There is a sudden explosion of foodie articles from the liberal community over the last couple of months. I am going to go through this one point by point.

[div class="excerpt"]The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights

Because of its health benefits, many more people are turning to raw milk. But there's one hitch: Raw milk is illegal.

Makenna Goodman

Food regulation is one of the most important issues consumers face today. And for people who are concerned with where their food comes from (and how it got there), milk is now at the center of this debate. And because of its health benefits, many more people are turning to raw milk. Even lactose intolerant folks have found they can digest the un-pasteurized liquid; and it's been said to reduce allergies and asthma in children -- ailments that are on the rise in the U.S.

But there's one hitch: raw milk is illegal.

I spoke with journalist David Gumpert, author of The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights, about our right to healthy food--what could very well be the new civil rights movement.[/quote]

So often, these articles promoting "alternative" food choices start right out with a blatant lie.

Raw milk is not illegal. Selling food to the public that is potentially a health risk, and selling food without submitting it to safety and health inspection are what is illegal.

This distinction is important, because it represents the difference between the left wing position - management of resources for the benefit of the general public - and the right wing position - anything goes "free markets" with no government "interference."

[div class="excerpt"]Makenna Goodman: Okay -- I'm just going to ask, even though it seems like it should be obvious: What is raw milk?

David Gumpert: Raw milk is just what the name suggests -- milk straight from the cow (or goat), which hasn't been pasteurized (heated to 161 degrees for 15 seconds) or homogenized.

MG: Mass media says raw milk is bad for me. Is this true?

DG: That is a complicated question. Yes, people do become ill from pathogens that can crop up in raw milk, like campylobacter, salmonella, listeria, and E.coli O157:H7. Most of the illnesses are mild, but occasionally, people have become very ill, and those most inclined toward the serious illnesses are children. But it's important to note that people also become ill from a variety of other foods, including raw spinach, ground beef, peanut butter, lettuce, and peppers. To the extent the mass media suggest that raw milk is highly dangerous, they are misleading people. Data from the CDC shows in the 33-year period 1973-2005, there have been an average of about 50 reported illnesses annually from raw milk. And consumers should be aware that it's possible to become ill from pasteurized milk; there have been outbreaks from contamination that has occurred post-pasteurization and led to occasionally thousands of people becoming ill. In Massachusetts during 2007, three elderly people died from contaminated pasteurized milk.[/quote]

E.coli O157:H7 is nothing to dismiss so lightly.

The fact that people can become sick from pathogens in other foods has nothing to do with the potential health risks from milk.

[div class="excerpt"]MG: What exactly is the difference between pasteurized (the milk we normally drink) and raw milk?

DG: Pasteurization is a heat-treatment process that took hold in the early and mid-twentieth century, in response to large numbers of illnesses and deaths from disease (like typhoid and tuberculosis) spread by contaminated raw milk. That, however, was a time when much less was known about the danger of pathogens, or the importance of sanitation and refrigeration.

Pasteurization kills off pathogens, and once it was introduced, childhood illness from pathogens in raw milk declined by 25% or more. The decline in illnesses, however, coincided as well with better sewerage systems and cleaner water.

There's been lots of debate in alternative health and nutrition circles as to whether pasteurization, in particular, depletes milk of important "good" bacteria, enzymes, and proteins. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control maintain that pasteurization has no appreciable effect on the nutritional composition of milk, but does get rid of potentially dangerous pathogens like campylobacter and salmonella. Pasteurization is really a processing function, though, and with all the concern over processed food, more people are questioning whether pasteurization does, in fact, alter milk's composition.[/quote]

In other words, much ado about nothing. Look at the last sentence there - pasteurization is "processing," and people have a bad feeling about "processed" things, and so therefore they are "questioning" (though not necessarily finding anything to justify their fears) so therefore we should hint around and spread information that raw milk is better in some vague way. More "natural" or something. Since people don't know, and are fearful, we should encourage them to continue not knowing and being fearful.

I am not arguing that raw milk is, or is not, "better" by the way. I am just pointing out the idiocy of what the guy is saying here, and most importantly how his arguments leave the door wide open for libertarian political ideas.

[div class="excerpt"]MG: What are the health benefits from drinking raw milk?

DG: There was a time during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when raw milk was pushed by some in the medical profession as nearly a cure-all for conditions ranging from arthritis to diabetes to gout. Today, there are extensive anecdotal tales of improved health from raw milk, such as relief from lactose intolerance. There is also research from Europe in the last few years indicating that children who drink raw milk have reduced rates of asthma and allergies.[/quote]

"Relief from lactose intolerance?" Hardly an earth-shaking "health benefit." Children whose parents give them raw milk may well be subjected to other factors that reduce the incidence of asthma and allergies - like living in the country.

"Some" in the medical profession promoted raw milk as "a cure-all for conditions ranging from arthritis to diabetes to gout?" Well, er, uh, OK. And this tells us what exactly?

[div class="excerpt"]MG: In your new book, The Raw Milk Revolution, you talk about how pasteurization has affected the way milk is being processed, sold, and consumed. Can you explain how, here?

DG: Sure. Pasteurization allows milk to be safely transported regionally, and still remain on store shelves for a week or more without spoilage. Increasingly, milk is being transported ever longer distances -- for example, milk from the West, where there tend to be surpluses, is often transported to the East, where there are shortages. As milk is increasingly transported long distances, standard pasteurization has been supplemented by ultra-high temperature pasteurization, which involves heating milk to 275 degrees for a few seconds. The effect is to kill off even more organisms, and thereby allow the milk to last for up to six to nine months without refrigeration. Because organic milk must often be transported the longest distances, it tends to be subjected to ultra-high temperature pasteurization more often than conventional milk.[/quote]

Ah, he has a book to sell.

Now, am I stupid, or doesn't this sentence completely demolish the arguments for "organic," etc.?

"Because organic milk must often be transported the longest distances, it tends to be subjected to ultra-high temperature pasteurization more often than conventional milk."

[div class="excerpt"]MG: Why is the raw milk revolution similar to the organic vs. conventional food debate?

DG: For a long time, organic veggies and fruits were seen as marginal products, produced by just a few local growers. A fringe group of consumers proclaimed their benefits. Eventually, organic food was produced in ever-larger quantities, with large agricultural growers becoming involved. It has become mainstream. Today, raw milk is similarly a marginal product, produced generally by a few local dairies. It's not clear, though, that it will follow the same trajectory as organic food, since even among raw milk advocates, there is a preference for obtaining it locally from small dairies. And among these advocates, there is doubt large feedlot type dairies could produce raw milk that would be consistently safe.[/quote]

Such a pack of lies. "Organic" is not mainstream - except in people's imaginations, where the organic movement has been very successful in selling a fanciful idea to the public - and is not being adopted by farmers.

[div class="excerpt"]MG: What does the divide between traditional and factory farming have to do with raw milk?

DG: Advocates of raw milk have consistently argued that they wouldn't want milk from factory farms sold unpasteurized, since the crowding of cows makes sanitation sometimes questionable. Indeed, there have been studies of the unpasteurized milk at factory farms (before it is sent for pasteurization), which show significant contamination by pathogens. A 2004 study published in the Journal of Dairy Science found that in milk samples taken from 861 bulk tanks in 21 states around the country, 2.6 percent contained salmonella and 6.5 percent tested positive for listeria monocytogenes. Pasteurization, of course, kills off these pathogens.

Instead, raw milk advocates seek out smaller traditional farms, which encourage pasture feeding of cows and diligent sanitation.[/quote]

There exists no "divide between traditional and factory farming." This is purely in people's imaginations.

[div class="excerpt"]MG: Why is there a crackdown on small farms who produce raw milk (even if they have devoted, happy customers)?

DG: The FDA is adamantly against consumption of raw milk, even if customers are happy. The head of its dairy division has been quoted on numerous occasions as saying that consuming raw milk "is like playing Russian roulette with your health." The FDA's warnings have done little to slow consumption of raw milk, however -- quite the contrary. So as raw milk has grown in popularity, the FDA, beginning in 2005 and 2006, has joined with state agriculture agencies in trying to instead cut the supply of raw milk. It has focused its efforts heavily on such large dairy-producing states as New York, California, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. In these states, there have been varying actions against producers of raw milk -- "sting" operations, shutdowns for contamination even when no one has become ill, and legal proceedings and fines.[/quote]

Preventive protection of public health is what those agencies do.

[div class="excerpt"]MG: When it comes to food, how much freedom should people have to choose their own--*regardless of the "risk"?

DG: This is a controversial issue. I think individuals should be free to assess the risks associated with foods, and make the final choices. All foods can be contaminated, and some, like deli meats and raw seafood, involve more serious risks than raw milk. Opponents argue that in certain situations, like with milk, which are heavily consumed by children, consumers shouldn't have free choice, since children can't make an informed choice.[/quote]

Personal choice by upscale yuppies is fine, but should not be presented as an alternative to the public health and safety infrastructure and regimen.

http://www.alternet.org/healthwellness/143720/the_raw_milk_revolution%3A_behind_america%27s_emerging_battle_over_food_rights?page=entire

or something if they're so concerned, I'm sure they have the means and spare time. I don't really get the point of it though, unless the author is just preening his yuppy superiority. Guess he wants to get his raw milk from Whole Foods. Ya know, that might be a good idea.....

Speaking of pasteurization, did ya see where they are talking about pasteurizing in the shell oysters from the Gulf Coast? This applies to oysters taken in the summer. Requires investment in equipment, the small guys will be put out of business. I understand the public health issue but goddamn, who wants to eat a dead oyster? I've eaten Apalachicola oysters for decades whenever I visit, often in June/July. It seems that all that is good is going away, fuckin' capitalists.

Of course, one might stick to the traditional 'months with an 'R' schedule for raw oyster eating, problem solved(in Md they may only be taken in those months). But then what about those watermen, what will they do for income during the summer? Seems to me a society that wants healthy oysters would subsidize those workers during their off months, but what do I know?

CHOLERA

E.coli O157:H7 has evolved so that it survives in a more acidic environment than other strains - like cider, for instance. Organic producer Odwalla, using mule power for their press (fecal contamination is the source of E.coli in food) killed a kid and that touched off a media frenzy of fear-mongering.

By the way, all three recent major food scares - cider, tomatoes, and spinach implicated the "organic" industry. The use of manure for fertilizer carries risks. A bunch of organic advocates almost broke their necks, they did such a complete about face on that so quickly, from "it's conventional agriculture!" to "ooops, never mind." One spokesperson tried to peddle a "well, it isn't really organic unless the manure is properly composted" line. Oh yeah? That wasn't true the day before. "Organic" apparently means "whatever is good" and "conventional" means "whatever is bad," and when organic fails that is because it was not "real" organic, real organic being continually re-defined to protect it as a sales and marketing concept.

E.coli O157:H7 is a legitimate concern. Need to say that. Nasty bug, serious risk. Thousands of small cider producers went out of business around the country. Hated to see that.

At the agriculture conventions there are always many clinics and seminars. That is where I (and all serious and conscientious people in the ag community) learned about the new E.coli strain. But no one from the organic crowd ever attend any of those seminars, since their belief system rejects everything about "conventional" agriculture. They hold their own seminars where people read "food manifestos" and compare notes on their gardens and look down their noses at farmers.

That guy Pollan was recently prevented from making a speech at a university and that has organic activists in a tizzy. What is the problem with not inviting someone who is ignorant about agriculture to lecture students on agricultural subjects? Would we have creationists lecturing on evolution? What is the difference?

Pollan is an extreme threat, because not only does he promote upscale foodie choices as an alternative and in opposition to a robust public agricultural infrastructure, he is now presenting his ideas as an alternative to a national health care program. "If only we were all making the right food choices, and the big bad government was not oppressing us, we would all be healthy."

He is very active, and his angle in an article today focuses almost exclusively on peak oil. "Farming uses too much oil" is the absurd argument. Whatever it takes to sell your books and to attack public infrastructure and promote libertarianism, I guess.

Why I Drink Raw Milk (That's Sold Illegally)

By Joel Salatin, Chelsea Green Publishing

The following is an excerpt from Joel Salatin's foreword to The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America's Emerging Battle Over Food Rights by David Gumpert (published by Chelsea Green).

I drink raw milk, sold illegally on the underground black market. I grew up on raw milk from our own Guernsey cows that our family hand-milked twice a day. We made yogurt, ice cream, butter, and cottage cheese. All through high school in the early 1970s, I sold our homemade yogurt, butter, buttermilk, and cottage cheese at the Curb Market on Saturday mornings. This was a precursor to today's farmer's markets.

In those days, the Virginia Department of Agriculture had a memorandum of agreement with the Curb Market that as long as vendors belonged to an Agricultural Extension organization such as Extension Homemaker's Clubs or 4-H, producers could bring value-added products to market without inspection and visits from the food police. The government agents assumed that anyone participating in the extension programs would be getting the latest, greatest food science and therefore conform to the most modern procedural protocols, which created its own protection.

As the Virginia Slims commercial says, "We've come a long way, baby." These conciliatory overtures to maintain healthy and vibrant local food economies exist no more. Today I can't sell any of those things at a farmer's market, and even if I take eggs some bureaucrat will come along with a pocket thermometer and, without warrant or warning, reach over and poke it through my display eggs to see if they are at the proper temperature. If they aren't, no amount of pleading that those are for display only can dissuade the petulant public servant from demanding that I dump those display eggs in a trash can on the spot. I don't sell at farmer's markets anymore.

In 1975, when I graduated from high school and began plotting my farming career, I figured out that I could hand-milk ten cows, sell the milk to neighbors at regular retail prices, and be a full-time farmer. This was before most people had ever heard the word organic. But selling milk was illegal. In those days, we didn't know about herd shares or Community Supported Agriculture or even limited liability corporations.

As a result, I went to work for a local newspaper and became the proverbial part-time farmer -- working in town to support the farming passion. I don't think I've ever gotten over the fact that the government arbitrarily determined to make it very difficult for me to become a farmer. That seems un-American, doesn't it?

Isn't it curious that at this juncture in our culture's evolution, we collectively believe Twinkies, Lucky Charms, and Coca-Cola are safe foods, but compost-grown tomatoes and raw milk are not? With legislation moving through Congress demanding that all agricultural practices be "science-based," I believe our food system is at Wounded Knee. I do not believe that is an overstatement.

Make no mistake, as the local, heritage, humane, ecological, sustainable -- call it what you will (anything but organic since the government now owns that word) -- food system takes flight, the industrial food system is fighting back. With a vengeance. By demonizing, criminalizing, and marginalizing the integrity food movement, the entrenched powers that be hope to derail this revolution.

This industrial food experiment, historically speaking, is completely abnormal. It's not normal to eat things you can't spell or pronounce. It's not normal to eat things you can't make in your kitchen. Indeed, if everything in today's science-based supermarket that was unavailable before 1900 were removed, hardly anything would be left. And as more people realize that this grand experiment in ingesting material totally foreign to our three-trillion-member internal community of intestinal microflora and -fauna is really biologically aberrant behavior, they are opting out of industrial fare. Indeed, to call it a food revolution is accurate.

But revolutions are always met with prejudice and entrenched paradigms from the about-to-be-unseated lords of the status quo. The realignment of power, trust, money, and commerce that the local heritage-based food movement represents inherently gives birth to a backlash. By the time of Wounded Knee, Native Americans no longer jeopardized the American reality.

But to many Americans, these Natives had to be crushed, extinguished, put on reservations. Would America have been stronger if European leaders had listened to wisdom about herbal remedies and consensus building? The answer is yes. But to Americans, the red man was just a barbarian because he didn't govern by parliamentary procedure or ride in horse-drawn stagecoaches along cobblestone streets. In fact, he was considered a threat to America. Just like giving slaves their freedom in 1850. Just like imbibing alcohol in 1925. Just like homeschooling in 1980.

The ultimate test of a tyrannical society or a free society is how it responds to its lunatic fringe. A strong, self-confident, free society tolerates and enjoys the fringe people who come up with zany notions. Indeed, most people later labeled geniuses were dubbed whacko by their contemporary mainstream society. So what does a culture do with weirdos who actually believe they have a right to choose what to feed their internal three-trillion-member community?

The only reason the right to food choice was not guaranteed in the Bill of Rights is because the Founders of America could not have envisioned a day when selling a glass of raw milk or homemade pickles to a neighbor would be outlawed. At the time, such a thought was as strange as levitation.

Indeed, what good is the freedom to own guns, worship, or assemble if we don't have the freedom to eat the proper fuel to energize us to shoot, pray, and preach? Is not freedom to choose our food at least as fundamental a right as the freedom to worship?

How would we feel if we had to get a license from bureaucrats to start a church? After all, beliefs can be pretty damaging things. And charlatans certainly do exist. Better protect people from those charlatans -- bad preachers and raw milk advocates.

But what does a society do when the charlatans are in charge? In charge of the regulating government agencies. In charge of the research institutions. In charge of the food system.

That is a real conundrum, because if health depends on opting out of what the charlatans think is safe, we are forced into civil disobedience. When the public no longer trusts its public servants, people begin taking charge of their own health and welfare. And that is exactly what is driving the local heritage food movement.

Lots of folks realize they don't want industrialists fooling around with something as basic as food. People like me don't trust Monsanto. We don't trust the Food and Drug Administration. We don't trust the Department of Agriculture. We don't trust Tyson. And we don't think it's safe to be dependent on food that sits for a month in the belly of a Chinese merchant marine vessel.

This clash of choice versus prohibition brings us to today's Wounded Knee of food. The local heritage-based food movement represents everything that is good and noble about farming and food culture. It is about decentralized farms. Pastoral livestock systems. Symbiotic multi-speciation. Companion planting. Earthworms. It is about community-appropriate techniques and scale. Aesthetically and aromatically sensual romantic farming. Re-embedding the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker in the village. And ultimately about health-giving food grown more productively on less land than industrial models.

Certainly some of this clash represents the difference between nurturing and dominating. The local heritage food movement -- the raw milk movement -- is all about respecting and honoring indigenous wisdom. The industrial mind-set worships techno-glitzy gadgetry and views heritage food advocates as simpletons and Luddites. Or dangerous criminals.

In this wonderful exposé The Raw Milk Revolution, David Gumpert employs the best journalistic investigative techniques to examine this clash from the raw milk battlefront. Be assured that the same mentality exists toward homemade pickles, home-cured meats, and cottage industry in general. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the food system, but it is harassed out of existence by capricious, malicious, and prejudiced government agents who really do believe they are doing society a favor by denying food choice to Americans.

The same curative properties espoused by raw milk advocates exist in a host of other food products, from homemade pound cake and potpies to pepperoni and pastured chicken. Real food is what developed our internal intestinal community. And it sure didn't develop on food from Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations and genetically modified potatoes that are partly human and partly tomato. Long after human cleverness has run its course, compost piles will still grow the best tomatoes and grazing cows will still yield one of nature's perfect foods: raw milk.

One of our former apprentices has just started a ten-cow herd-share arrangement with our customers. Here is a young, entrepreneurial, go-get-‘em farmer embarking on his dream, serving people who are enjoying their dream of acquiring unadulterated milk. Can any arrangement, any relationship-between farmer and cow, cow and pasture, customer and producer be more honorable, respectable, open, and trusting? Everything about this is righteous, including respecting the individual enough to let her decide what to eat and what to feed her children.

Let the revolution continue.

Joel Salatin is the owner of Polyface Farm, which was featured in Michael Pollan's book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" and the documentary film "Food, Inc." He is also author of the book "Everything I want to do is illegal: War stories from the local food front."

What does this concept of "food rights" (which is the only coherent theme I can detect in the article) amount to?

The "right" to sell food to the public by "young, entrepreneurial, go-get-'em farmers" without the meddlesome interference of safety and health inspectors.

[div class="excerpt"] "In 1975, when I graduated from high school and began plotting my farming career, I figured out that I could hand-milk ten cows, sell the milk to neighbors at regular retail prices, and be a full-time farmer. This was before most people had ever heard the word organic. But selling milk was illegal. In those days, we didn't know about herd shares or Community Supported Agriculture or even limited liability corporations.

"As a result, I went to work for a local newspaper and became the proverbial part-time farmer -- working in town to support the farming passion. I don't think I've ever gotten over the fact that the government arbitrarily determined to make it very difficult for me to become a farmer. That seems un-American, doesn't it?"[/quote]

Who the f*ck is kidding whom? The Department of Agriculture, whom he "doesn't trust," will help get any serious farmer started. What is "very difficult to do" is to support yourself with ten cows, and that has nothing to do with the government. Selling milk is not illegal.

[div class="excerpt"]"Isn't it curious that at this juncture in our culture's evolution, we collectively believe Twinkies, Lucky Charms, and Coca-Cola are safe foods, but compost-grown tomatoes and raw milk are not?"[/quote]

Uh, well, there are health risks from manure and from unpasteurized milk. What does that have to do with junk food?

No one is stopping this guy from using manure and from drinking raw milk. What he cannot do is to sell food that is uninspected and unregulated to the public. Poor baby. He so much wanted to be a young go get 'em entrepreneur, but the big bad gubmint stopped him!

If there truly are health benefits from drinking raw milk, that could be determined. (Oops that would mean the dreaded "science-based" farming.) Programs could be established to assist farmers with pathogen monitoring on site (this is happening with cider) and then raw milk could be safely sold. (Oops that would mean involvement by the dreaded Agriculture Department and those horrible farm bills protecting the public welfare and regulating farming.)

[div class="excerpt"]"We don't trust the Department of Agriculture."[/quote]

Yeah! Get the gubmint out of our lives!

[div class="excerpt"]"With legislation moving through Congress demanding that all agricultural practices be 'science-based,' I believe our food system is at Wounded Knee."[/quote]

Yeah, we wouldn't want science involved in food safety. We need to stop that horrible effort Kucinich and Kaptur and Lee to actually regulate the food industry. That would take away our "choices!"

[div class="excerpt"]"The only reason the right to food choice was not guaranteed in the Bill of Rights is because the Founders of America could not have envisioned a day when selling a glass of raw milk or homemade pickles to a neighbor would be outlawed."[/quote]

Those things are not "illegal." Endangering public health is.

[div class="excerpt"]"In this wonderful exposé The Raw Milk Revolution, David Gumpert employs the best journalistic investigative techniques to examine this clash from the raw milk battlefront. Be assured that the same mentality exists toward homemade pickles, home-cured meats, and cottage industry in general. The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well in the food system, but it is harassed out of existence by capricious, malicious, and prejudiced government agents who really do believe they are doing society a favor by denying food choice to Americans."[/quote]

Absolute rubbish. I personally know hundreds of small farmers selling products from the farm. Yes, the food and safety inspector has a look-see, and I don't know any farmers who think that is a bad thing.

"The entrepreneurial spirit in the food system??" That is root cause of the problems in the food system.

I am much more worried about foodie "entrepreneurs" meddling with my food, and sabotaging all efforts at rebuilding the public agricultural infrastructure than I am worried about visits by the health inspector.

Let's get the foodies, the entrepreneurs, the investors and the speculators OUT of the food system, and public inspectors and regulator back into it.

Yep, is this like the for profit health care system, except food, in the making???
No profit mongers in any human need category, and the lack of regulations across the board is one of the major problems that have gotten us where we are! Thanks TA, this clarifies a lot!! :)

The "alternative agriculture" movement in its various forms is all about entrepreneurs, investors and speculators. That is not easy for people to see, because green and natural and organic all sounds so good.

Organic and CSA are to food as charter schools and vouchers are to education, as mandatory private insurance is to health care, as privatized prisons are to justice, as green initiatives are to the environment, as bailing out Wall Street is to housing, and on and on. Capitalism running amok.

Micahel Pollan, darling of the foodie crowd, goes so far as to say that if alternative food entrepreneurs were given more freedom from regulation (and more public funding) that this would solve the health care crisis! (Drinking soda pop is high on his list of dangerous evil things that are making people sick. If we could just go back to the good old days when people lost half their children to food borne illness, things would be much better. Think of all the money "we" would save! Only half as many people would make it to old age and then need all of that expensive health care!)

Talk to me about charter schools. There is an ad running on Detroit TV during the hockey games (I'm making up for a couple of years of being hockey deprived) promoting charter schools in the Detroit school system.

If it truly all about personal individual choice - wanting to drink raw milk, or eat organic veggies, or drive a Prius - then why the need to aggressively promote it to others? Doesn't that suggest that there is a hidden political agenda there?

Freedom free of social responsibility, that is. In other words, libertarianism. But they're progressive, they got causes, they're on the side of the angels, even their capitalism is 'hip'. But you, you must be a freeper or stalinist cuz if ya go far enough left yer right and the middle is where ya find balance an' if ya can't understand that yer probably a knuckle dragging sheeple who didn't work so, so hard in that good school that our parents sent us to cuz they worked real hard too and besides somebody got to pick up our recyclables and nanny the kids when we fly to Aspen for New Years Eve so shut yer pie hole cuz we know the tip will make or break ya.

(Think I need to lay off DU for a while?)

in Detroit??? how about seeing the kids have decent needs met?? I'll try to get back to you later this weekend on "charter schools", its all a way to make a profit from a place where no profit should be found or made, again needs into profits...

I found the ad really offensive- AA grade school kids standing in the dark holding candles and singing "This Little Light" as the candles are lit. The voice over says (paraphrasing of course) "kids in Detroit schools have no chance, no future, are flunking, the schools are failing them blah blah, we all know what a nightmare it all is, but some of us care about the little dark children" and then "in this new innovative improved wonderful charter school, they are reaching their potential. It may not be much, but at least we are doing something, so please help us light a candle in the darkness." Something like that.

This guy is one slippery snake oil salesman. The main theme here is that we shouldn't worry about food safety, and that we need de-regulation so we can have more freedom and choices. The assertion that there is inadequate data regarding food safety and food borne pathogens is absurd, by the way.

He deceptively drags in a couple of new things here (his work can only read as a cynically crafted sales pitch) for their potential persuasion value. The FDA is being given increasing authority and power, rather than the agricultural departments (where you will find the data on food borne pathogens and associated illness) and that is a problem. The media does run fear campaigns regarding food. And who is more guilty of inciting and promoting fear campaigns about food than the alternative food people themselves? Gumpert doesn't explain or explore either of those, they are just tossed out to support his main theme.

His theme? Government interference is "an infringement on individual rights" and means "added costs for doing business." How is that any different than what the conservatives are saying? It isn't.

Don't Be Scared of Food: Are We Being Needlessly Hysterical About Food Safety?

By David E. Gumpert, Chelsea Green Publishing. Posted November 25, 2009.

Despite all the media hype, there's little to actually suggest we're facing a major food safety crisis.

There have been all kinds of scary headlines and stories about food safety problems. The most recent was a front-page story in the New York Times a few weeks ago about a young dance instructor who wound up paralyzed from the waist down after a bout of illness from E.coli O157:H7 contained in a hamburger she ate. The story led to so much public upset that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack was prompted to issue a statement saying the case was "unacceptable and tragic."

Shortly after that, victims of foodborne illness were received by Obama administration officials at the White House for a high-profile photo session.

Besides health care reform, new food safety legislation moving through Congress (passed by the House, about to be voted on by the Senate) is billed as the most urgent consumer proposal in the Congress. It’s supposed to reduce the scary headlines about contaminated peanut butter, pistachios, ground beef, spinach, and other foods that have embarrassed the public health establishment over the last three years.

Unlike health care reform, food safety legislation, which is designed to give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration more power to monitor food producers and institute recalls, is heavily supported by an array of consumer organizations and health industry professionals, not to mention bureaucrats and legislators. President Obama has indicated he’s ready to sign whatever Congress passes.

But in all the handwringing, there’s been very little data presented by public health officials to document that we have a worsening problem with foodborne illness. Indeed, when you review the testimony provided by the FDA and other experts to the House in connection with the legislation that passed there over the summer (HR 2749), no one even tried to make a statistical case that we have a worsening problem with foodborne illness. The best you’ll find is FDA food safety adviser Michael R. Taylor, saying, "Every year, millions of our friends and neighbors in the United States suffer from foodborne illness, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized, and thousands die."

The reason FDA experts haven’t provided more convincing data is that it doesn’t exist. Indeed, if you examine the data on foodborne illness, you find a different sort of crisis—a crisis of credibility, based on ineffective and incomplete data gathering and investigation. And some of what is there actually shows declines in rates of foodborne illness.

The bastion of data on foodborne illness is the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the data it pushes the public to consider as most relevant is a study scientists conducted more than ten years ago, and published in 1999. The study estimates that 76 million Americans are sickened by foodborne illness each year, with 325,000 hospitalizations and 5,000 deaths. (That’s the data the FDA’s Michael Taylor was quoting from.)

Three things are most notable about this data. First, it is old. Not only is the paper containing its findings more than ten years old, but the data it draws on goes back to as far as 1948.

Second, it is based entirely on what can only be termed wild estimates of the real situation. The number of reported illnesses are miniscule in comparison with the 76 million estimate. Even allowing for the multiplier effect -- the likelihood that for every reported illness, there may be between ten and forty times that number not reported -- the numbers don’t obviously add up to the millions projected by the CDC. Consider that in 2007, the CDC reported a total 21,183 cases of foodborne illness, based on reports from states and localities around the country. Multiplying that by 40, you still only get 847,000 illnesses, a far cry from 76 million.

Not only that, but the 2007 data of reported illnesses is down 15% from the 25,035 reported in 2001. The Center for Science and the Public Interest, a nonprofit organization that also monitors foodborne illnesses, reported last year that it counted 168,000 illnesses over the 17-year period 1990-2006. That averages out to fewer than 10,000 per year.

The problem here isn’t that the CDC is manipulating the data, but rather that the data is incomplete. Public health officials will tell you that states categorize illnesses differently, and vary widely in their aggressiveness in seeking out information. The Center for Science and the Public Interest in its 2008 report on foodborne illness, reported that "nearly half of all states do not follow national standards for tracking disease outbreaks. Those gaps are particularly troubling given the numerous recent large outbreaks."

So what’s behind the hysteria on foodborne illness? Clearly, part of it has to do with the dramatic cases being reported of individuals who have suffered serious long-term repercussions. While the vast majority of foodborne illnesses involve mild gastrointestinal problems that last just a few days, the serious cases obviously capture public attention, and stir up nervousness, as well they should. They are tragic.

But there’s another factor at work here as well: a drive to broadly expand the powers of the FDA. As one example, it will have the power under the House legislation recently passed to require highly detailed written food plans from all food producers, including the smallest makers of artisan cheese and meats. The owner of a two-person California maker of specialty cheeses, fruits, and nuts, told me that creating such a plan would require about 100 hours of upfront work, and then two hours a day to be kept up to date. Failure to comply could result in a fine of $10,000 per infraction per day, this for a business doing less than $100,000 of annual revenues.

In addition, the FDA could inspect the records of all food producers at will, instead of the current requirement of having strong reason to believe a problem exists, or obtaining a search warrant. It will also be able to quarantine large areas of the country if it believes a serious source of pathogens exist, and shut down all food shipping in the process. And it will obtain substantial additional budget for inspection personnel.

Before requiring such an infringement on individual rights, and added costs for doing business, it would seem that the FDA should at the least put together data showing the nature of the foodborne-illness problem at hand, and to what extent its new powers will solve the problem. It could be that more targeted changes, costing less in funding for new personnel and foregone rights, could be quite effective in reducing foodborne illnesses.

This might work for the country squires and urban sophisticates with their access to the freshest food at the premium dollar but not so much for the rest of us.

I shop at modest grocery stores, BiLo & Food Lion, and I have noticed a decline in quality, across the board, from kale to meats and sea food. But ya go across town to the Fresh Market which serves the trendy and old money and everything is very nice and very pricey. Two tiered food supply has been around as long as the rich but the trend is accelerating. The majority needs assurance of quality more than ever but these fucks got theirs and fuck the rest of us.

What did you tell me about Jonathan apples?

Don't remember what I might have said. Old variety, disappearing.

Not a bad apple pie.

That's cool.

I have been reading all of the foodie articles in the liberal and progressive media. This one is pretty bizarre. Gumpert tells us that food safety issues are much ado about nothing, and now this guy says it is all out fault because of our slovenly wasteful lifestyle, and that the solution is to restrict food supply. (No doubt, as usual with liberals, when they say "we are bad" they really mean "they are bad" - the unenlightened WalMart crowd.) Then he drags in the usual "growing food wastes oil and water" canard.

Are liberals and progressives advocating starving people as a trade off to promote their foodie agenda and green lifestyle whims?

[div class="excerpt"]Americans Toss Out 40 Percent of All Food
by Robert Roy Britt

U.S. residents are wasting food like never before.

While many Americans feasted on turkey and all the fixings yesterday, a new study finds food waste per person has shot up 50 percent since 1974. Some 1,400 calories worth of food is discarded per person each day, which adds up to 150 trillion calories a year.

The study finds that about 40 percent of all the food produced in the United States is tossed out.

Meanwhile, while some have plenty of food to spare, a recent report by the Department of Agriculture finds the number of U.S. homes lacking "food security," meaning their eating habits were disrupted for lack of money, rose from 4.7 million in 2007 to 6.7 million last year.

About 1 billion people worldwide don't have enough to eat, according to the World Food Program.

Growing problem

The new estimate of food waste, published in the journal PLoS ONE, is a relatively straightforward calculation: It's the difference between the U.S. food supply and what's actually eaten, which was estimated by using a model of human metabolism and known body weights.

The result, from Kevin Hall and colleagues at the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, is about 25 percent higher than similar estimates made in recent years.

Last year, an international group estimated that up to 30 percent of food - worth about $48.3 billion - is wasted each year in the United States. That report concluded that despite food shortages in many countries, plenty of food is available to feed the world, it just doesn't get where it needs to go.

Previous calculations were typically based on interviews with people and inspections of garbage, which Hall's team figures underestimates the waste.

Related problems

ScienceNOW, an online publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, reports that food waste occurs at the manufacturing level and in distribution, but more than half is wasted by consumers, according to a separate study earlier this year by Jeffery Sobal, a sociologist at Cornell University.

Meanwhile, Hall and colleagues say a related and growing problem, obesity, may be fueled by the increased availability of food in this country and the incessant marketing of it. All that extra food is bad for the environment, too.

Addressing the oversupply of food in the United States "could help curb to the obesity epidemic as well as reduce food waste, which would have profound consequences for the environment and natural resources," the scientists write. "For example, food waste is now estimated to account for more than one quarter of the total freshwater consumption and more than 300 million barrels of oil per year representing about 4 percent of the total U.S. oil consumption." [/quote]

over-reach much? So, half of this waste is in manufacturing and distribution, that's capitalism. And the half that they blame on consumers, how much of that can really be blamed on a mode of distribution who's goal is not feeding people efficiently but rather generating profit? How they come by those numbers in the last paragraph I'll never know.

It is probably impossible to apportion the blame for this nonsense between ignorance and avarice. Doesn't really matter, the net effect is the same.

People have this strange idea about "throw away." Where is "away?" Working on the farm I really saw that clearly. People were always calling, looking for a bargain on stuff they presumed we "threw away." They could not grasp two basic concepts: 1. nothing is "thrown away" on the farm, there is no such place as "away;" and 2. the food itself is free and what they are paying for is the labor required for tending, harvesting, cleaning, storing, shipping, etc.

There was an article in some liberal publication a couple of years ago pushing some green and energy efficient stove for heating, and it said that cherry pits were the recommended fuel. WTF? The phone rang off the hook with people - very insistent and arrogant and self-righteous people - looking for cherry pits. "You are just going to throw them away anyway, aren't you?" I would just take them apart. I would ask them if they wanted those cleaned, dried and bagged. Of course they hadn't thought about that - if we were going to sell something from the farm that is what would be required. I told them that nothing gets "thrown away," it is composted back into the soil; that feeding people was the idea, as efficiently and sustainably as possible. I would ask them if they thought it was a smart idea to grow cherry trees for the purpose of extracting and processing the pits so people could burn them. How could that be "green" or "energy efficient?" How could that possibly be scaled up, and if it could not, how could it possibly achieve the goals the article was claiming - "green" and "energy efficient?" They would get very angry with me for questioning their little yuppified fantasy world.

Then we have the "set aside" controversy. Every damned year there are articles in the local press with headlines that scream "the farmers are throwing away food!" and the organic crowd is always yapping about that. Farmers are not "throwing away food" in the "set aside" program. The USDA assesses the size of the crop (amazing to watch, as they actually come out and count the damned things on all of the farms) compares that to consumption, and comes up with a number for "set aside" - that is, a percentage of the crop to be left on the trees. Otherwise, the buyers and speculators would drive the prices down (to the farmers, not to the consumers.) It is a way to put the brakes on over-production. The fruit is not "food" until it has been harvested, washed, sorted, pitted, packaged and shipped to consumers. The idea there is to best support the farmers and the eaters by restricting the freedom of the investors, speculators and marketers.

There are millions of wild fruit trees around here. They don't get harvested. Does that mean that "food is being thrown away" or is going to waste? Of course not.

Then we have the liberal food advocacy non-profits. The main one we have around here is "committed to supporting small farms" they say - to their donor base and grant sources. (In addition to raising money from upscale yuppies through fund raising campaigns, they are funded by corporate agri-business, as are most of the organic and sustainable farming advocacy organizations, but that is another subject. In fact, writing grant proposals and raising funds is really ALL that they do (other than putting on some wine and cheese events, as described below.) All of their "educational" literature - their only product - consists of fund raising pitches.)

According to the charter of that organization, the problem with our food system is that people are not "eating locally," because farmers are not selling locally and because restaurants and grocery stores are not buying locally. They periodically have "meet and greet" events over wine and cheese in some upscale resort, where yuppie hobby farmers bring their "artisan" products like herbs and mushrooms and "hand-crafted" cheeses and sip wine and chat with chefs from fancy restaurants.

In the world of liberal food advocacy those people - the advocates themselves, the chefs in the fancy restaurants, the boutique hobby farmers (mostly suburban invaders from corporate white collar backgrounds,) and the writers for the yuppie magazines who show up and write glowing articles about the "food revolution" - are the "good guys." They are the caring enlightened people who are "doing something" to solve the food problems.

Who are the "bad guys" in their world? The hundreds of real farmers in the area, the local independent grocery stores (the corporate chains don't have much presence here, and have already been "converted" to "organic" and other gourmet idiocy) and the local greasy spoon restaurants.

I got sent to one of their soirees by the farmers, and tried to explain the situation. I said, look right here we are harvesting peaches right now, yes? And the local stores are selling peaches, yes? and they are often from the west coast. You look at that and see something wrong. But think about that. The owner of the local grocery store drives right by the farm every morning on his way to work. But it is not worth his while to stop and pick up a half bushel of peaches. Nor is it worth our while to run a half bushel of peaches three miles down the road and deliver them to him.

They are blaming the farmers and the store owners and the consumers and completely ignoring the real source of the problem - the speculators and investors and traders who are between the farmer and the consumer (and who represent as much as 90 cents of every dollar consumers spend on food.)

What is the common denominator in each of these cases? What is the basic flaw in the thinking there?

They are focusing on food as a commodity and ignoring people. They are blaming labor and giving capital a pass. They are seeing food as a product and not as a system.

that is truly sickening, the co-options make me so ill. I will try to research, but my union is actually trying to figure out how to get involved...reasons to scream...thanks, I think...