But much less attention has been given to some recent food legislation bills. However, the proposed increase in "food safety" regulations are having the exact same effect: producers of food are threatening to go on strike.
I've written about the most recent legislation in question, HR 2749, here. From a BusinessWeek article by David Gumpert entitled Small Food Producers Question Greater FDA Powers, here's a brief summary of HR 2749:
There's a big push in Washington to pass new food safety legislation. The House has already passed a major bill, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, which would significantly expand the Food & Drug Administration's authority to oversee food companies, and the Senate is expected to act on a similar version once its recess ends after Labor Day. President Barack Obama has indicated he will sign whatever the legislators finally approve.
The intensive action is coming in response to a number of highly publicized food recalls involving everything from peanut butter to spinach to cookie dough to raw hamburger over the last three years. The new law would seem to reduce the chances of food contamination by clamping down on producers—requiring detailed, written, quality plans, more frequent FDA inspections, and tough penalties for violations.
These "written food safety plans" have been estimated to cost thousands of dollars to enact.
If the idea of medical service providers going on strike bothers you, how about producers of food? Sound too implausible to be true? David Gumpert writes:
For Destandau, the latest federal efforts to crack down on food producers is part of a long-term trend. When he started in business in 2003, he had one inspector to deal with, from the California Food & Agriculture Dept. Now he deals with more frequent and costlier inspections from both the CDFA and the county health department. As Destandau contemplates the addition of FDA inspectors, he considers leaving the U.S. entirely. "Right now, we are seriously looking at moving to Australia," he says.
Of course, as with healthcare, the increased regulatory burden would not cause food production to grind to a swift halt. However, a certain number of food producers would simply stop producing -- and quality and choice would gradually decline over the coming years and decades.
The true answer to food-borne illness is a free market. That means de-regulating large and small producers alike and de-regulating things like raw milk. Smaller food producers and small farmers often like to mention that large food producers cause food-borne illness on a much wider scale and it is harder to track. These points are true, but overall, food-borne illness rates are remarkably low.
Even so, mistakes, negligence, and fraud all happen. No amount of regulation will take that fact away. Producers, if they make a mistake or commit fraud, should be held responsible for the food they produce. One of these means is through objective tort law. Consumers also need to be responsible. In 2009, one would expect various third party inspection organizations to eventually crop up in the absence of the FDA. (They already exist for organic certification, and the standards are more stringent than the USDA's. It should be noted that organizations like NOFA pre-date the USDA organic certification program.)
100 years of experience with the FDA's "food safety" regulations ought to be enough to convince Americans that more nannying by the FDA isn't the answer. We don't need more food safety regulations, irradiation mandates, food bans, and the like. Herearesomeresultsofflawed FDA and USDA policies. An Ayn Rand quote is apropo: "One of the methods used by statists to destroy capitalism consists in establishing controls that tie a given industry hand and foot, making it unable to solve its problems, then declaring that freedom has failed and stronger controls are necessary."
If HR 2749 passes, there will be one sure result: reduced quantity and quality at your farmer's markets, local farms, and meat and veggie CSA as they become unable to cope with the costly regulatory burden. Eventually it would happen in the grocery store too. Let's not let it.
About a month ago, an outbreak of campylobacter may have been linked to a raw dairy in Colorado. I say "may have been" as non-raw milk drinkers also succumbed to the illness, and only about 6% of the shareholders originally reported illness. I believe the investigation is still ongoing and the dairy is still shut down. You can find the specifics on David Gumpert's blog, The Complete Patient, here and here. The comments lines of these threads are informative.
It's no surprise that the vast majority Freeman's shareholders are standing with him, and to the health department's surprise, most people just want their milk supply to start flowing again. This speaks to the fact that the majority of raw milk consumers understand the potential risks, yet see the benefits as outweighing those risks. It also highlights the importance of having a good independent association of raw milk consumers and producers, such as RMAC, committed to producing safe milk. When one buys food from a local farmer, a personal connection is usually forged. This creates the ultimate incentive to produce safe food: the farmer's reputation. The power of market forces is really more than enough to ensure safe food from local farms.
I do not wish to diminish the gravity of some serious food-borne illness cases that may have been tied to raw milk in recent years. However, one must keep perspective. There may be as many as 3 million raw milk drinkers in the United States. Some people are extremely susceptible to food-borne illness. I've never experienced a case of food poisoning in my entire life. I know several other people who have experience several cases each of food poisoning just this year. So, there is individual variation in immune response. Not everyone exposed to a pathogen will become ill.
Second is that the raw milk program under Guidestone Farms has been operating safely in Colorado for 30 years. There are now around 30 independent raw milk dairies in Colorado that have been operating for several years. Despite this incident, the record is still quite good.
Third, it's important to remember that even in a free market, accidents and mistakes will still happen, especially with newer operations. That doesn't mean we need government regulators to come in and "solve" the problem.
Interstate raw milk shipments
In other raw milk news, Mark McAfee of Organic Pastures Dairy in California recently made a pitch to a government-industry juggernaut, the National Conference on Interstate Milk Shipments, to lift a ban on interstate raw milk shipments. (Ron Paul is also a sponsor of a bill that would legalize interstate raw milk shipment.) The proposal was unanimously vetoed. Here are statements from two milk industry representatives:
Robert Byrne of the National Milk Producers Association, said “the federal ban (on raw milk shipments) should be extended to include an intrastate ban.” In other words, a national ban on raw milk.
Jim Howie of something called the Southern Marketing Agency, a consortium of Southeastern milk processors, scoffed at McAfee’s claims about the economic advantages of raw milk. “This should not be a marketing issue...I market organic milk. Organic milk is not raw, and raw is not organic. Yes, there is a black market for raw milk. I cringe when I see it. Use the laws they have to close that black market...If someone gets sick (from raw milk), the newspaper article will not say raw milk, it will say milk...will hurt dairy farmers around the country. This proposal would be a step backwards.”
Of course, what the industry reps fail to note (although they know it full well) is that increased availability of raw milk would make them less relevant and their market share would decrease. And of course the milk industry is adamantly opposed to anyone in the milk industry -- raw milk producer or not -- besting what amounts to a government-run cartel. If you wonder why I call NMPA a government-industry juggernaut, you should read this article and see how these government-run milk cooperatives attack any milk producer that attempts to defy federal milk marketing orders. Federal milk marketing orders result in production quotas and price fixing in order to "support" milk producers. In other words, it protects them from competition and raises prices above what they would be in a free market. Agricultural marketing orders date back to the FDR era. This is another minor reason I buy raw milk. I would not buy raw milk if it was an inferior product. However, it is a superior product in my opinion. And if I can help it, I won't willingly give money to a bunch of thugs who think they have the right to keep a 75 year old government-supported cartel in business.
An interesting conversation with the biggest milk regulator of all
Finally, Gumpert reports that he was finally able to meet John Sheehan in person at this meeting after doing lots of investigation, without much fruit, to try to figure out more about Sheehan's professional background. John Sheehan is the FDA's head of milk safety who has repeatedly stated that drinking raw milk is like playing Russian roulette. According to David, here is the conversation with Sheehan after snapping a couple of photos of him at the NMPA meeting:
“Hi, I'm David Gumpert.”
“Yes, I know who you are.”
“I wonder if we could chat for just a few moments.”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I don't want to.”
Well, you have to give the guy credit for being honest... He just doesn't want to be f****ing bothered. If a guy doesn’t want to talk to you, not much you can do, even if you do help pay his salary.
Obviously, it's high time our government officials were reminded that they are supposed to work for us -- not the other way around.
A closing note
I highly recommend David's blog, The Complete Patient. He covers raw milk regulatory issues quite well. One finds strong support for individual rights in his writing and in many of the blog comments. Although there is often disagreement on the concrete specifics of raw milk benefits and safety in the comments, most of the commenters are quite intelligent. While the exchange can get heated, the tone is usually remarkably civil for such a controversial issue as raw milk.
ROCHESTER, Pa. -- On the first Friday of Lent, an elderly female parishioner of St. Cecilia Catholic Church began unwrapping pies at the church. That's when the trouble started.
A state inspector, there for an annual checkup on the church's kitchen, spied the desserts. After it was determined that the pies were home-baked, the inspector decreed they couldn't be sold.
...
The problem is the pies are illegal in Pennsylvania. Under the state's food-safety code, facilities that provide food at four or more events in a year require at least a temporary eating and drinking license, and food has to be prepared in a state-inspected kitchen. Many churches have six fish fries a year, on Fridays during Lent. St. Cecilia's has always complied with having its kitchen licensed, so food made there is fine to serve. But homemade goods don't make the cut.
Go read the whole thing.
If these pies are so dangerous, why is it legal to give them away?
The sad thing is that this story is not exceptional. There are health codes like this across the country and they are partly responsible for the decline in farmer's markets. It is impossible to sell a loaf of bread -- or any other homemade product -- at some farmer's markets due to health codes. Getting away with it is dependent on the grace of the regulators and whether they are willing to turn a blind eye.
This is all beyond absurd. These pernicious regulations must be repealed.
HR 875 By Monica @ 7:47 AM
I've been remiss in blogging about HR 875, the so-called "Food Safety Modernization Act". This bill does not take a long time to read, but the language in it is extremely vague. It proposes the erection of an enormous new federal agency called the Food Safety Administration. What appears clear under the bill is that any "food establishment" where food is passed from producer to consumer could be highly regulated. This is all a serious worry, I think. I plan to summarize HR 875 in the coming week or so, but in the meantime, you may wish to read these two articles on the matter: Kansas Cattlemen on HR 875
Local Farmers Corralled in Sting Operation By Guy Adamson @ 8:22 AM
SPRINGFIELD (FNS), April 1 -- The kids say they were only doing their part, but authorities say the nation’s food supply is a little bit safer now thanks to the work of these school-age members of the volunteer service group AgriCorps.
Six local farmers were cited for noncompliance with the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) thanks to help from area 4-H Club and FFA members, now part of the U.S. government’s AgriCorps food safety volunteer group.
“We really couldn’t have carried out this animal safety sting operation without the help of our youngest volunteers,” said Skip Butts, Sr. Executive Regional Troop Leader of the AgriCorps Volunteers.
According to authorities, the school-age AgriCorps volunteers asked the farmers to bring their best dairy calves and heifers to the county fairgrounds for a 4-H dairy judging competition. But the competition was just a ruse to see if the farmers were following NAIS protocol—they weren’t.
NAIS regulations require all farm animals to be tagged with an identification chip and any movement tracked in the national food safety database. None of the six farmers who showed up were in compliance and all were issued citations. In lieu of a court appearance, all six volunteered to join the AgriCorps Volunteer-Abroad program. None of the four men and two women cited were available for comment since they immediately left for the new AgriCorps farm training facility at Riker’s Island in New York, according several relatives, who asked not to be named.
“The best part is, we get to keep the animals!” said a delighted Lisa Smith, age 10, who begged her neighbor to bring his animals to the contest. “I’m glad they volunteered to go help people in other countries who don’t know how to grow food.”
The local Dairymen Corps, Inc., a public/private partnership organization, will operate the six farms until the local farmers return from overseas volunteer duty, said Butts. He added that additional supply of soy milk from the National Food Reserves will be allocated for the area to make up for any drop in cow’s milk production as a result of the transition.
###
April Fools! Yes, this is a fictional story…for now.
WHAT: Congressional Hearing on NAIS (National Animal Identification System) WHEN: Wednesday, March 11 WHERE: Washington, DC
The U.S. House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry will hold a hearing on NAIS on March 11, 2009. Bills to enact NAIS into law, HR875 and HR814, are being pushed through Congress, as well as an enormous "Appropriations Bill", i.e. massive spendulus program, with funding for NAIS which passed in the House and is now awaiting in the Senate.
This House hearing is critical to blocking mandatory NAIS. Blocking passage of the appropriations bill, 1105, is also critical.
Here is the first one HR 814 - the bottom line is that the Dept of Ag can:
1. Make all farmers who bring an animal to a USDA slaughterhouse participate in this program or the USDA slaughterhouse can refuse them (regardless of whether you are selling your meat in state or across state lines).
2. Farms will need a premise ID to ensure traceability from farm to consumer in order to comply with this bill.
3. The Dept of Ag can send a rep out to your farm to inspect and copy your records for each animal.
HR 814 -TRACE ACT of 2009
This Act may be cited as the `Tracing and Recalling Agricultural Contamination Everywhere Act of 2009′ or `TRACE Act of 2009′.
SEC. 414A. TRACEABILITY OF FOOD.
(a) Establishment of System- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this section, the Secretary shall establish a traceability system described in subsection (b) for all stages of manufacturing, processing, packaging, and distribution of food.
(b) Description of System- The traceability system required by subsection (a) shall require each article of food shipped in interstate commerce to be identified in a manner that enables the Secretary to retrieve the history, use, and location of the article through a recordkeeping and audit system or registered identification.
SEC. 26. TRACEABILITY OF LIVESTOCK, MEAT, AND MEAT PRODUCTS.
(a) Definition of Traceability- In this section, the term `traceability’ means the ability to retrieve the history, use, and location of an article through a recordkeeping and audit system or registered identification.
(b) Requirements-
(1) IN GENERAL- Cattle, sheep, swine, goats, and horses, mules, and other equines presented for slaughter for human food purposes, and the carcasses or parts of carcasses and the meat and meat food products of those animals, shipped in interstate commerce shall be identified in a manner that enables the Secretary to trace–
(A) each animal to any premises or other location at which the animal was held at any time before slaughter; and
(B) each carcass or part of a carcass and meat and meat food product of such animals forward from slaughter through processing and distribution to the ultimate consumer.
(2) TRACEABILITY SYSTEM- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this section, the Secretary shall establish a traceability system for all stages of production, processing, and distribution of meat and meat food products that are produced through the slaughter of animals described in paragraph (1).
(c) Prohibition or Restriction on Entry- The Secretary may prohibit or restrict entry into any slaughtering establishment inspected under this Act of any cattle, sheep, swine, goats, or horses, mules, or other equines not identified as prescribed by the Secretary under subsection (b).
——————————-
The second bill establishes NAIS via the newly created Food and Safety Administration, run by the “Administrator” - whoever that is….
HR 875 - ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FOOD SAFETY ADMINISTRATION
SEC. 210. TRACEBACK REQUIREMENTS.
(a) In General- The Administrator, in order to protect the public health, shall establish a national traceability system that enables the Administrator to retrieve the history, use, and location of an article of food through all stages of its production, processing, and distribution.
b) Applicability - Traceability requirements under this section shall apply to food from food production facilities (FARMS), food establishments, and foreign food establishments.
ACTION: Please call and fax all members of the subcommittee (below).
1. When you call, ask to speak to the legislative aide for agriculture.
2. Please send this to everyone you know, ESPECIALLY to people in the states with members on the subcommittee. Members need to hear from their constituents- -the people who vote them into office. It's important that residents of Colorado and Connecticut call in. The representatives sponsoring these atrocious bills are Diana DeGette (D-CO) and Rosa DeLauro (D-CT).
Also, email Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack. His e-mail address is AgSec@usda.gov.
Finally, contact your Senators and tell them NOT to support HR1105.
The message is simple: We don't want, nor will we comply with, the National Animal Identification System in any form.
It doesn't matter that there is ever more consumer demand for locally raised animal products. The government could kill small farming with these bills.
If you are a farmer, take action or lose your right to raise animals.
If you are not a farmer and you plan on raising animals in your backyard, take action or lose the right to raise these animals. How easy/cheap do you think it will be to order a few chicks by mail order from a hatchery when the whole process will require traceability by a bloated government organization?
If you are a consumer of locally raised meat, take action or lose the right to eat the food you want. This isn't an exaggeration. Most people think the choices in our supermarkets are greater than ever before, but this is mostly true for produce and processed foods. Check out the meat products available in London in the mid-1800s. Ask yourself how many of those species and cuts of meat are available in your supermarket today in 2009. Some of this is simply a result of consumer choice, but a good deal of it is regulation. Try finding brain, for instance. It's loaded with DHA and perfectly safe if it comes from grass-fed animals, but the regulators have banned access to it.
The government/Big Ag juggernaut wants to shut down our freedom of choice for their short-term goals. Remember, NAIS is a program invented by Cargill, etc. to gain access to the export market, which requires traceability. They are not content to form a voluntary program on their own; they are the ones who presented the idea to the USDA; they would rather have small farmers pay for the program so that they can benefit (every animal tagged vs. one tag for hundreds of animals for the corporate farm).
If we don't act, small farmers will be forced out of business and we will be faced with one species of chicken raised in a few "approved" warehouses in the United States where the animals are packed in like sardines. Same for every other farm species, of which over 30 will be tracked by this proposed program. Not only is this a violation of our rights, it will further consolidate and endanger our food supply. Any thinking person who understand the principles of disease control could tell you that this is an epidemiologic nightmare waiting to happen -- and the results would be the exact opposite of the supposedly beneficial intentions of this tracking program.
It's that simple. Your sustenance is in peril. Don't think if you are a vegetarian or a vegan that regulation of food "safety" doesn't affect you. "Safety" is just an excuse for ever greater control over our food supply -- whether it is forced regulation /safety /pasteurization / irradiation mandates for meat, milk, or vegetables.
The Real JunkFoodScience By Monica @ 10:18 PM
A silly article about raw milk has been recently published in Clinical Infectious Diseases that ends with a completely inappropriate threat to medical professionals:
"...physicians, veterinarians, and dairy farmers who promote, or even condone, the human consumption of unpasteurized milk and dairy products may be at risk for subsequent legal action."
Every few years Clin Infect Dis publishes an article like this. I think such articles and news pieces will become more frequent as raw milk becomes more popular. The acknowledgments to this particular article thank none other than John Sheehan, BSc, Jd and FDA head of safety for milk and eggs and a raw milk foe, "for valuable discussions on the subject during the preparation of the manuscript."
I don't believe crediting a government regulatory agent is necessarily proof of ignorance or corruption. I am sure there are many honest people who work for regulatory agencies and I don't believe every piece of research produced or funded by government is evidence of corruption. However, the Weston A Price Foundation has already, point by point, rebutted Sheehan's Powerpoint slides on raw milk in a 71 page PDF file. It's quite a read and anyone interested in the whole "controversy" around raw milk should take a look.
Oftentimes bias it is not evident in news media pieces or peer-reviewed articles. This is the case with the current Clin Infect Dis article. It appears to be well-written and most of the points are likely true in the context of grain-fed confinement cows. But the authors of the article make several mistakes, so that the article winds up reading more a like a political position paper than an honest evaluation of the science. Let's go through the major points.
First, they don't really understand the microbial ecology of a milk product in the context of grass feeding. For instance, Listeria monocytogenes is relatively fragile in the face of other protective factors in unpasteurized milk such as lactoferrin and beneficial coliforms that outcompete pathogens. These factors are destroyed by pasteurization and sometimes allow remaining L. monocytogenes to take off. This is why the FDA has considered making ultrapasteurization mandatory. Heat resistant strains have evolved and regular pasteurization is no longer good enough. Almost all organic milk on the retail market is now ultrapasteurized.
Second, the authors are mired in the reductionistic pseudoscience of nutrition that ignores the effect of pasteurization on the function of various proteins in the milk (lactase, phosphatase, immunoglobulins). Good science is timeless, and these authors haven't gone to older papers demonstrating the benefits. Many people anecdotally report reductions in asthma, allergies, and lactose intolerance on raw milk vs. pasteurized milk. Actually, it's not even so much that the mainstream doesn't recognize the existence of these proteins. They do, because the pasteurization test is a negative phosphatase test. Instead, they simply claim that these proteins aren't necessary and don't add any value to the consumer, nutritive or otherwise. This is paternalism on steroids.
No mention is made of the difference in grass-fed milk and grain-fed milk with respect to vitamin content, particularly a vitamin first discovered by Weston Price in the thirties, now believed to be vitamin K2 M-4. Price showed that K2 M-4 was dependent on the method of feeding and was highest in the dairy produced from cows on rapidly growing spring grass. This is widely known among those knowledgeable about pastured methods of raising animals but it still relatively unacknowledged or unknown in medical and government circles (though not unknown in the medical literature at this point).
The authors also ignore the significant difference between milk from Holsteins used for all pasteurized grocery store milk and milk from other older breeds usually used for raw milk. The latter has higher butterfat content, and thus, fat-soluble vitamins. "Milk is milk and it all comes from cows" is the FDA's position. That's demonstrably wrong.
Finally, they ignore that while there may be more outbreaks from raw milk, such outbreaks are small and easily identifiable, unlike food-borne illness outbreaks from pasteurized milk. They also don't discuss the relative risks of various foods, and give the impression that raw milk on a per serving basis is more dangerous than pasteurized milk. I don't believe we really know what the relative risks are, but my understanding is that they are about the same on a per serving basis. The WAP Foundation presents some interesting numbers on this in their two rebuttals, linked above and below.
The Weston A. Price Foundation has recently released a rebuttal to the recent Clin Infect Dis article. Unfortunately, people like Sandy Szwarc at JunkFoodScience obviously haven't seen the rebuttal. Ms. Szwarc's piece is simply a point by point regurgitation of the Clin Infect Dis article. This is curious because from what I can see of her blog she usually looks for an opposing view and does not buy into hysteria. I think this speaks to the power of conventional wisdom in creating a bias in a person's mind.
"Sound science" is not a conspiracy, Ms. Szwarc says. Most science often isn't a conspiracy, but that's really irrelevant to evaluating whether the science is actually sound and unpoliticized. The "science" used by the mainstream researchers to justify their biased thoughts about many aspects of our food is not sound. It is based on faulty assumptions that have since been disproven either in the medical literature or by simple logic and/or it is too reductionistic. Most seriously, it is almost always performed outside the context of evolutionary biology or even the history of food science in the past century. Most nutritional science simply does not operate within an evolutionary framework. It's bad science. Ms. Szwarc's readers deserve a more critical analysis than the one she says she is providing in her blog header.
In the most recent Clin Infect Dis article, the authors state that raw milk consumers "unconsciously process information in a biased manner." They encourage public health officials and physicians to speak with one unified voice against raw milk, repeating the message over and over clearly until the consumer gets it.
In other words, the raw milk consumers are knuckleheads nearly unreachable by reason, while the conventional view is based in reason and science. As I've indicated above, the situation is more complex than the authors would like health professionals to believe. At the very least, the authors and health experts ought to be recommending that people source raw milk and heat it, or that the dairy industry ought to at least convert to grass-feeding to increase fat-soluble vitamin content so critical for development of children and continuing robust health into adulthood.
The authors suggest that unlike consumers with strongly held opinions, "experts" with strongly held opinions do not selectively seek out information supportive of their views or process it in a biased fashion, yet they themselves choose to discuss the ability of pasteurization to kill pathogens without acknowledging the ability of grass-feeding to prevent contamination; they themselves choose to discuss illnesses attributed to raw milk without admitting that more illnesses have been attributed to pasteurized milk; they themselves choose to discuss modern assays with little to no destruction of vitamins without accounting for older feeding studies showing dramatic reduction in their biological activity; and they themselves choose to conclude by threatening experts who do not select information and unconsciously process it exactly as they do with the heavy hand of the law.There is a word for this kind of double standard and it is called hypocrisy.
The group, Free Agriculture - Restore Markets (FA/RM), advocates agricultural and health policies based solely on the principles of individual rights.
The protection of a person's basic rights to growing, producing, selling, buying, and eating the food of his or her choice -- which are applications of the fundamental rights to life, liberty, property, and the pursuit of happiness -- require a separation of economy and state. We support the right of producers and consumers to grow, sell, manufacture, and trade food supplies to mutual benefit without government interference. Based on objective fraud and tort laws, the courts can adjudicate cases of harm to consumers due to negligence or fraud.
This is not anarchy. This is free-market capitalism.
Because we defend free-market capitalism, I feel that it’s important to write a few educational posts now and then on some of the shenanigans that are going on in our food supply, as Diana has recently done.She also made the excellent point in the comments line to her post that too many businesses have now sold out their own long-term interests for shorter ones, which is often an unintended effect of government regulations and/or the faulty epistemology so prevalent in our society today. That's particularly true for agriculture. I'll be writing on this issue of short- vs. long-term interests with regard to soil fertility in the future.
Educational posts about food are useful to free-market activism to the extent that such information reveals that people can't just sit back and hope that all businessmen will behave morally in the marketplace -- particularly those in foreign countries like China where corruption is rampant and universally accepted as the normal way to do business.
People shouldn't assume -- with or without the existence of government regulations -- that every food product one can buy is safe or healthy. Furthermore, recognizing that some businessmen will cut corners for a quick buck -- and then criticizing them when they do it and adjusting purchasing accordingly -- isn't anti-capitalist. As a friend of mine recently wrote to me in an email, “Objectivists certainly ought to speak out about bad behavior on the part of businesses -- particularly fraud and negligence. We aren't pro-business; we're pro-capitalism and pro-freedom.”
Anyone wishing to make a donation to the Stowers' legal fund is encouraged to make it to the Buckeye Institute. The Buckeye Institute is an independent research and education group and does not perform contract work or accept government grants: "To maintain the highest degree of intellectual integrity, we need the support of the people whose lives we're seeking to improve through sound public policy. We thank you in advance for your support. "
I received an email requesting people to write letters, especially to the Governor of Ohio, the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Lorain County Health Department. If anyone has experienced a similar tale of government abuse, please leave it here in the comments and I will forward it to the Stowers', as they would like to hear about it.
Will you please join me in writing these three government offices? We need to send a clear message to the officials in Ohio -- and other government agencies in the country no doubt following this case closely -- that these types of actions are completely unconstitutional and unacceptable. Here is my letter. Feel free to adapt it to your needs.
Dear __________,
I am extremely disturbed at the strong-arm tactics displayed in the raid on the Stowers home in late 2008. Not one complaint of illness has been made against Manna Storehouse, nor has any evidence been offered that the products of the Stowers farm are dangerous. Would this type of action have been acceptable in America in 1808 or even 1908? No. Then why is it acceptable in 2008? It is not.
People have a constitutional right to enter into contractual agreements that harm no one, and they have a right to do so without government permission slips. For too long now, a government official has been responsible for deciding what is healthy. The current regulatory scheme drastically decreases choices available to consumers and forces them to buy food products as the government sees fit -- regardless of their own judgment or unique circumstances. This is a complete anomaly in human history. For thousands of years, even well into the history of the United States, humans have survived and lived perfectly healthy lives without a government dictating their food choices.
The members of the Manna Storehouse coop are informed consumers. As for the possibility of food-borne illness, there are no guarantees of safety even from federally inspected items, including pasteurizedmilk, beef, chicken, tomatoes, sausage, spinach, and alfalfa sprouts -- despite what government agencies would like us to believe. All Americans need to be more informed about their food choices -- not lulled into a false sense of complacency about a particular product simply because it is deemed "safe" by a state or federal health agency. Americans must have the right to eat the food they choose. Should situations of harm to consumers arise, Americans will always have a recourse: the courts.
Yet there wasn't even a case of food poisoning as an excuse for this raid. No one complained or became ill from purchases from the Manna Storehouse coop. No one's rights were violated until the Stowers home was forcibly entered. Why was there a need to raid the Stowers home and confiscate thousands of dollars worth of food, including private supplies as well? This type of action resembles something out of a Soviet Politburo handbook. It is most certainly not our founders' vision of the United States. The Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Lorain County Health Department should be ashamed of themselves.
Ohioans, indeed all Americans, should be allowed to to make their own decisions about the food put into their bodies -- without any government interference whatsoever. The government should not be able to unlawfully seize peoples' very sustenance because of minor code infractions. Government agencies appear to need continual reminders that it is they who serve American citizens -- not the other way around. This outrageous action against the Stowers family is a clear violation of the fourth and fifth amendments of the Constitution of the United States, and all such raids need to come to an end.
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.
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)
AUSTRALIA has been caught up in an international "honey laundering" scam in which Chinese honey is disguised and sold as the product of another country.
The illegal scheme follows the collapse of bee colonies in the US and Europe, creating a shortage of honey and the bees necessary to pollinate crops, The Times and The Australian report.
In the scam, drums of honey are shipped from China, usually to a distributor outside the country, who then repackages and re-exports it. In one case, drums of Chinese honey were marketd (sic) "Polish Light Amber Honey".
In 2003, Melbourne-based agents of a Chinese firm rebadged Chinese honey as Australian and onsold it to the US. As a result Australia is on a list of 13 countries whose honey products must be cairfully (sic) checked on entry to the US.
...
The Melbourne operators were charged and fined $489,000 for importing and rebadging 125 containers holding 1.7 million litres of Chinese honey sold to the US.
The elaborate subterfuge is to avoid heath and safety checks, import fees and tarrifts (sic) imposed by the US and other countries on Chinese food products.
Here's another report on this story. It's very revealing. If your kid eats Honey Nut Cheerios, s/he could be getting an unexpected (albeit probably small) dose of some pretty toxic antibiotics like ciprofloxacin and chloramphenicol. This is why I said that any foreign honey is suspect.
China is an enormous danger to the food supply of the United States. And such fines simply aren't going to stop them, as the second report clearly indicates.
As usual, Chinese producers and Chinese-based firms are willing to do almost anything to make a fast buck -- whether adding toxic melamine to milk (it is still going on -- I get news alerts about this daily), ethylene glycol to toothpaste, or fraudulently labeling their food as from a different country so as to get consumers to buy it. They will play this game endlessly to escape the regulatory schemes set up. It's not going to end here, and new regulations aren't going to protect consumers because the Chinese will keep adapting to find ways around the regulations.
I'll repeat it -- the greatest way to ensure the safety of your food (or at least that your food is not from China) is to buy a whole food and to buy locally or domestically sourced items. This isn't protectionism, it's common sense. If third world countries had ethical production standards and my inbox wasn't flooded with several news items about food fraud -- daily -- I'd have no problem buying foreign food for myself. It's a personal choice -- nevertheless, I feel compelled to tell all of you readers what you're up against and that you do so at your own risk.
Let me give you an example of why any packaged, multi-product food in the store is suspect. Stoneyfield Farm labels their yogurt as organic yet they source some of their raw materials from China. First, it's a multi-product food: there's more than one ingredient and whenever that is the case the manufacturer is not required to label the country of origin for those ingredients. Second, I highly doubt there is any verification proces to make sure the Chinese strawberry farmers aren't spraying toxic chemicals like methyl bromide, or worse -- or that the strawberries are even rinsed before going into the yogurt. Same for any other multi-product food: you have no idea where it came from. Literally any boxed or packaged food with more than one ingredient could have sourced one or more of the ingredients from China. If grocery stores refused to stock goods from China they'd have to shut down their entire store because a majority of the items sold in a grocery store are multiproduct goods, which means there's a possibility that they contain raw materials from China.
The new country of origin labeling (COOL) requirements for meat, supposedly designed to help consumers, are also a joke. I recently saw soup bones in the grocery store labeled, "Product of the USA, Canada, and Mexico." Informative, no? Actually it is -- it gives at least some indication of what is going on in those USDA-approved meat packing plants.
"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 previouswritings 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!"
