately a month. Waking glucose levels down to 95 ng/mL… not sure what they were before, and it's still not ideal, but it’s definitely an improvement. Insulin usage down more than 50% — used to be 8-10 units at a time, now down to around 4 at a time. His diet is not even uber low carb yet. Increased energy. He and my grandmother are pretty excited about these positive results, although he is finding the low potassium diet limiting (he cannot have things such as tomatoes). I suspect that if they just get over their fear of fat (he has "high cholesterol" and is on statins -- UGH! -- my next target once I learn about his lipid profile) and increase their range of foods they will be a bit more satisfied on a low carb diet. Also, once he is able to be off the low potassium diet his range of choices in food will increase a bit more. I get the sense they will both definitely continue low carbing, their health and well-being will improve, and my grandfather will add some time to his life. I'm very pleased and excited for him. As a commenter on amazon said of Diabetes Solution, "If the ADA disappeared tomorrow but this book remained, prognosis for all diabetics would be improved." Unfortunately, that's too true. That sentiment also applies to the rejecting much of the conventional wisdom of the American Heart Association, which ultimately comes not from good medical research but straight from mouths of the USDA/Big Agriculture. Labels: Modern Ignorance, Nutritional Guidelines, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    1 Comments   Thursday, March 19, 2009 Who Supports (and Opposes) NAIS? By Monica @ 4:57 PM I'm often greeted with disbelief or dismay when I suggest that larger producers favor NAIS. But it's true. This excellent editorial by Timothy Carney nails it when it comes to NAIS (and even other issues like the unintended effects of recently enacted regulations on childrens' clothing shop owners and toymakers). Here's an excerpt: It’s informative to study who’s backing mandatory NAIS, and who’s opposing it. On the pro-regulation side, lobbying records and congressional testimony show, are McDonalds, the National Pork Producers Council, the National Milk Producer Federation, and some technology companies that likely hope to get in on the action of tracking all these animals. On the anti-regulation side are hundreds of family farmers and ranchers who argue the mandate will crush them. If you are a corporate ranch, the costs and hassles of tracking each animal by RFID tags may be worth it in any event, while smaller outfits do better with cheaper, old-fashioned methods of tracking their herds. Think of Wal-Mart’s inventory control compared to a mom-n-pop corner store. Separate from congressional discussions about mandating NAIS, the USDA has proposed a new uniform numbering system for the current voluntary NAIS. The public comments on this regulation reflect the small rancher outrage over the program. Nearly 5,000 comments have been filed, many by farmers, almost all negative, and mostly directed at NAIS itself rather than the numbering proposal. In a New York Times op-ed this week, one family farmer described the burdens this law would impose. “Each time one of those animals is sold or dies, or is trucked to a slaughterhouse, we would have to notify the Agriculture Department. And there would be penalties if we failed to account for a lamb quietly stolen by a coyote, and medical bills if we were injured when trying to come between a protective sow and her piglets so we could tag them.” ... And in all these regulations, there’s another common thread. The biggest businesses in the regulated industries—often the businesses whose sloppiness lead to the safety scares in the first place—support the regulations. The big companies have the lobbyists to craft the fine print in the regulations, and they also have the economies of scale to bear the burdens. Government regulation is usually billed as a check on big business by the people’s representatives. Looking closer, however, reveals that regulation is often a big-government power grab that crushes smaller businesses and protects the big guys. Labels: Government Idiocy, NAIS, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Wednesday, February 4, 2009 Fat Head" and Fast Food Myths By Monica @ 10:00 AM The new documentary "Fat Head" is out. I haven't seen the film yet, but it looks quite interesting: 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. Michael Eades, MD, also has an extensive interview with Naughton. Here are some excerpts: 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 Head here. Labels: Conventional Wisdom, Individual Rights, Meat Myths, Modern Ignorance, Nutritional Guidelines, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    7 Comments   Wednesday, January 21, 2009 NAIS Presentation from Liberty Ark Coalition By Monica @ 8:07 AM The Liberty Ark Coalition has constructed a short video on the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). This video is slightly more informative than the one I embedded before in this post. I encourage everyone interested in fighting NAIS to view the video to the end, which includes some education and activism opportunities. I'll be keeping everyone up to date with what is going on with NAIS, and issuing reminders about the March deadline for comment from time to time. It's urgent that we stop this intrusive government program. Labels: NAIS, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Tuesday, January 20, 2009 More Reasons to Cut Farm Subsidies By Monica @ 8:02 PM As if we didn't have enough reasons already. But here is a good article from the Cato Institute on some of the perhaps unintended effects of farm subsidies. I've already discussed some of the effects. Here are some more: » Farm subsidies damage the economy. In most industries, market prices balance supply and demand and encourage efficient production. But Congress short-circuits market mechanisms in agriculture. Farm programs cause overproduction, the overuse of marginal farmland, land price inflation and excess borrowing by farm businesses. » Farm programs are prone to fraud and scandal. The Government Accountability Office found that improper farm payments amount to as much as $500 million each year. Since 2000, the government has paid $1.3 billion in subsidies to people who own "farmland" that is not even used for farming. The government also frequently distributes disaster payments to farmers who don't need them and often didn't even ask for them. » Farm subsidies are a serious hurdle to progress on global trade agreements that could help productive U.S. exporters. Agricultural trade barriers also damage U.S. security and global stability because they hinder the ability of poor countries to achieve stronger economic growth. » Farm programs damage the environment. Subsidy programs and trade barriers draw marginal farmland into production and encourage the overuse of fertilizers. Lands that might otherwise be used for parks, forests or wetlands get locked into farm use. Florida sugar cane cultivation, for example, causes substantial damage to the Everglades, yet it thrives only because of import protections. » Some farm programs raise food prices and hurt consumers directly. Federal controls on the dairy industry raise milk prices to consumers. Controls on the sugar industry raise U.S. sugar prices to about twice the world level, pushing up consumer costs for breakfast cereals, chocolate and other food products. » If farm subsidies ended, U.S. agriculture would continue to thrive. Farms would adjust, planting different crops and diversifying their sources of income. A stronger and more innovative agriculture industry would emerge, as occurred in New Zealand after it repealed all its farm subsidies in 1984. Labels: Subsidies, Trade, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Monday, January 19, 2009 The Bankruptcy of Ethanol By Monica @ 3:49 PM From Forbes: VeraSun Energy Corp., the nation's second largest ethanol producer, is putting seven of its biorefineries up for auction as part of a bankruptcy court financing agreement. VeraSun needs up to $12.3 million in additional funds to maintain its work force and plants in Ord and Central City in Nebraska; Albert City and Dyersville in Iowa, Woodbury, Mich., Hankinson, N.D., and Janesville, Minn., through April 30, according to a filing approved Thursday by a federal bankruptcy court in Delaware. ... The Sioux Falls, S.D.-based company owns 16 biorefineries with the total capacity to produce 1.4 billion gallons of ethanol annually, or about 13 percent of the country's total capacity. But only four - Charles City, Fort Dodge and Hartley in Iowa and Aurora in South Dakota - remain operational, with the rest idled until market conditions improve. Corn ethanol is an industry that the government is pouring billions into yearly. And all this government money isn't preventing VeraSun from going bankrupt. When you are making a product that takes more energy to create than you get out of it (thus, actually exacerbating the "problem" of CO2) it is not rocket science to figure out that it's not sustainable. The ethanol subsidy should have been eliminated in the most recent farm bill, not just cut ten percent. This is what Obama's pick for secretary of agriculture, Tom Vilsack, wants to spend your money on. Vilsack comes from a state of Corn (Iowa), is a friend of Big Corn and Monsanto, and has so far only said that corn ethanol is a bridge to cellulosic ethanol. That's his big admission, if you can call it one, that corn ethanol isn't working. Earth to Tom, earth to Tom! Corn ethanol is not a bridge to anywhere, and it's an outrage that even one public penny is being spent on this industry. I suppose VeraSun will be asking for a bailout next, claiming like GM has that if only they could have just a teensy tiny little bit of that government bailout crack, that they will straighten their act out tomorrow. Need I say more? Labels: corn, Ethanol, Government Idiocy, Rants and Whines, Subsidies, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    4 Comments   Saturday, January 17, 2009 Range Magazine Article on NAIS By Monica @ 10:57 PM Range Magazine recently published an article entitled "NAIS STINKS!" It's a very informative article for those who want to learn more about NAIS. I've been asked to spread this article around, but I don't want to reproduce the entire thing because it's all worth reading. Here's an excerpt: A few years ago, Darol attended a USDA-sponsored "listening session." A federal employee explained a new program: the National Animal Identification System (NAIS). Darol was shocked to learn that the ranch would have to be registered with a new seven-digit identification number in a new government database. He learned that each of his animals would have to have a new identification device bearing a new 15-digit identification number, loaded into another new government database. And he learned that every time one of his animals was moved off the property, the event would have to be reported and recorded in the government database within 24 hours. "Well, that just left a horrible taste in my mouth," Darol says. "The way it was presented, we had no choice. It was a done deal. We would be forced to sign up." The USDA spokesman talked about how foot-and-mouth disease would wipe out an entire herd in a matter of hours, and how dangerous anthrax is, and, of course, he talked about the dreaded mad cow disease. This new USDA program would make it possible for the government to trace back any diseased animal to its source within 48 hours, the groups was told. Darol knew something was not right. "It did not pass the basic hubcap sniff test," he says. He contacted a specialist at Texas A&M, Uvalde, Texas, who confirmed that there had not been a case of foot-and-mouth disease in the United States since 1929. He also learned that anthrax is no longer a problem because ranchers can vaccinate against it for 80 cents a head. Mad cow disease is not a problem because it is not contagious, and the new system would do nothing to stop the disease even if a case were discovered. Does NAIS sound fishy to you yet? It should. Just like RealID, tracking all animals (or people for that matter) with chips and tags isn't really going to do anything to protect us from terrorism or disease. Instead of strengthening the disease monitoring systems already in place (like allowing independent access to USDA test kits for mad cow) the USDA wants a national animal surveillance program. Go read the whole thing. Then go comment on USDA's proposed NAIS rules. Labels: NAIS, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   ACTION ALERT on NAIS: USDA is Moving Fast! By Monica @ 8:43 PM If you haven't read about NAIS yet, please do so now. The USDA is moving fast on NAIS -- and so should we. About a month ago, R-CALF sued the USDA when it attempted to make NAIS mandatory for interstate commerce. Now, we have some inkling as to why the USDA has so easily canceled that memo that would have made premises ID mandatory for interstate commerce. They have a much bigger trick up their sleeve. A commenter, Mary Zanoni, in this yahoogroup, Colorado Against NAIS, informs us: On Tuesday, January 13, 2009, the USDA published in the Federal Register a proposed rule that would make two elements of NAIS -- NAIS Premises ID and NAIS individual animal ID -- effectively mandatory in USDA animal disease programs. This rule, if it goes into effect, would be an enormous step toward creating a fully mandatory NAIS for all U.S. livestock. The proposed rule directly affects cattle, bison, sheep, goats, and swine. However, it will also bring a full NAIS closer for all species. Therefore, all owners of horses, poultry, and other species should also submit comments and urge their livestock/farming organizations to submit comments. The comment period is scheduled to close on March 16, 2009. Commenting on this proposed rule is extremely important. Not only all animal owners, but also consumers of local/organic/grassfed foods, and everyone concerned with preserving a place for family farms in a world increasingly dominated by Industrial Agriculture, is urged to comment. I agree. Ranting against industrial agriculture sounds anti-business but unfortunately, most large producers simply don't oppose NAIS. That's the unfortunate fact. Here is a good example of such support. Although NAIS is now a USDA program, it was invented by large producers to get better access to export markets due to traceability requirements. (I believe Cargill was the company that presented USDA with this program idea in the first place.) Now the USDA wants to force it on everyone, even if they don't ship materials internationally or even interstate. Large producers don't care because they know it will be a more burdensome cost for smaller producers that will pay in greater proportion for the program since their every animal will be tagged, while whole lots of animals in industrial agriculture can just be moved under one tag. Mary continues: In regard to advancing NAIS, the four most important aspects of the USDA/APHIS Jan. 13, 2009 rule are: 1. As of the effective date of the final rule, the NAIS Premises ID Number (PIN) would be the only form of PIN allowed for certain official uses. (Note on timing -- the comment period is open until March 16, 2009. Then USDA reviews the comments and at some point can issue a final rule. That date of issuance would be the effective date for the mandatory assignments of the NAIS Premises IDs. However, a large number of unfavorable comments might result in the postponement, or even retraction or cancellation, of the rule.) 2. Although the system announced in this proposed rule supposedly permits the continued use of the National Uniform Eartagging System (traditionally, metal tags) and a "premises-based numbering system," in fact, these systems would be used in the same way as NAIS Animal Identification Numbers. The older forms of eartags and individual IDs would all be connected into the NAIS Premises ID database through the Animal Identification Number Management System ("AINMS," the USDA system that keeps track of what individual animal identification number is assigned to what farm or ranch). In other words, under the system of this proposed rule, anytime a farmer/rancher has metal tags applied to livestock (such as for TB or brucellosis testing), the farm/ranch will be placed into the NAIS Premises ID system and the numbers on the tags will be tied to the farm/ranch through the USDA's AINMS system. 3. Some requirements are being added for official eartags and these new requirements might make it very difficult or even impossible to obtain metal tags instead of the NAIS tags. The additional requirements include a "U.S. shield" printed on each tag, and tags must be "tamper-resistant and have a high retention rate in the animal." The APHIS Administrator must approve all tags. The NAIS tags now available already meet these standards. It is not clear that metal tags have ever been judged by these standards, so it is possible that the APHIS Administrator could fail to approve metal and other non-NAIS tags. Also, tag manufacturers will have a clear self-interest in abandoning production of cheap metal tags in favor of expensive NAIS RFID tags, so non-NAIS forms of tags may quickly become extinct. 4. The addition of a definition of the AINMS to the animal-disease program rules in the Code of Federal Regulations is huge. Previously the AINMS has only been defined in the non-rule NAIS informational documents (Draft Strategic Plan, User Guide, Business Plan, etc.) so it did not have any defined legal status. Now this proposed rule adds a definition of the AINMS and also provides that eventually the AINMS will be used to tie all types of "official" tags -- not just the NAIS 15-digit tags -- to a NAIS registered premises. The proposed rule accomplishes essentially a mandatory system for the first 2 elements of NAIS -- NAIS premises ID and NAIS individual animal ID. The only difference from the original NAIS plan is that now the metal tags and other traditional forms of individual ID have become additional forms of numbering/tagging that are used as part of NAIS. Note that even if your state has passed a law to keep NAIS "voluntary," that will not necessarily save you from this rule. The Federal Register notice specifically states: "All State and local laws and regulations that are in conflict with this rule will be preempted." (p. 1638.) However, if you are working to pass a state law limiting NAIS in the present legislative session, keep working -- such a law could still be very important. It shows the opposition of animal owners and consumers to NAIS, which may help get the rule postponed or rescinded. In addition, the question of whether this rule would pre-empt contrary state laws in all circumstances may someday be open to legal challenge. Your best defense against government takeover of your food is to go comment on the proposed rule right now. There are only a handful of comments there. (Mine is not there yet but it will be.) I cannot urge strongly enough how important this is. How long would citizens be able to remain independent with a government-controlled food supply? If the government can control the food, it can control the population. Just tonight I was at a meeting in which it was revealed that Monsanto is proposing a program to the government to track all vegetables. Folks, I am not kidding. Industries invent these programs to protect themselves, because the enormous scale and centralization of modern production means food-borne illness outbreaks are huge when they end up happening (just look at the recent peanut butter outbreak). It's not a global conspiracy for takeover of our food, I don't think. The problem is that these programs then become required of everyone when they are proposed to government, not just the groups for whom it might make some sense. When I get milk from my local farm (or vegetables or whatever) it makes ZERO sense to track these items with RFID chips. I know where these products came from. "Treaceability" is a nice idea for industrial agriculture, but for local farm-to-consumer sales it is just an added, costly regulatory burden that puts my local producer out of business and makes me more reliant on a government-controlled supermarket. (This has been going on for nearly a century now will predictable results.) No, thank you. The USDA has said all along that NAIS will be voluntary. Now they are reneging. How can we possibly believe the USDA when it now assures farmers that this information will be kept private and used only for disease programs? Given the increased communication between the alphabet soup agencies that we have seen under the Bush administration under "Homeland Security" we could easily expect that such premises IDs could be handed over to the EPA for them to collect their taxes on cows because they release methane. This will destroy not just small, local, sustainable or organic agriculture -- yes, that will go first, just as it has been going for the past 40 or so years. But eventually it could be all of agriculture decades down the road when the government decides it needs to "depopulate" not just farm animals, but humans, too, in order to "save the planet". It's not a conspiracy theory. The USDA or EPA, I'm sure, doesn't plan on eliminating any humans right now and most government employees would be horrified at the thought. But eventually, we've seen the incredible control that is concentrated in the hands of government agencies if citizens don't stand up for their rights. The Founders of this country would be absolutely horrified at the United States today. Given the USDA and EPA statements on the taxation of agriculture to prevent global warming, I'm not encouraged about NAIS's potential uses. Right now they claim it's about disease control of TB, brucellosis, etc. I'm skeptical, since the USDA has actively blocked independent testing for mad cow. Whatever the true intentions of NAIS right now, this recent action proves, yet again, that the USDA has no intention that NAIS be voluntary at the federal level. Their intention for state mandates hasn't worked, and since the disease control programs the USDA already has in place are mandatory, converting THESE programs to mandate NAIS premises registration effectively makes the program mandatory. I urge everyone to sumbit comments on this sneak introduction of NAIS onto producers and consumers via the Federal Rulemaking Portal. The proposed rules may be read in full here in the Federal Register. Clearly state that your comment refers to Docket # APHIS-2007-0096. Our very sustenance is in peril. If you eat any meat whatsoever, this affects you, but if you eat locally sourced meat it affects you even more. Please comment before March 19. Thank you. Labels: EPA Tyranny, NAIS, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    1 Comments   Monday, January 12, 2009 Freedom to Farm -- in Your Backyard By Monica @ 7:05 PM I've been increasingly concerned about our food supply with the thought of an economic meltdown. There are others I have spoken to who feel similarly. Some have even written about such matters: 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! Labels: De-regulation, Individual Rights, NAIS, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    0 Comments   Monday, January 5, 2009 Linda Faillace Discusses NAIS By Monica @ 7:56 PM NAIS is not going to assure consumer confidence in the meat supply, but that is how it is being sold to the American public. In fact, the USDA has actively blocked independent testing of mad cow disease by Creekstone Farms, and the levels of testing that the USDA carries out are woefully inadequate: less than a tenth of a percent. With three cows discovered so far, that level of testing is simply not going to be effective at discovering the disease, and the USDA knows it. It has admitted a concern that more testing will "undermine confidence in the meat supply." We're going to have to keep a close eye on the Obama administration when it comes to the NAIS issue. It's simply a mechanism for more control over our food supply. The safety and terrorism issues are a complete smokescreen. In Linda Faillace's book Mad Sheep, she issued a very strong verdict against the USDA, saying that it needs to be completely dismantled and restructured. I give the book my highest recommendation and wrote a review of it here. Labels: "Safety", Meat Inspection, NAIS, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    8 Comments   Saturday, January 3, 2009 What's Wrong With Tom Vilsack? By Monica @ 10:13 PM Lots. Tom Vilsack is Obama’s pick for Secretary of Agriculture, if you hadn’t heard. Let's start with corn. As governor of Iowa, he was named “Governor of the Year” by the Biofuel Industry Organization. If you did not know, ethanol from corn is a process that uses as much or more energy to create than the finished product generates. Only the government could dream up such a wasteful scheme. Cellulosic ethanol and biodiesel may be profitable enterprises, as opposed to corn ethanol, but if that is the case they do not need government to prop them up. This is not rocket science -- even self-described environmentalists agree that ethanol needs to stand on its own. But it would appear that it’s going to be business as usual at the USDA with Vilsack in charge, with yet more taxpayer money -- on top of the $56 billion already spent in a decade on corn! -- going to Big Corn. Monsanto, Syngenta, et. al. must be lapping this news up. Once these programs get started, they grow a life of their own. That's why we have to kill them before they are actually born. Speaking of killing bad programs before they start, let's talk about the National Animal Identification System -- NAIS. Those trying to raise healthy, free-range grass-fed meat animals might be up against more trouble under USDA headed by Vilsack. Vilsack is a supporter of NAIS, and if implemented fully, more small farmers (read: pastured, humane operations) raising animals will be put out of business by it. Confined Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) will be allowed to register hundreds of animals under one tag while other producers will have to buy a tag for each animal. This system will not even prevent animal-borne disease. It can only track it 48 hours after an outbreak. And given that the USDA is allowing the mixing of meat from Canada, Mexico, and the USA and labeling it as such in grocery stores, it is not even going to be useful in meat recalls. NAIS needs to be a top priority under the Obama administration. It's an invention of Big Moo to give them better access to the export markets. It needs to remain a completely voluntary system and the USDA is trying hard to get this implemented for all animal owners by now trying to get it implemented state by state, requiring it for interstate commerce, and requiring it of producers in order to sell meat for the USDA's School Lunch Program. Thankfully, many are fighting hard against NAIS now and it's only been implemented in a handful of states. A recent suit brought against the Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) has resulted in APHIS canceling their memo requiring NAIS for interstate commerce! This is very encouraging -- it shows that when people stick up for their rights and stand up against intrusive programs before they start, they can be prevented. If you haven't voted to kill NAIS, please do so here. It's in third place for ideas about Agricultural Policy on change.org. You can also vote to legalize raw milk: that proposal is in first place in Agricultural Policy. Obama's pick for Secretary of Agriculture really doesn't look good for people who support individual rights and a more rational farm policy. In addition to wanting to prop up Big Corn and Big Moo with your money, Vilsack himself received $42,782 in farm subsidies over a seven year period. Are we ready to end the farm subsidy programs yet?!? Is this “change we can believe in?" The "change" that economically unsustainable ethanol should continue to guzzle our tax dollars, deplete our soils of vital nutrients, and create an enormous hypoxic dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico the size of New Jersey? The "change" that millions of dollars should be spent on animal eartags in the name of “safety” at the expense of the small farmer? The "change" that billions of dollars should continue to be extorted from hard working Americans to give to lawmakers and billionaires? The "change" that Americans should continue to be fed a steady diet of subsidized commodity corn, wheat and soy products that lead to obesity, cancer, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes, while continuing to be told by the USDA that these foods will lead to better health? No. I saw that I could put an end to your outrages by pronouncing a single word in my mind. I pronounced it. The word was "No." John Galt's Speech, Atlas Shrugged, p. 973 (35th Anniversary Edition) Labels: "Safety", De-regulation, Government Idiocy, NAIS, Nutritional Guidelines, Rants and Whines, School Lunch Program, Subsidies, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend E-mail Monica    PermaLink    2 Comments   Subsidies for Billionaires -- and Congresspeople Too! By Monica @ 8:46 PM Well, dear readers, it’s high time I addressed the issue of farm subsidies. Hold onto your seat. First, a bit of preliminary information about subsidies. The Environmental Working Group has compiled a wonderful searchable database and some excellent statistics on the farm subsidy programs, which are a subset of the Farm Bill spending: $177.6 billion in subsidies 1995-2006 67 percent of all farmers and ranchers do not collect government subsidy payments in United States, according to USDA Among subsidy recipients, ten percent collected 74 percent of all subsidies amounting to $130.6 billion over 12 years Recipients in the top 10% averaged $36,290 in annual payments between 1995 and 2006. The bottom 80 percent of the recipients saw only $731 on average per year Now that you have an idea how the money is generally distributed, here are some more specifics about the top programs and crops that receive USDA money: Corn Subsidies $56,170,875,257 Wheat Subsidies $22,051,566,200 Cotton Subsidies $21,329,862,262 Conservation Reserve Program $20,337,282,263 (This is a euphemism for paying farmers not to farm – i.e. to pull marginal land out of production because subsidies are driving down prices which encourages overproduction.) Disaster Payments $15,114,518,393 Soybean Subsidies $14,239,702,740 Rice Subsidies $11,043,795,298 Sorghum Subsidies $4,569,912,363 Dairy Program Subsidies $3,560,356,847 Livestock Subsidies $2,908,502,988 Peanut Subsidies $2,609,286,072 Barley Subsidies $1,962,025,270 Environmental Quality Incentive Program $943,955,199 (This is a euphemism for paying farmers to clean up the factory feedlot waste that creates obnoxious odors for local residents and manure pollution sometimes hundreds of miles downstream. This program started around 1996.) Tobacco Subsidies $530,488,022 Sunflower Subsidies $461,135,751 Apple Subsidies $261,540,987 Sugar Beet Subsidies $242,064,005 Canola Subsidies $200,281,433 Oat Subsidies $198,255,252 Wool Subsidies $185,590,080 Get a load of what is missing. With the exception of apples, all fruits and vegetables are conspicuously absent. Grains are very highly subsidized. I don’t know exactly why this is, but I believe it probably stems back to Earl Butz’s desire to feed to world and mass-produce food cheaply. I need to do more research to confirm this, but it is interesting that what almost all of the subsidized items above have in common is that they store well. It’s clear with all of the above data that most farmers producing fruits and vegetables are managing to stay in business without any federal "help" whatsoever. Most people think of the farm subsidy system as helping small family farms stay afloat. Nothing could be farther from the truth: Farm subsidy payments are based on acreage, so by definition, the largest agribusinesses get the largest subsidies. Consequently, commercial farmers — who report an average income of $200,000 and net worth of nearly $2 million — now collect the majority of farm subsidies. Most farm subsidy dollars go to millionaires. … Payment limits exist — on paper. However, an entire industry of lawyers exploits loopholes, rendering these limits meaningless. Farmers can simply divide their farms into numerous separate entities and then collect subsidies for each farm. For example, The Washington Post reports that Tyler Farms in Arkansas has collected $37 million in farm subsidies since 1996 by dividing itself into 66 legally separate corporations. Other farmers evade payment limits by signing up family members, such as the Georgia farmer who reportedly collected thousands in additional subsidies by listing his two-year-old daughter as a co-farmer. It gets even sillier. Most subsidies are based on land’s historical use, even if it is no longer used for farming. So when 75 acres of Texas farmland was recently converted into a housing development, the homeowners on these $300,000-properties become eligible for annual farm subsidies for the lawn in their backyards. Residents never asked for these subsidies and have even stated that as non-farmers they do not want the government mailing them checks. It gets worse. You may be shocked to know that more than 50 billionaires received a total of more than $2 million from farm welfare programs between 2003 and 2005. The government has begun to try to curb the amount of subsidies pocketed by millionaires and billionaires. The problem is that some of the recipients are congresspeople themselves, with ten of the twelve recipients receiving up to 6 figures each in farm subsidies, pocketing a total of about $6 million over a ten year period. Do you think that the congressional recipients of this pork dole-out are likely to vote out the farm subsidy system that fattens their own paycheck? Not a chance. Get a load of this statement: "Without these programs, there are some years that we would have been in very, very dire straights," said Sen. Jon Tester, a Montana Democrat elected last year who farms 1,800 acres. Along with his wife, he received about $232,000 from 1995-2005, according to Department of Agriculture records gathered by the Environmental Working Group. Hm. I wonder if the “we” he is referring to there in "dire straits without their farm subsidies" would be he and his wife. It would also appear that there is some sneakiness involved on the part of some lawmakers in reporting this “farm” income: Members of Congress must report sources of income totaling more than $200, but most get payments through partnerships or other entities, so it can be difficult to learn which ones receive the subsidies. Recipients are searchable by name on www.ewg.org, but, for example, payments to Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., are listed under her maiden name, Lambert, at a Virginia address near Washington. Records show Lincoln and her family members collected $715,000 from 1995-2005, the most recent year complete data are available. She said she personally received less than $10,000 a year, and the subsidies ended in 2005 when her land was sold. The proposed $283 billion, five-year Senate farm bill would preserve a system that pays 84% of subsidies to the biggest 20% of the farms, according to the working group, which supports caps on farm payments. Some agribusiness companies receive millions from taxpayers each year, even with crop prices at record levels. One farmer-senator, Republican Chuck Grassley of Iowa, plans to offer an amendment that would cap payments at $250,000 annually. Grassley collected about $225,000 for his corn and soybean farm from 1995-2005. His son took in about $654,000, records show. Neither ever got $250,000 in a year. How convenient for Grassley, keeping the annual payment cap above what he and his family would receive in a given year. How generous! But I almost forgot about the billionaires: Microsoft co-founder Allen, who got $39,932 worth of subsidies; brokerage bigwig Charles Schwab, $67,498; the Walton family, at least $8,800; and banker-philanthropist Rockefeller, who received $50,023 in subsidies. Wait…it gets better! The Pritzker family — which besides Hyatt Hotels also owns Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines and commands a collective worth of at least $22 billion — took in a total of $273,461.57 in subsidies. Among their holdings: cattle and horse ranches in California and Wisconsin, along with timber interests in Louisiana, Illinois and elsewhere. Oil heir and avid outdoorsman Lee Marshall Bass, of Fort Worth, Texas, who is estimated to command a $3 billion fortune, collected nearly $250,000. Also in the upper ranks was oil-and-gas kingpin Tom Ward, who received subsidies totaling $135,710.98 for his investments in Kansas and Texas farms and feedlots. Most of the money came via wheat subsidies. Ward's estimated wealth is $1.6 billion. According to this article, Paris Hilton’s grandfather, hotel czar William Barron Hilton, got some farm subsidy money too. That means Paris Hilton may actually inherit some of your hard earned tax dollars. Ready to end the farm subsidies yet? Rep. Marion Berry, D-Ark., says the system works well: He and his family's farming interests received almost $2.4 million in federal payments from 1995-2005, records show. His net worth in 2005 was $1.7 million to $6.6 million, according to his financial disclosure statement. "He has firsthand experience of how this really benefits farmers," said his spokeswoman, Angela Guyadeen. Wow, he sure does! Believe it or not, it actually gets even more absurd. We’re paying dead people to farm: In July of 2007, the Government Accounting Office discovered something about the farm subsidy program. It turns out, the government was still paying farmers after they had died. And it wasn’t just a small amount. It was over a billion dollars in subsidies. Over a seven year period, the Department of Agriculture paid $1,100,000,000 in subsidies to farmers who had shuffled off this mortal coil. Of the 73 estates checked by the GAO, sixteen has received over $200,000 in subsidies, and 4 topped $500,000. The Department of Agriculture also paid $400,000 to a soybean and corn farm in Illinois after the owner had died in Florida in 1995! The farm just told the government that the owner was “actively engaged” in the day to day operations of the farm. An Indiana corporation that was owned entirely by one person never notified the government of the owner’s death in 1993 and continued to collect unspecified payments for a decade before new owners filed for farm benefits. The government made $567,000 in payments to an Alabama estate over seven years on behalf of an owner who died in 1981. Another estate continued to receive unspecified payments on behalf of a person who died in 1973 — more than three decades ago — without any investigation or review. Please refer your acquaintances, friends, and family members to this post the next time they claim that agriculture would collapse without subsidies. It’s a load of hooey. In fact, 90 percent of all farm subsidies in the United States are linked to just five crops — wheat, cotton, corn, soybeans and rice. Producers of fruits, vegetables, beef and poultry receive almost no farm subsidies and most farmers simply aren't even getting farm subsidies. Somehow, their products manage to make it to market. Thankfully, we also have a 35 year case study of a country with almost completely free market farm economics. In 1984, New Zealand swiftly eliminated farm subsidies under a newly elected labor government. Only 1% of farmers lost their farms and New Zealand’s farming industry is doing better than ever, particularly the sheep industry which was previously subsidized. The advice of the Federated Farmers of New Zealand to the farmers of America? “Get off the subsidy gravy train as soon as possible.” Oh, I almost forgot to tell you. Tom Vilsack, governor of Iowa and Obama’s new pick for Secretary of Agriculture, received subsidy payments of $42,782 from 1995 to 2006. That's approximately 1/3 of the Farm Bill, folks. Your tax dollars at work, paying lawmakers and billionaires tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars, giving farm subsidies to landowners who don’t farm, paying farmers not to farm, and doling out checks to dead people. This isn’t a system that needs reform. It needs complete elimination. Especially considering that it’s been going on since 1929. Labels: Government Idiocy, Subsidies, Why the USDA is Not Your Friend 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   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 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   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   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   Monday, December 8, 2008 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   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