1.10.2007

NORTH AMERICAN UNION

Here is a little background on the agreement made between Canada, Mexico and the U.S.A... signing over our national sovereignty to the corporate elites.

CNN/DOBBS: W FULFILLS HIS DAD'S DREAM OFA NEW WORLD ORDER

This is reality, and I guess when you start seeing it on CNN, more folks will believe it is true and begin to wake up. Corporations are destroying our democracy, and our paid-off elected officials are allowing it to happen. I recall a little party happening in Boston over a small tea tax.

1.08.2007

TAKE ACTION: FDA APPROVES FOOD FROM CLONES

The Organic Consumers Assoc. has set up a way to contact the FDA during their 90-day risk assessment on meat & milk from cloned animals. The FDA plans to approve food from cloned animals WITHOUT the need for labeling these products. The public will be the unknowing guinea pigs for transgenic science.

Please take action by visiting the OCA website here >>> http://www.democracyinaction.org/dia/organizationsORG/oca/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=6433

- Farmer Brad
www.homesweetfarm.com

1.04.2007

Cloned Cows Continue...

Transgenic science is getting out of control, and the recent news reports are bringing it to light. I wonder if they expected no one to notice all this breaking news during the busy holiday season. Now they tell us that they are cloning cows without the prion proteins that cause the mad cow disease. But don’t worry, these beeves are not meant for our food supply, they “were created so that human pharmaceuticals can be made in their blood”, i.e. future vaccines against Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, worth billions to the drug industry.

The Washington Post article published Dec. 31, 2006 quotes “Barbara Glenn, director for animal biotechnology at the Biotechnology Industry Organization, a Washington industry group that counts among its members Hematech, the Sioux Falls, S.D.-based company that created the gene-altered cattle. ‘This shows the application of transgenics to improving livestock production and ultimately food production.’"

How can science improve anything? They forget that the cause for mad cow disease is conventional agricultural practices, feeding animal by-products to animals that were designed by our Creator to forage on grass. Just as e-coli 0157 is caused from feedlot grain-fed contaminated cow feces. Now science can come up with a new profit driven solution to the problems that they have created.

The real solution is not releasing more unproven science; we need to get back to nature. Animals need to leave the feedlot, and return to the farm. Artisan farmers need to be restored, producing food that has brought about thousands of years of healthy civilization. The modern food system is moving us backwards as food contamination becomes the norm. Farming has changed over the last 30 years, and the problems will not be remedied with radiation, genetic modification or cloning. We need to buy local food from the family farms that we can trust.

This phenomenon is being driven by industry bulldogs, and is allowed unchallenged by our compromising government. The governments power is to be given by the people, and the people do not want this new technology unlabeled in our food supply, as meat and milk from cloned animals is improved by our FDA. When are they going to hear our voices?

Checkout the Washington Post article: Scientists announce mad cow breakthrough CLICK HERE >>

Befuddled

Glen Boudreaux
Jolie Vue Farms
Brenham, Texas
www.jolievuefarms.com

We only now learn the following from our protectors at the FDA and USDA:
1) e-coli 0157 outbreaks in lettuce and leafy greens have been occurring "for a long time" and on an "ongoing basis...we're seeing an increased number of outbreaks, an increased number of cases in outbreaks, and an increase in the number of types of produce involved." Dr. Christopher Brady, chief of outbreak response at the Center For Disease Control.
2) we have "nowhere near the resources" to inspect the facilities that handle fresh produce. Dr. David Acheson, chief of food safety and applied nutrition at the FDA.
3) the government doesn't have a clue as to how they are going to solve the problem of e-coli contamination in our produce. "There are a lot of unknowns." Dr. Acheson.

I suggest a good start would be to get their facts right. They start with this false assumption: "We know that 0157 is a natural contaminant of cow feces", says Dr Acheson. But 0157 is not a "natural" contaminant in cow manure. It was first discovered in 1982 and it is found only in cattle confined to feedlots and fed an unnatural diet of corn and other unmentionables. Corn sets up an extremely gaseous and acidic condition in the ruminants' digestive tract, which creates the condition which allows 0157 to initiate and grow. When that happens, the likelhood of contamination of other cattle in the feedlot is compounded, since they are all lying and standing around in their fellow-beeves' manure. Joel Salatin refers to this condition in feedlots and pig and chicken confinement houses as an e-coli soup, infecting everything in the confinement operation, air, water, and dirt. Take the cattle off corn, remove them from the feedlot, and put them on fresh green pasture, and Voila!, 0157 dies out in a week or so. Now that's "natural".

Isn't this the real problem, folks? Our government, with all good intentions but ignoring the objections of the naturalists, from Thomas Jefferson at Monticello to my grandfather at Fair View Dairy, instituted, taught, promoted and subsidized the industrialized production of our food. 60 years later, the chickens are coming home to roost on that project. To fix the problem, they would have to admit that they created it. It will take one fine public servant to do that, and so far there are no volunteers.

Take your food fate into your own hands by supporting the natural agriculturalists in your own community. Shop the farmers markets, organize a food buyers club or home delivery farm, speak to your government representatives and bureaucrats. Eat and encourage your friends and family to eat Real Food. Start today.

Yours in the local harvest,

Glen

1.03.2007

NY Times: When Bad Things Come from Good Food

This is a must read article… NY Times: When Bad Things Come from Good Food CLICK HERE>>

This should be the quote of the year from the chief of the outbreak response and surveillance team:

Dr. Braden said: “The way produce is farmed and processed has changed. It’s become more centralized, and you have these huge processors and distributors that produce tens of thousands of pounds of a particular produce in a particular day. If something goes wrong with that produce you’ve got a big problem, whereas with small farmers, if there is a problem it’s much more limited.”

In addition, he said, bagged and prewashed produce didn’t exist 25 years ago, and people today eat more raw vegetables than in the past.


It’s time to get serious about supporting local food!

Farmer Brad

1.01.2007

No GMO: A New Year Resolution

This is from Jeffery Smith, author of Seeds of Deception and the founder of the Institute for Responsible Techology. GMO food and cloned meat/milk is becoming a major issue to be dealt with. I encourage everyone to be informed and to be active... buy local, buy fresh, support the freedom of choice.

-Farmer Brad


Spilling the Beans

Iowa, Dec. 26 -- Consumers of any age can improve their health with one New Year's resolution. "Avoid eating genetically modified organisms (GMOs)," says expert Jeffrey M. Smith, who points to evidence of mounting health risks associated with gene-spliced foods.

Smith urges consumers to cross off brands that contain genetically modified (GM) ingredients, which are in 60-70% of foods sold in the U.S. The principle offenders are non-organic soy and corn derivatives and canola and cottonseed oils. Thus, Ragu tomato sauce would be off limits, since it contains corn syrup and soybean oil, but Light Ragu or Barilla brand sauces, which contain olive oil and no corn sweetener, are non-GMO.
"Consumers in the U.S. are being used as human guinea pigs by biotech companies, which rushed their GMOs to market without adequate studies and before the science was ready," says Smith. "Once Americans learn they are feeding these high-risk foods to their children, they will demand non-GMO alternatives." In Europe, where consumer knowledge about GMOs is considerably higher, shoppers' concerns prompted food manufacturers there to remove all GM ingredients. Smith sees this trend building in the US, with more and more healthy brands declaring ingredients "Non-GMO" on the label.

Smith's new book, Genetic Roulette: The documented health risks of genetically engineered foods, due out in the spring, links GMOs to risks such as allergies, immune system dysfunction, potentially pre-cancerous cell growth, stunted organs and death. "Many of the beliefs about DNA that were popular when GM foods were introduced ten years ago," he says, "have been proven wrong. Swapping genes between species turns out to have far more unpredicted dangerous side effects than we thought."

Animals choose non-GMO

Smith also documents how several animals, when given the option, choose non-GM food over GMOs. These include cows, pigs, elk, deer, raccoons, squirrels, mice, rats and geese. He says a non-GMO New Year's resolution will help people elevate their choices to match the wisdom of the animals.

Cloned food may be FDA deja vu

“The FDA’s recent announcement declaring milk and meat from cloned animals as safe,” says Smith, “reminds us of their 1992 approval of GM crops. When the agency’s internal files were made public years later, they revealed that the FDA’s GMO policy was dictated by corporate manipulation, not sound science. Warnings by government scientists were ignored by political appointees from the biotech industry.” Smith adds, “And like GMOs, the FDA does not want labels on cloned food, thereby forcing the entire population into their dangerous uncontrolled experiment.”



Jeffrey Smith is the author of Seeds of Deception, the world's bestselling book on GMOs. He is the founder and executive director of The Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT) and a leading spokesperson on the risks of GM foods. Go to www.responsibletechnology.org for eater-friendly tips for avoiding GMOs at home and in restaurants. Jeffrey M. Smith is the author of Seeds of Deception, the world’s bestselling book on GM foods. His forthcoming book, Genetic Roulette, documents more than 60 health risks of GM foods in easy-to-read two-page spreads, and demonstrates how current safety assessments are not competent to protect consumers from the dangers. He is available for media at media@responsibletechnology.org.

There You Go Again


I wanted to share this commentary by our rancher friend Glen Boudreaux of Jolie Vue Farms. His comments on the approval of meat and dairy from cloned animals are very insightful. Glen's family produces drug-free 100% grass-fed beef serving the Houston area. Glen is also an attorney and very dedicated to the local food movement in Texas, he is one of the few that are really doing it!

- Farmer Brad



"There You Go Again"
Glen Boudreaux
Jolie Vue Farms
Brenham, Texas
www.jolievuefarm.com

Remember the 1980 presidential debates when Ronald Reagan responded to an apparent misstatement by Carter of his position on Medicare with the now famous line: "There you go again". Well, there goes the FDA and USDA again. The "again" is the non-disclosure policy recently adopted by our government designed to keep us in the dark about what we are eating. First, with genetically-modified vegetables, now with cloned beef.

Orwell or Heller?

If you missed it, the Food and Drug Administration has approved cloned beef for sale to us, the "eaters", so long as we aren't told that we are eating cloned beef. I can't tell if I'm reliving Orwell's 1984 or Heller's Catch 22. Or is this the logical extension of Clinton's "Don't ask, don't tell" policy. We can't ask and they can't tell.

Goodness gracious, what has happened to the democratic principle of an educated and informed populace? And how in the world does our government square this fake-food favoritism against the multitude of food labeling mandates of the past? Why has the FDA decided to go back to a policy of caveat emptor when disclosure has worked so well? I find myself in a state of perpetual anomie with all of the government double-speak.

When the FDA announced its intention to study the safety of cloned beef, its Director of the Center For Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Sundloff, promised us this, and I quote in relevant part: "We want to make sure the public is clearly informed [about the safety of cloned beef]". Who brain-washed him in the meantime?

How close is "pretty close"?

Do we need to worry about whether cloned beef is safe, even while being assured by our government agency that it is? Well, we just finished reviewing Seeds of Deception, which spells out the risks associated with introducing genetically-modified produce. The risk to humans and the animal environment are the same, because predictability of result encounters the same risks when trying to duplicate an animal as when we are trying to modify then reproduce a tomato. That long DNA string has a lot of ways to re-route the original prescription that we send it. If you doubt that, just reflect on this model of equivocation announced by one of Sundloff's lead investigators of cloned beef progeny: "In theory, they're pretty close to identical twins" (emphasis mine). In "theory", not in fact? And how close is "pretty close"?

The unannounced policy:Caveat Emptor

Let's review where the federal agencies have taken us so far as they protect the Fake Food industry against the onslaught of the small family farmer.

-Free Range means that a chicken has "access" to the out of doors, even though we know from Michael Pollan that by the time the door is opened, no self-respecting, cage-raised, over-fed and over-doped chicken would even consider going outside.

-Natural means "minimally processed". Whatever that means, it has no relationship to the common understanding of the word.

-Organic now allows 60+ synthetic materials to be used in the "organic" process.

-And genetically-modified tomatoes and cloned ribeyes are so safe that it is better that we don't know that.

What you can do

I would suggest that you write the FDA and the USDA except I have many times. They never respond. Never. Not even a form letter. Ditto Senator Cornyn, or my Congressman. The popular Senator Bailey-Hutchinson does, even if it's just a form response (and it is sometimes more than that), which probably explains her overwhelming popularity in our state. Otherwise, I can only suggest that you put a face on your food by shopping at the Houston Farmer's Market. That's where you'll find full-disclosure. We stake our livelihood on it.