Image via Wikipedia
As I write this, I am eating my breakfast. It consists of six eggs, soft cooked(actually overeasy), fried in bacon grease and gathered from my own chickens. My coffee has raw goat milk in it and I made the bread that I am dipping in the soft runny yolk. By recent bureaucratic actions and rulemaking, I am a criminal. The juice I am drinking is actually a mixture of a water kefir that I ferment on my countertop and herbal tea gathered from my yard and garden. Later, I will probably refresh myself with a glass of kombucha made with my own spring water. I sort of regret that I need to import the tea…
In the last few years, I have been vaguely aware of the increasing numbers of regulations regarding just what it is we are all supposed to eat. What business is it of the first lady how much barbecue I eat? Who elected her as my personal dietician. Lately, big city mayors have trying to get in on the act. While I don’t often go to the city, and even less often I drink a soda pop, why exactly does Mayor Bloomburg of New York care how big my coke is?
I salt my food liberally, with sea salt, and occasionally with colt’s foot ashes if I haven’t been to town lately to buy groceries. I eat a lot of the things that are bad for you. I also eat an awful lot of the thing that are good for you. Balance in all things. But to make this asinine trend worse, these self appointed mothers have somehow decided that I can’t even know if my store bought items contain Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO). In case you don’t know, these are the same familiar food items you have always bought, but the plants or animals they come from have been modified by literally blasting a culture of their genetic material with genetic material from some other, often unrelated, species. The resulting “Frankenfood” has new traits that nature has not seen fit to put in the original. Often the material comes from unrelated things like putting crustacean genes into plants and lightning bug lights into corn. Or like potatoes or corn that can produce their own toxic pesticides to protect them from bugs and weeds. These pesticides would not be allowed if they were applied by the farmer, but they are virtually unregulated. The EPA says its not their problem since these are food items, the FDA (don’t get me started) says they are pesticides so they don’t need to cover them. I know I don’t want to eat anything that is too noxious for even a bug to eat. Yet these and other genetic monstrosities are fast becoming ubiquitous in the grocery store. Since we are supposed to be making healthy choices, should we be able to decide whether or not we eat such things? The FDA says no, GMO foods do not have to be labeled as such, and big corporations often sue any companies that apply a label to their foods stating that they DO NOT contain GMO ingredients. Are they serious? I can’t even be trusted to know what IS NOT in my food? If they are so good for us, why the secrecy? (I encourage you to do even a small amount of research on this topic, and I will post a few links here later after I come back from the barn.) And I won’t even touch here on the fact that these modified plants pass their traits along in their pollen and seed, often “infecting” neighboring farms. Or the fact that the big corporations have been able to sue the infected farms for “stealing” their patented genetics. Or the fact that someone really thinks it is ok to patent life forms…
And why all the fuss over raw milk? Without getting into the great (and often misleading) argument of whether milk is better or safer raw or cooked (pasteurized), most every farmer I ever knew drank and fed his family raw milk as a matter of convenience. It was out there in the bulk tank or fresh from the udder, and “why the heck should I bother to cook it? Never hurt me or anyone I know, and my family is my most important livestock I raise!” If an informed choice has been made, then whose business is it, really? And yet many states, at the encouragement of the federal government, are raiding farms and families “suspected in dealing in raw milk”. Really? Armed raids on the Amish? I would think that the state of California (or Ohio or Pennsylvania…) would have better things to do or to spend their borrowed money on than raids on folks selling organic produce and raw milk, especially since it is labeled as such, along with government mandated health warnings to boot… Perhaps they haven’t noticed it yet, but they have somewhat of a reputation (with those of us in the flyover states) as having something of a drug problem, and a certain level of crime that many of us would be uncomfortable with. (I’ll also post a couple of links here when I am done in the barn.)
I missed a lot of this, living out in the woods, and am only just catching up. That being said, it seems most folks are as unaware as I have been, but they have not been protected by their ignorance. I know what I have been eating, because I generally know where it grew. Other folks have not been as lucky. They, and probably you, have been lied to, and the lies continue. Go meet a farmer, you’ll be glad you did.
Enough ranting, I gotta go milk.
