All of this talk about dying - 45,000 killed by that, 2 million might be killed by this - is all about scaring and herding people. Never mind dying - the death rate for people is 100% and nothing will change that. It is how we live that matters. Whenever people start talking about "you could die!!!" I know that they are going to start fucking with the way we live.

Speaking of which, there is a flood of new articles the last few days from the food Nazis, led by that asshole Pollan. You see, the health care problems are caused by it all being too expensive, and the reason it is too expensive is because we are eating the wrong things. The evil farmers are at fault, along with the belief systems of those fat and lazy TV watching, WalMart shopping, fast food eating people. The pharmaceutical companies and the insurance companies are actually our allies in this battle against fat people, and we need legislation that cripples farmers, and taxes soda, and helps the health care industry cut costs by coercing the people into eating the "right" things. I kid you not.

[div class="excerpt"]Unhealthy US Diets Prompt More Calls for Reform

The increasingly unhealthy American diet has contributed to epidemics of obesity and diabetes. The government and the insurance industry, which pay the cost of treatment, may form an unlikely alliance to demand the food industry play a bigger part in getting Americans on a healthier footing.

http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2009/09/18-9[/quote]

OK, now follow this logic, if you can...

[div class="excerpt"]"Today, chronic diseases such as cardiovascular disease (primarily heart disease and stroke), cancer, and diabetes are among the most prevalent, costly, and preventable of all health problems," the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says on its website.

Almost half of all Americans lived with at least one chronic condition in 2005, the CDC said.

Chronic diseases account for 70 percent of all U.S. deaths, and costs for caring for the chronically ill account for more than 75 percent of the nation's $2 trillion health care costs.[/quote]

Change we can believe in...

[div class="excerpt"]Soda Tax: It’s the Real Thing

Obama, in the current issue of Men's Health, said soda taxes should be explored. "There's no doubt that our kids drink way too much soda,'' Obama said. "And every study that's been done about obesity shows that there is a high correlation between increased soda consumption and obesity.''

Obama acknowledged that taxes would be resisted by the soda industry and their political enablers. But he said, "If you wanted to make a big impact on people's health in this country, reducing things like soda consumption would be helpful."

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/19-2
[/quote]

And now for the libertarian anti-regulation anti-gubmint pitch, so popular among organic activists...

[div class="excerpt"]Protecting Local Farms

The first problem is that these regulations sweep small, direct-market farms into the same category as industrial food processors like Dole Foods. Visualize the typical small farm, where a farmer cuts salad mix with scissors and carries it in a basket to her packing shed to wash and box up for the next morning's farmers' market, after taking a bag to the house for her family's dinner. Then think about California's vast acreages of lettuce-harvested by machines, trucked to a factory for washing, cutting, and packaging, put on another truck and shipped to a warehouse, then to a supermarket, where it sits on a shelf until the expiration date arrives.

The small farmer would argue that her salad mix is not even the same product as the bagged supermarket stuff, known in the industry as "fresh cut." Production at such a large, industrial scale introduces risks that aren't present at the local level, such as contaminants introduced by machinery and packaging, or the increased risk of cross-contamination when produce comes from multiple farms. Yet the Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement calls for burdensome regulation of all leafy greens, wherever they are grown and whether or not they are processed.

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/18-8
[/quote]

If you are going to sell food to the public, you should be subject to public food health and safety inspection and regulations. Period. I don't care how much love you give your veggies, or how enlightened your "world view" is.

Next, enlightened capitalism comes to the rescue...

[div class="excerpt"]From Fast Food Nation to Pro Food Ventures

As sustainable food discussions move into the mainstream, so will the opportunities for entrepreneurs and existing companies to bring to market innovative approaches to selling higher quality, healthier foods to increasing percentages of consumers, businesses and institutions. As these companies grow, they have an increasingly realistic chance to break the near death grip that industrial food has put on America's food system:

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2009/09/18-1[/quote]

And Wall Street will help!

[div class="excerpt"]The next wave of ProFood start-ups will have the advantage of leveraging the many lessons learned by these pioneers. Unlike earlier sustainable food entrepreneurs, this next-generation will also have the benefit of a growing number of mission-driven investors showing up sustainable food conferences, e.g., Slow Money Alliance and New Seed Advisors, looking to drive sustainable food forward.[/quote]

Pollan says that aligning with big insurance can help us bring down evil big agriculture - and getting everybody thin and on the proper diet is the most pressing issue, yes?

Here he stakes out a position far to the right of Obama...

[div class="excerpt"]Big Food vs. Big Insurance

To listen to President Obama's speech on Wednesday night, or to just about anyone else in the health care debate, you would think that the biggest problem with health care in America is the system itself - perverse incentives, inefficiencies, unnecessary tests and procedures, lack of competition, and greed.

No one disputes that the $2.3 trillion we devote to the health care industry is often spent unwisely, but the fact that the United States spends twice as much per person as most European countries on health care can be substantially explained, as a study released last month says, by our being fatter. Even the most efficient health care system that the administration could hope to devise would still confront a rising tide of chronic disease linked to diet.[/quote]

The problems with the health care industry? All caused but those damned people, and their lifestyles. "They" are costing "us" far too much!!

[div class="excerpt"]We're spending $147 billion to treat obesity, $116 billion to treat diabetes, and hundreds of billions more to treat cardiovascular disease and the many types of cancer that have been linked to the so-called Western diet. One recent study estimated that 30 percent of the increase in health care spending over the past 20 years could be attributed to the soaring rate of obesity, a condition that now accounts for nearly a tenth of all spending on health care. [/quote]

"My pet foodie cause is not getting the attention it deserves!" Farm policies do not "encourage America's fast-food diet" Capitalism does, marketing does.

[div class="excerpt"]But so far, food system reform has not figured in the national conversation about health care reform. And so the government is poised to go on encouraging America's fast-food diet with its farm policies even as it takes on added responsibilities for covering the medical costs of that diet. To put it more bluntly, the government is putting itself in the uncomfortable position of subsidizing both the costs of treating Type 2 diabetes and the consumption of high-fructose corn syrup. [/quote]

Lies, lies and more lies from Pollan...

Here he would have us belive a few ludicrous assertions. Fist, that the farm lobby is more powerful than the pharmaceutical, insurance, and health care industry lobbies (??). Secondly, that the public is more at risk from the modern diet, and food contamination than they were from the diets of 100 years ago or so. Are we to actually think that the food industry is a greater risk to us than the health care industry?

[div class="excerpt"]Why the disconnect? Probably because reforming the food system is politically even more difficult than reforming the health care system. At least in the health care battle, the administration can count some powerful corporate interests on its side - like the large segment of the Fortune 500 that has concluded the current system is unsustainable.

That is hardly the case when it comes to challenging agribusiness. Cheap food is going to be popular as long as the social and environmental costs of that food are charged to the future. There's lots of money to be made selling fast food and then treating the diseases that fast food causes. One of the leading products of the American food industry has become patients for the American health care industry.[/quote]

Free enterprise and the profit motive to the rescue...

[div class="excerpt"]But these rules may well be about to change - and, when it comes to reforming the American diet and food system, that step alone could be a game changer. Even under the weaker versions of health care reform now on offer, health insurers would be required to take everyone at the same rates, provide a standard level of coverage and keep people on their rolls regardless of their health. Terms like "pre-existing conditions" and "underwriting" would vanish from the health insurance rulebook - and, when they do, the relationship between the health insurance industry and the food industry will undergo a sea change.

The moment these new rules take effect, health insurance companies will promptly discover they have a powerful interest in reducing rates of obesity and chronic diseases linked to diet. A patient with Type 2 diabetes incurs additional health care costs of more than $6,600 a year; over a lifetime, that can come to more than $400,000. Insurers will quickly figure out that every case of Type 2 diabetes they can prevent adds $400,000 to their bottom line. Suddenly, every can of soda or Happy Meal or chicken nugget on a school lunch menu will look like a threat to future profits.

When health insurers can no longer evade much of the cost of treating the collateral damage of the American diet, the movement to reform the food system - everything from farm policy to food marketing and school lunches - will acquire a powerful and wealthy ally, something it hasn't really ever had before.[/quote]

Pollan is the worst of the foodies and organic promoters to come down the pike in a long time - an effective self-promoter and persuasive speaker and shameless liar.

You (?) wrote: "If you are going to sell food to the public, you should be subject to public food health and safety inspection and regulations. Period. I don't care how much love you give your veggies, or how enlightened your "world view" is."

Where i live, from mid-May (when the first strawberries come in) to late October (with the last of melons) you can't swing the proverbial dead cat without knocking over a mom&pop-owned/kid-run roadside produce stand. This has been a staple of local life since the advent of the automobile--and no one has yet been seriously sickened, much less killed, by consuming locally-grown produce. And i'd bet a nickel this has been the experience of most of rural (and even suburban) America for just as long, if not longer. So if local produce is cheaper and healthier (no small benefits to consumers) than the overly-chemicalized/GM crap sold in chain supermarkets (now including Wal-Mart), wouldn't putting them out of business through over-regulation actually increase the health risks to the public by eliminating even more competition for the benefit of Monsanto, ADM, etc. and their farm/livestock factories, and increasing THEIR market share? You obviously imagine your motive here is protecting the public health; yet, for all practical effects, you're just a useful idiot for the most predatory forms of capitalism--and how fucking ironic is that?

So what's really going on? As an avid "Bees" keeper (and the presumption is you do subscribe to that hive), as a former Queen Bee (uh, sorry 'bout your Admin. problems; but you'll have to take that one up with management, whoever that may or may not be), do you just distrust the worker-drones so much that they can't be allowed to make their own decisions w/out "direction" from the Central Committee (or in corporate/capitalist terms, the district sales office)? Even though you should be aware, through your "scientific empiricism" (the pixie-dust of intellectualism from which "Bees" are made), that these threats to public safety have been quite successful at responsibly serving their communities (the same one's they live in, unlike the owners of the "local" Shop&Gag/Acne/etc.) for generations...a contradiction i'll let you mull a while...

Yet, this does suggest a deeper, more "meta" agenda: The Hard Left (TM) is into collectivism (or whatever else you wish to call it). And the enemy of collectivism (or whatever) is it's anthesis--individualism; esp. the "rugged" individualism of amerikans. And as you should also know, one of the deeper taproots of self-reliance and personal responsibility can be found (to coin a phrase) down on the family farm. You can permutate the possibilities of this at your leisure.

And, am i really so cynical as to suggest (as distinct from insinuate) that? I'll let you permutate those possibilities as well...

I work with hundreds of such mom and pops in the fruit business, and have set up and worked in dozens of u-picks and roadside farm markets over the years. I have worked closely with department of ag inspectors and helped set up food safety regimnes in many facilities. I have consulted often with the food safety and toxicology people at the hort colleges.

People are rarely harmed by food and water borne pathogens today, but not so long ago that was not true. We have public agenices to thank for that. Are you arguing against public health and food safety agencies?

Not sure where the red-baiting is coming from, since this post has nothing to with your imagined red menace.

Indivisualism is not merely the eenmy of collectivism, or the only possible alternative, as you would apparently have people believe. It is the heart and soul of Reagan bootstrap conservatism and libertarianism. Nothing wrong with that, though I am myself in opposition to those ideas. you are free to take that political stance. Let's not pretend that is the only alternative to Stalin or Pol Pot, though, OK?

Careful, the new administration is trying to portray a "we have no problem with socialists" image, and you are contradicting that.

I don't have any "admin problem" - now where did you get that idea? Interesting.

I remember one thread in which you went on and on about how locally-grown, organic produce was NOT the way to go.

I quote:
**********quote**********

Buying local and buying organic probably works against us more than for us. If a sufficient number of people started doing that - and how else "effect change" - then the capitalists figure out how to exploit that. Advocating different consumer buying habits probably weakens us, since it sets up (already has) a two-tier food system: one for the enlightened caring few, another for the peasants. Also, it is based on personal consumer choice and promotes the notion that social change is something we could buy. That is exactly what the advertising people are telling us all the time. So it reinforces, strengthens and promotes the very ideas that are the cause of the problems. That is probably why right wingers and corporate marketers and libertarians have completely infiltrated the organic movement and steer it so effortlessly. They know that it promotes consumerism and personal choice politics. Those support the ruling class, in a very powerful and effective way.

Ironically, organic food is less safe, not more. Based on emotional appeal, with no definition other than "natural," and the craze has opened up a extraordinary marketing opportunity that is placing public health at great risk. Merely bribing an official in Mexico or China wins an "organic" label for the importer, and that is where most of the "organic" produce originates. That avoids any inspection or safety standards of any sort. The produce is passed through a holding company (and becomes almost impossible to trace) and then is repackaged as "local" and "organic" and given a folksy-sounding brand name and distributed around the country.

"Buy local" too often means buying from a hobbyist or a gardener operating outside of the rigorous testing and inspection regimen in the "conventional" ag community.

I think if people an to garden, or have certain feelings about their food, they have every right to do that. But we should not place public health at great risk, as well as promote right wing politics for the sake of the whims of the few, and that is what the organic movement is doing.

For-profit privatized food superior choices for the wise or enlightened consumer as a model for solving public health problems is no different than privatized health care and privatized schools and all of the rest of the right wing program. That is the source of the problem, and should not be thought of as a solution. The few will be able to buy freedom from poison (if the dichotomy claimed by organic zealots - one choice poisonous, the other choice healthy -is even accurately reflected in reality, and it is not) while "let them eat cake" applies for the rest of the people.

http://www.progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=104&topic_id=95284&mesg_id=95502
********endquote********

Yes, I'm sure there are minimal sanitary conditions required of the vegetable and fruit producers at our local open market, and these are carried out by LOCAL authorities. Most of us don't object to LOCAL ordinances. We merely object to unnecessary state and federal regulation, the aim of which is NOT food safety, but rather to drive local producers out of business through applying costly burdens. The goal of this corporatocracy is to favor a few large producers in the area, with the food being chock full of pesticides and pollutants, not to mention that ghastly GM food.

I just want to emphasize that NO ONE will be telling me what I can or cannot eat. I will find a way to get my locally-grown, organically-grown produce no matter what. No mega-corporations or governments are going to tell me what I can eat, nor is any "dictatorship of the people."

Furthermore, I am a member of the Organic Consumers Association, and will fight in any way I can (and, yes, that means donations) any effort to bully or intimidate small producers or local growers. I also donate to the effort to fight against those attempting to intimidate or set up the participants in local food cooperatives. I don't need regulatory people "protecting" me, and, frankly, the other consumers feel the same way. So, to those who want to "protect" me, bug off! I'm willing to sign an assumption-of-risk statement.

Moreover, I LOVE my CSA, and Spirit help the SOB that tries to take it away from us! Viva la libertad!

:)

By the way, most of us are smart enough to know the difference between "natural" and "certified organic," or "organically-grown." We know what each of those labels mean, and some of us even research each of the vendors from which we buy!

:)

**********quote********
As these companies grow, they have an increasingly realistic chance to break the near death grip that industrial food has put on America's food system ..."
*********endquote******

Gosh, I hope so!

I don't agree that the health insurance companies should charge more money for those who eat unhealthy foods; but, then, I'm for a singlepayer healthcare system. I think that people should be supported in making their individual choices; but, then, that's the "libertarian" (as opposed to authoritarian) in me. Those who attempt to blame people for their diseases are not true libertarians; they're rightwing dictators. They have stolen the term, "libertarian," for liberatarians are for liberty. Most libertarians I know believe that services should be provided equally to people no matter what.

I'm not sure that you have established a connection between libertarianism, organic food, and CSAs up there.

Pollan's attempt to work with the insurance companies really doesn't have anything to do with the benefits of eating high-quality food. Some of us believe that locally-grown, organically-grown, healthy food fits this bill. We get to choose what we eat still - thank Spirit! Someone wants to warn people about it - fine. Most of us read both sides of the story. But protect us by precluding it - no dice!

:)

First, obviously i'm not against public health; and THIS is not an either/or proposition, as i'm sure you know. And i suspect the pathogen problems of yore originated in the macro (industrial pollution/dumping; coal-fired utilities; etc) rather (or at least exponentially more so) than the micro (small family farm practices). Clean up the macro environment, and the risk to (and from) the micro greatly diminishes--thus, regulating small farms like mega-corporations is a waste of governmental time and resources, and taxpayers money. And i was also remarking on the social--and more importantly, cultural--importance of this rapidly vanishing lifestyle; a generational connectedness to the land that provded (and still does) much of the social cohesion that holds this country together. There are consequences to knocking this prop out from under our (or anyone else's) historical heritage that, apparently, appeal very strongly to you, while very little (if at all) to me.

This, i'll propose, is because i don't share your drearily one-sided, and pejorative, opinion of individualism, which has (for better AND for worse--but then, the same can be said for any, if not all, ism, eh?) been the defining character trait of American identity, at least since the Age of Jackson--long before the Reaganauts expropriated the trope and turned it into "morning in America" ads (a Monday 'morning' as i write, ironicly enough). And it is quite the mistake to conflate the two, however superficially associated they are in popular opinion. Just as it's wrong to lump all the lunatics of the fundy/hard-right into one, big undifferiented mass of "individualists". The personality type is far too diverse and multi-faceted to be dismissed with the yawn of intellectual laziness.

It's your perogative to dismiss this as red-baiting; i regard this as an academicly valid question that transcends politics beyond ideology and into philosophy.

But since you raised the point, you have opened a new can of worms: "Careful, the new administration is trying to portray a "we have no problem with socialists" image, and you are contradicting that." We're not the one's with the "socialists problem"--at least, we didn't think we had a problem until you and yours returned to the Promised Land like OT kings on an ideological cleansing bender. You see, it doesn't matter to us what anyone here actually calls themselves or identifies with (in academicly formal terms--socialist, liberal, progressive, generic leftist, green, even libertarian and democrat; including all possible hypenations). We simply accepted people as they are, and gave them the benefit of the doubt re: their bona fides until events (the quality of their posts and on-site civility, esp. in the more contentious threads) determined them one way or the other. With all due respect, all this blather about red-baiting and who's more this/that/whatever than who is important only to you and yours. We don't object to you doing any of this--we just don't understand why you left SI, and disrupted and divided this site, just to do the same thing over here, especially since you were doing it so more successfully over there.

There I go again, expressing my opinion and observations about this subject.

I think eating high quality food is great and said nothing to the contrary. I know and work with many organic farmers and people running CSA's, including my sister. I didn't and wouldn't demonize those people. I work with small family farmers, and have years of experience in the area of safe food, nutritional science and sustainable farming, as well as public education on those subjects.

Once again, when someone expresses an opinion you disagree with you immediately personalize it and accuse them of attacking or maligning you or others on a personal level. That just isn't happening. Your ideas may be being challenged, but neither you nor anyone else is being personally attacked. Pollan's work and ideas are being challenged here.

If you are suggesting, and I think that you are, that the ideas of certain people are immune from criticism because they are "good people" or are "doing good things" I would disagree with that. When someone cloaks themselves in the self-righteous cloak of the do-gooder and resists any criticism, I become more skeptical, not less. I think we should be skeptical of that type of true believer thinking, and suspicious when people try to hold their ideas free from any critical scrutiny.

We see things differently.

Regulation of larger operations means more repsurces, The standards are the same, since produce either is or is not contaminated by E. Coli regardless of the size of the farm. The new strain of E. Coli is a serious threat, small farms are very susceptible - every bit as much as larger operations - and the fact that people have been eating food from roadside stands for years doesn't change that.

I personally know a couple of hundred people who run roadside produce stands in the Midwest. All are subject to inspection and safety standards, and all think that is a good idea. The proposals in the new farm bill, which comes from the most progressive members of Congress, are intended to overturn decades of Republican deregulation and are perfectly in keeping with the level of inspection and records keeping that all farmers have been subject to since the New Deal and earlier.

I was at meetings with Ron Paul and other liberatarians and "alternatove food"tycoons and huscksters when they discussed how to craft "they are coming for your organic tomatoes!!" scare campaigns, and pass them into organic groupos for the purpose of using organic advoactes to promote anti-gubmint libertarian propaganda. You can;ltkonw that this is true, however reading the tracts that were dissemniated on that subject by the irganic groups should be sufficient - any discerning reader can easily see that libertarian tracts disguised as pro-organic ideas are in fact being distributed by oirganic and liberal organizations.

I have a lot more to say about this, and welcome the opportunity to do so since I think the more we talk about it the more likely it is for people to get a better understanding of this issue - the hijacking of the progressive movement by industry and liberatrian groups and organizations, and why that represents a dire threat to our freedom rather than the defense of our freedom it claims to be.

Oops, hold on. I think the feds are prowling around my organic tomato patch. Gotta get my shotgun and chase them off. Freedom! Oh, no wait. It is the feds and they are here to offer me a low interest loan to expand my farm through the New Deal farm credit program, and help with soil management in cooperation with the public land grant agricultural college experts, and a grant for developing my new roadside market, and guidelines for safe food handling to follow. Guess I won't shoot them after all.

the quote I listed didn't seem like you supported organic farmers much; but, hey, if you do, that's great! And CSAs - great!

I'd never suggest that the ideas of certain people are immune from criticism.

I need to see the exact wording of any federal or state bill - before I back it. Funding education is frequently an exercise in backdooring un-needed regulation.