Global milk war ramps up as citizens face off with regulators

By Rady Ananda

The battle for food freedom intensifies across the planet as citizens assert their right to raw dairy products unadulterated by drugs and genetically modified ingredients – in the face of authorities seeking to restrict our food choices and to criminalize entrepreneurs who operate outside the monopolized factory food system.

The State of Maine recently sued farmer Dan Brown for selling food and milk without State licenses, despite a local law that permits it. “Blue Hill is one of five Maine towns to have passed the Local Food and Community Self-Governance Ordinance,” explains Family Farm Defenders.

Jailbirds add life to UK prison famous for torturing suffragists

By Rady Ananda

The British Hen Welfare Trust re-homed 20 commercial hens at HM Prison Holloway on Oct. 3, as part of the staff’s garden program offering educational and therapeutic projects to its women inmates. This is a far cry from the days when Holloway imprisoned women for agitating for the right to vote, and then tortured them.

Volunteer re-homer at the British Hen Welfare Trust (BHWT), Jean Gill, delivered the hens and spoke to prisoners about the work of the charity and advised them on hen care.

“This is a really interesting experiment and a real opportunity from the charity’s point of view,” said Gill in a press release. “It is apt and extraordinary on so many levels that some of the prisoners will be able to take care of something as vulnerable as a battery hen that has had a restricted start in life, that has been kept, literally behind bars in a small cage without access to sunlight or fresh air.”

New film: WWF beds with Monsanto to steal public lands, promote GM crops

By Rady Ananda

“We need to start focusing on food production.  It takes 15 years to bring a genetically engineered product to market. The clock is ticking.  We need to get moving.” ~ Dr Jason Clay, Senior Vice President, World Wildlife Fund, 2010.

A 2011 film by Wilfried Huismann, The Silence of the Pandas, targets the World Wildlife Fund, the largest, most trusted, and best-funded environmental “protection” organization in the world.  Its reputation does not live up to its actions, however, which green wash industries that are destroying the environment as well as indigenous cultures.

Factory Foods Cause 70 pct of all foodborne illnesses; Dairy safest

By Rady Ananda

With all the milk raids over the past few years, you wouldn’t think that dairy is the safest type of food in the U.S., or that factory foods cause 70% of all foodborne illnesses – but that’s just what a new study by the University of Florida reveals. [1]

Permaculture ends meat-vegan debate, promotes anarchy

By Rady Ananda

Review of Meat: A Benign Extravagance by Simon Fairlee (2010, 322 pp.); and

Sepp Holzer’s Permaculture: A Practical Guide to Small-Scale Integrative Farming and Gardening by Sepp Holzer (English version 2011, 232 pp.)

Notice: PBS is rebroadcasting Food, Inc. on Tuesday, August 9 and is kicking off its new Food site. Check local listings here.

While the Bush reign may be described as a war on privacy, Obama’s is clearly a war on food freedom.* As his Monsanto administration arrests organic farmers and distributors, seizing and destroying healthy foods privately contracted and sustainably grown, this tyranny is not unique to the United States.  All over the world, organic, sustainable farmers are under attack by large agribiz actors  who, through government and trade agreements, are regulating them out of business and destroying the environment in the process.

Two farmers arguing against ecocidal hyper-regulation and “conventional” and “orthodox organic” farming are Simon Fairlee of England and Sepp Holzer of Austria. Both have written seminal books that should grace the bookshelves of everyone who gardens, farms or cares about the impact of agriculture on the biosphere.

FDA Goons and the Second Amendment

By Rady Ananda

On July 16, the US Food and Drug Administration posted a libelous release linking a foodborne pathogen to a South Carolina raw dairy before confirming whether or not such a link existed. Two weeks later, the FDA determined that Tucker Adkins Dairy products were free of all contaminants but has still not issued a retraction at its webpage.

“How do we get our reputation back?”  That’s what Tommy and Carolyn Adkins asked the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. (FTCLDF)

Without a retraction at the web page, they can’t.

Controversial ag spending bill defunds local food systems, promotes meat monopoly

By Rady Ananda

Plutocrats aimed another weapon at the nation’s poor and at small and midsized farmers, this time thru the 2012 agriculture appropriations bill, H.R. 2112, which the House passed on June 16. The 82-page bill returns some federal spending to 2006 levels and others to 2008 levels.

Now being reviewed by the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, the final version of HR 2112 will lay the terrain on which the 2012 Farm Bill will be crafted. The House Agriculture Committee began preparatory hearings on the 2012 Farm Bill this week, reports NSAC.

Key sections provide deep cuts to domestic food programs, threatening food banks, low-income seniors, women and children, and farmers markets supported by WIC vouchers issued thru the Women, Infants and Children program.

How Safe Is Your Food? GMOs, Foodborne Illness and Trade Agreements

Graph: Data compiled by GRAIN from government and UN sources, 2008-2010 (except Australia=2005)

By Rady Ananda

A research group that supports community-controlled and biodiversity-based food systems, GRAIN, has released a global report, Food Safety for Whom? Corporate Wealth vs. Peoples’ Health, showing how governments and corporations use “food safety” to manipulate market access and control. Rather than making food safer, domestic and trade rules “force open markets, or backdoor ways to limit market access.”

So how’s the Food Patriot Act working out so far?

[Image]

By Rady Ananda

Another armed food raid – this time on a company that provides nutritional supplements primarily for autism spectrum disorders and Alzheimer’s disease – another day under the Food Safety Modernization Act. As predicted, the FSMA is turning out to be a deliberate plan to wipe out small (under a million dollars a year in sales) and medium-sized (under $10 million a year) producers of natural, wholesome food and supplements. This is what happens when corporations run governments.

The concept of “food safety” in corpogov-speak is really just food fascism, according to Vandana Shiva:

“Risk Assessment in the hands of centralized corruptible agencies is no protection for consumers as the disease and health epidemic in the U.S. linked to over processed, industrial foods show. Even while the U.S. is at the epicenter of the food related public health crises, the U.S. government is trying to export its Food laws which deregulate the industry and over regulate ordinary citizens and small enterprise. This deregulation of the big and toxic and over regulation of the small and ecological is at the core of Food Fascism.” [emphasis added]

Small scale producers of meat, raw dairy and veggies, and dietary supplements are under continual attack by food giants who have placed their former employees in positions of power and authority.

Industry’s war on nature: ‘What are the bees telling us?’

By Rady Ananda

While industries continue to pollute the planet with their toxic chemicals, toxic waste and toxic spills, Earth’s pollinators sing a swan song that leaves no doubt as to the folly of modern civilization. Our ability to hear and appropriately respond to the crisis of declining pollinators will determine humanity’s survival.

“In 1923, Rudolf Steiner, an Austrian scientist, philosopher and social innovator, predicted that in 80 to 100 years honeybees would collapse.” Queen of the Sun

Steiner believed the industrialization of bees would lead to their demise. It looks like he was right. In recent years, the United States has lost between 100 and 300 billion bees, and the problem has spread to Europe and beyond. While industrialized beekeeping operations do kill millions of bees each year, several other factors contribute to their massive die-off.

Joe Bageant Passes; Review of his last book on agrarian democracy

Joe Bageant, 1946-2011

After a vibrant life, Joe Bageant died on March 27 following a four-month struggle with cancer. He was 64. Joe is survived by his wife, Barbara, his three children, Timothy, Patrick and Elizabeth, and thousands of friends and admirers. He is also survived by his work and ideas. According to Joe’s wishes, he will be cremated. His family will hold a private memorial service.

Here’s his last post, on January 4, 2011, announcing his cancer.

Some Fight Back

A Review of Joe Bageant’s Rainbow Pie: A Redneck Memoir

By Michael Donnelly

This book is all about the post WWII shift from Maw and Pap’s agrarian democracy to the urban-dominated/techno/bureaucratic/ military/security/consumer Empire of today, showing how that shift and the resulting class stratification has led us to the brink of economic and ecological collapse, writes Donnelly.

Patriot Act for Food: A close look at bizarre propaganda for S.510

By Rady Ananda
Food Freedom

Need a good laugh? Check out the bizarre reasoning offered in support of the Patriot Act for Food (S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act), which the U.S. Senate will vote on shortly (likely Monday). From a need to stop food smuggling, to the law is too old, to the terrorists are gonna get us, elites sure are shy on brains when it comes to credible propaganda. They must be drinking fluoridated water and smoking Monsanto marijuana, or hoping you are.

Jack DeCoster’s Salmonella Touch: Another massive egg recall

By Rady Ananda
Food Freedom

Another massive egg recall, another tie to scofflaw Jack DeCoster.

Nearly 300,000 eggs have been recalled, affecting eight states, after Cal-Maine Foods, Inc. got word on Friday from the FDA that eggs from one of its suppliers, Ohio Fresh Eggs, tested positive for Salmonella Enteritidis (SE). Cal-Maine processed and packaged 24,000 dozen eggs in its Green Forest, Arkansas facility under the Sunny Meadow, Springfield Grocer, Sun Valley and James Farm labels.

Cartons bearing plant number P1457 with Julian dates of 282, 284 and 285 are being recalled. The Julian date follows the plant number, for example: P1457-282.

11/9 UPDATE: An additional 120 dozen shell eggs that have the potential to be contaminated with Salmonella Enteritidis (SE), were added today to the products included in this recall.

Product Description	Plant Number	Julian Date	Sell By / Expiration Date
Pippin Loose Medium	1457	282	11/07/10

Dr Shiv Chopra: The Toxic Five- Why Are They Still in Our Food?

digg it  |  reddit

By Rady Ananda

This 80-minute interview by Dr. Mercola of Dr. Shiv Chopra, author of Corrupt to the Core, significantly contributes to the global movement to end hunger. Take the “most toxic food system” on Earth — that of the US and Canada, he says — and let it die a natural death because we no longer buy its product. Instead, implement his “five pillars of food safety.” Stop complaining to the fox that there are not enough chickens in the henhouse. “The fox is not listening.”  Take matters into your own hands.  I’m not going to give up the secret – listen to the entire interview.

Watching two scientific paradigms collapse: GMOs and vaccines

By Meryl Williamson

Those promoting genetic engineering have claimed it is the cutting edge of science. Those in opposition are treated as ill-informed. African scientists who reject genetic engineering are treated as a needy, backward underclass and “starved for science.” Vaccines are considered the greatest gift of modern medicine and those opposed are said to be putting others’ lives at risk.

But whatever high ground the biotech and vaccine industries have claimed for themselves scientifically is crumbling. Both paradigms are beginning to collapse.

Tribute to Chesney, Former Cockfighting Rooster

Guest Blogged by Annette Fisher
Happy Trails Farm

From Chesney’s story we can imagine the conditions in CAFOs, as Ms. Fisher implores: “Think of the animals such as those on factory farms — chickens in battery cages, pigs in gestation crates, geese being force-fed with tubes on foi gras farms, small baby calves used for veal and chained to small calf hutches, and so on.” There is a better, healthier, kinder way to eat or to entertain ourselves.

ADM Tries to Take Down Funny Video; Big Business Has No Solutions; Now What?

By The Yes Men

A legal complaint from agribusiness giant ADM has resulted in the removal from Youtube of a fake video of ADM’s CEO making over-honest pronouncements. (The video is still available here and here.)

CAFOs to Seize Ohio thru Issue 2

NO on Issue 2

By Rady Ananda

A radical reach for power, Issue 2 grants a politically appointed Livestock Care Standards Board autonomous authority over the Ohio Dept of Agriculture, the Ohio EPA, other state agencies and the state legislature. Ohioans are now voting on the Issue through Nov. 3rd.

Spending millions of ad dollars on bolstering support for Issue 2, industry giants are confident they’ll win. The initiative thwarts a growing national movement to enforce more humane, and fewer, CAFOs – concentrated animal feeding operations.