Want more bang for your grocery buck? This new short documentary shows that local, healthy, humane food from farmers you know is the real bargain. Watch it, then share it...Spread the word! http://tinyurl.com/TheRealBargain
August 7, 2014 at 1:00 am THE GREAT LAKES
Toledo panic shows Great Lakes at risk Gail Philbin
Toledo’s recent bout with poisoned drinking water should serve as a huge wake-up call to Michigan to take seriously the link between factory farming, water pollution and public health.
The story of how dangerous levels of a toxin ended up in the water supply of Ohio’s fourth-largest city is in large part the story of how we grow our food today and who decides what are considered good farming practices. The impetus for Toledo’s weekend water ban was microcystin, a toxin experts say can cause diarrhea, vomiting or abnormal liver function that probably formed in a recent algae bloom in Lake Erie. The soupy, pea-green growth in one of our Great Lakes is an increasingly common occurrence fed in part by phosphorus run-off from southern Michigan fields applied with commercial fertilizer or factory farm waste.
Why all the fertilizer and animal waste in our water? Because we eat lots of meat, dairy, poultry and eggs. The United States is the largest producer of corn in the world. Eighty percent of what we grow is consumed not by people but by domestic and overseas livestock, poultry and fish production, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Vast monocultures of corn require large amounts of fertilizer to grow.
We also like cheap food and buy products that come from industrial-scale, concentrated livestock facilities, many of which have been constructed in the last decade in western Lake Erie watersheds that include southern Michigan.
Such operations are favored by federal Farm Bill subsidies that keep their product prices artificially low. This taxpayer-funded support often goes to help construct manure lagoons and other systems for handling the huge amount of waste factory farms generate. Even so, it can end up polluting nearby waterways, as shown in the 2013 report, Restoring the Balance to Michigan’s Farming Landscape. The current subsidy system rewards polluters, giving an unfair advantage over healthy, sustainable livestock farms.
Public health advocates are fuming over a new court ruling that they say could hasten the coming of the next pandemic.
In a 2-1 decision released Thursday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit ruled that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration need not consider banning the use of antibiotics in healthy food-producing animals.
"We believe that this decision allows dangerous practices known to threaten human health to continue," said Avinash Kar, an attorney with the Natural Resources Defense Council. "Adding antibiotics to farm animals' feed, day after day, is not what we should be doing. It's not what the doctor ordered and it should not be allowed."
In March 2012, a federal court ruled that the FDA must act on scientific knowledge that the overuse of antibiotics in animals raised for food has contributed to the rise of antibiotic-resistant infections in humans. That decision came in response to a lawsuit filed by the NRDC concerning findings made by the FDA back in 1977. Feeding livestock low doses of penicillin and most tetracyclines, the agency had concluded, might pose a risk to human health. The FDA never acted on or retracted those findings.
KALAMAZOO, MI -- How do Michigan farmers and consumers feel about food from local farmers?
Since last month Erin Denay has been posing that question at farmers markets across the state to create enough video snippets to roll out one a day during the month of July, part of a collaborative project with Sierra Club, said Gail Philbin, assistant director of the Sierra Club Michigan Chapter.
"We really want consumers and farmers already involved in the sustainable agriculture scene to understand there are people supporting them," said Denay, 22, of Bay City. She is a senior at Western Michigan University majoring in environmental and sustainability studies and organizational communication.
Sustainable agriculture, she said, is farming that "revolves around the well-being of the surrounding environment, people, and animals while producing healthy, high-quality food that protects the quality of the land and water for future generations.
In the series of one-minute video testimonials produced by the Less=More sustainable agriculture coalition, Michigan residents talk about why meat, dairy, poultry and eggs that are locally grown under humane conditions are important to them, their communities and local economies, a news release from Sierra Club said.
"Sustainable agriculture is farming that revolves around the well-being of the surrounding environment, people, and animals," Denay said, " so as to produce healthy, high-quality food that protects the quality of the land and water for future generations."
"We want them to know we are here for them," Denay said, "and to draw more attention and tax dollars to them," the farms practicing sustainable agriculture methods.
Maynard Beery of Beery Farms in Middleville, for instance, told Denay that though he could not keep up with soaring demand for his grass fed beef "there is no way that I can compete with a 50,000 animal feedlot. They're happy if they wind up with $10 a head in profit and no, that's not going to support myself and my son."
Farm subsidies for which he currently does not qualify would allow his farm to expand, he said.
The project also hopes to let people know there are 300 farmers markets in Michigan, and lots of choices when it comes to shopping for food. "We want to illuminate the opportunities to eat local, sustainable healthy food," Denay said.
What were the most promising findings of Denay's interviews?
"The appetite, pardon the pun, for local, healthy food is alive and well in Michigan," Philbin said.
The series kicks off July 1 with the release of the testimonial of Jill Johnson and Mary Wills of Crane Dance Farm in Middleville via Less=More's Twitter account, @MoreforMichigan, and its Facebook page.
The remainder of that week the videos feature Kalamazoo farmers and consumers, Denay said.
"Being involved with this project has made me so much more aware of the healthy, high-quality food that is being made available by small-scale sustainable farmers in Michigan communities," Denay said. "I want this testimonial series to really highlight the wonderful things they are doing and why they deserve our support so they can succeed and grow and continue to provide for their communities."
Sierra Club believes issues such as antibiotic overuse, the viability of local economies, climate change, fair wages and working conditions for workers and animal welfare can be traced back to how food is grown.
"Many consumers are searching for a way to have some control over the food they eat because they are disillusioned or disgusted with the industrial food system," she said. "Growing your own food or buying from local farmers they know is a good way to do that."
Sierra Club is a member of the Less=More Coalition, producers of the video series. The group is made up of national, state and local organizations as well as consumers and farmers who support sustainable agriculture and seek to level the playing field for sustainable livestock farmers.
Specifically, the coalition is tackling inequities in the subsidy system that the coalition argues is weighted toward concentrated livestock operations.
In 2013, the coalition's report "Restoring the Balance to Michigan's Farming Landscape" noted that some farms continue to receive taxpayer-funded subsidies even when they have been fined for violations of environmental law and blasted the farm subsidy system for favoring concentrated animal feeding operations in the award of funds.
Less=More members include: Beery Farms of Michigan, LLC, the Center for Food Safety, Crane Dance Farm, LLC, ELFCO Food Cooperative, Environmentally Concerned Citizens of South Central Michigan, Food & Water Watch, Greater Grand Rapids Food Systems Council, Groundswell Farm, Zeeland, Humane Society of the United States, Michigan Farmers Union, Michigan Small Farm Council, Michigan Student Sustainability Coalition, Michigan Voices for Good Food Policy, Michigan Young Farmers Coalition, Sierra Club Michigan Chapter and Socially Responsible Agricultural Project.
The coalition is also asking people to contribute their own food stories to the series. For more information on submitting a testimonial, email:Moreformichigansc@gmail.com
Inc. BY BO BURLINGHAM It's late afternnoon in bucolic Bolinas, California, and Bill Niman has indicated that yes, he is willing to talk about his unhappy exit from the company he founded. But he has a lot going on just now. There are 78 heritage turkeys that are cackling, clucking, gobbling, and squawking as they fly into trees, jump up on fences, and generally resist the efforts of Bill and his wife, Nicolette, to herd them into their coop for the night. Meanwhile, over at the cattle barn, a grieving cow needs tending to. The cow recently lost a calf during birth, and Bill and Nicolette have a plan to unite her with another calf that has been rejected by its mother. As for the rest of the herd, it's spread out across Niman's thousand-acre ranch on the shores of the Pacific Ocean. More ...
Livestock Rancher, Lawyer, and Author, Righteous Porkchop: Finding a Life and Good Food Beyond Factory Farms
Most people share at least the following traits: they want to be healthy; they like animals; and they value clean air and water. Yet relatively few Americans connect those concerns with their food. As more people start making the link (especially if they've seen graphic video footage of industrial animal operations), many decide it's time to stop eating foods from factory farms. This is a guide for doing just that.
After years of sweeping the issue under the rug and hoping no one would notice, the FDA has now finally admitted that chicken meat sold in the USA contains arsenic, a cancer-causing toxic chemical that’s fatal in high doses. But the real story is where this arsenic comes from: It’s added to the chicken feed on purpose!
Even worse, the FDA says its own research shows that the arsenic added to the chicken feed ends up in the chicken meat where it is consumed by humans. So for the last sixty years, American consumers who eat conventional chicken have been swallowing arsenic, a known cancer-causing chemical. (http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/loc…)
Until this new study, both the poultry industry and the FDA denied that arsenic fed to chickensended up in their meat. The fairy-tale excuse story we’ve all been fed for sixty years is that “the arsenic is excreted in the chicken feces.” There’s no scientific basis for making such a claim… it’s just what the poultry industry wanted everybody to believe.
But now the evidence is so undeniable that the manufacturer of the chicken feed product known as Roxarsone has decided to pull the product off the shelves (http://www.grist.org/food-safety/20…). And what’s the name of this manufacturer that has been putting arsenic in the chicken feed for all these years? Pfizer, of course — the very same company that makes vaccines containing chemical adjuvants that are injected into children.
Technically, the company making the Roxarsone chicken feed is a subsidiary of Pfizer, called Alpharma LLC. Even though Alpharma now has agreed to pull this toxic feed chemical off the shelves in the United States, it says it won’t necessarily remove it from feed products in other countries unless it is forced by regulators to do so. As reported by AP:
“Scott Brown of Pfizer Animal Health’s Veterinary Medicine Research and Development division said the company also sells the ingredient in about a dozen other countries. He said Pfizer is reaching out to regulatory authorities in those countries and will decide whether to sell it on an individual basis.” (http://www.usatoday.com/money/indus…)
But even as its arsenic-containing product is pulled off the shelves, the FDA continues its campaign of denial, claiming arsenic in chickens is at such a low level that it’s still safe to eat. This is even as the FDA says arsenic is a carcinogen, meaning it increases the risk of cancer.
The National Chicken Councilagrees with the FDA. In a statement issued in response to the news that Roxarsone would be pulled from feed store shelves, it stated, “Chicken is safe to eat” even while admitting arsenic was used in many flocks grown and sold as chicken meat in the United States.
What’s astonishing about all this is that the FDA tells consumers it’s safe to eat cancer-causing arsenic but it’s dangerous to drink elderberry juice! The FDA recently conducted an armed raid in an elderberry juice manufacturer, accusing it of the “crime” of selling “unapproved drugs.”
(http://www.naturalnews.com/032631_e…) Which drugs would those be? The elderberry juice, explains the FDA. You see, the elderberry juice magically becomes a “drugs” if you tell people how it can help support good health.
The FDA has also gone after dozens of other companies for selling natural herbal products or nutritional products that enhance and support health. Plus, it’s waging a war on raw milk which it says is dangerous. So now in America, we have a food and drug regulatory agency that says it’s okay to eat arsenic, but dangerous to drink elderberry juice or raw milk.
Eat more poison, in other words, but don’t consume any healing foods. That’s the FDA, killing off Americans one meal at a time while protecting the profits of the very companies that are poisoning us with their deadly ingredients.
Oh, by the way, here’s another sweet little disturbing fact you probably didn’t know about hamburgers and conventional beef : Chicken litter containing arsenic is fed to cows in factory beef operations. So the arsenic that’s pooped out by the chickens gets consumed and concentrated in the tissues of cows, which is then ground into hamburger to be consumed by the clueless masses who don’t even know they’re eating second-hand chicken crap. (http://www.naturalnews.com/027414_c…)
