Illegal Discussion Part Five

This is part five of my discussion of Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal. Read part one here.

Chapter 19 discusses Avian Influenza and chapter 20 talks about bioterrorism. They are closely related because they both work to taint our food and the USDA without fail will always try to claim that small family farmers are the ones propagating diseased food and/or are the ones most likely to be the source of a bioterrorism outbreak with their unsecured facilities.

Several years ago there was big scare about local chickens having the bird flu and Salatin shares some stories and theories. He even shares a widely held theory that the chicken industry “planted” the bird flu and accidentally let it get out of control. I buy that theory 100%. In fact I have a similar theory about almond growers and a salmonella outbreak. It was conventional almonds and not raw ones that were the source but somehow…miraculously raw almonds were the ones that got banned. Funny how things just work out like that for big agricorp? They get to stick it to their competitors when they should have been grabbing their ankles. ;)

Even when it is the large, industrial chicken farmers that are spreading disease it is the small family farmer that takes the heat. The USDA certainly won’t tell you Tyson did this to you….they want you to think that birds raised outside that can come into contact with air and other birds are the ones getting infected, when that could not be farther from the truth. They simply will not allow the media to portray their benefactors in a bad light. The local food chain is the fall guy.  I guess some people really are dense enough to believe that 100 chickens crammed into a small cage that eat manure and never see the light of day are safer to eat than a bird that gets fresh air, sunlight, and grass to eat.

Salatin goes on to compare small, local farms with that of industrial ones as far as access for bioterrorists goes. The USDA wants us to believe that industrial farms are immaculate, stainless steel wonder worlds that are guarded ferociously to protect all the wonderful people of this country. Small local farmers are dirty, careless, and certain to let any old terrorist on their property to taint food. Does this sound logical to you?

Industrial farms are almost devoid of people. Machines feed and water them, computers monitor temperature, and there is hardly anyone around. They are prime for terrorist infiltration. The actual processing facilities however, where they slaughter and process all that raw product is crawling with people, many of whom have no legal status to be in this country and do not even speak English. How hard would it be for a foreigner (because terrorists are always foreign don’t ya know) to get a job there and taint up to 10 tons of food? I don’t think it would be to hard….at all.

A smaller, local farmer would be much less likely to be targeted. It is also unlikely that they ever would be considered a viable target because they do not do the same volume and a terrorist will want maximum impact. The USDA is trying to make us fear the local food system when it would likely be the safest thing for us in the event of a bird flu outbreak or a bioterrorism event.

Chapter 21 addresses the NAIS or National Animal Identification System that the government wants to impose on us by 2011. Basically it would require microchips be implanted in all cows, pigs, chickens, horses, sheep, and goats. I think the program sounds crazy but supposedly it would make our food much safer if we tag all the animals. The fines you can rack up for stupid things, like forgetting to declare and animal dead or for having an extra chicken are outrageous. Also, the smaller farmers will have to tag each and every animal but industrial farms can have one tag per 10,000 animals. How fair is that??

Chapter 22 is about Mad Cow disease and how it became a problem. Also discussed is the disgusting practice of industrial farms to grind up animal remnants and manure (even from sick and diseased animals), mix it up with some grain and molasses, and feed it back to the living animals. It is practices like this that make mad cow disease possible but the USDA is not about to change things. They don’t really care about food safety.

If you recall a couple years back a company in Missouri called Creekstone Farms was upset because the mad cow scare in the US was causing foreign buyers to ban US meat products. Creekstone managed to secure a deal with a Japanese buyer that they could still do business if the farm tested every piece of meat they sold. Well, the USDA sued them! Why? The USDA said that if this farm tested every product then that would make all other meat processors who choose NOT to test look suspect in the consumer’s mind. So here the USDA is suing a company because that company is testing for mad cow disease. Creekstone eventually won that case but the USDA plans to appeal. If they really cared about food safety why would they sue companies testing for diseased meat?

Chapter 23 was not a favorite of mine. It talked of animal welfare and how farmer’s get vilified for buying chicks via mail order or using farrowing crates for sows. Salatin explains that when he orders 2000 chicks in the mail and the post office accidentally suffocates them or leaves them out in cold temperatures and they freeze to death this is the post office’s fault. Hence the farmer should not be vilified for a practice that would have been harmless to the chicks if not for careless post office workers. But I don’t buy that. The post office shouldn’t need to baby-sit your mail. If you elect to ship a living thing in the mail then deal with the backlash when it dies and people get mad.

The final chapter just sums thing up for us and tells us where we need to go from here. I particularly like this quote:

The political rationale for food safety ultimately rests in the notion that we are wards of the state. Not a free people.

I for one do not want the government telling me what I can and cannot eat. This is a basic freedom that I don’t think anyone should give up. The crack down on food is just getting worse everyday. Anything raw, even vegetables are getting the evil eye these days. Are we ready to throw ourselves under the bus of government protection because we are too stupid to know what is good for us? Are we ready to start eating sterilized, irradiated, processed, antibiotic laden “clean” foods for the rest of our lives?

Make your voice heard that this won’t be tolerated, find back door methods to get illegal foods such as raw dairy through cow share programs or donation based markets. Withhold your compliance from the tyrant that seeks to take our food freedom away…