Hi again Diana,
Let's look at this from the viewpoint of 'follow the money' rather than what
makes sense.
Sense flew out the window years ago while greed moved in.
Here's a little micro history.
Farmers have been the backbone of this country for before the beginning of
the USA.
WWII took a lot of the farm workers out to the battlefields and they didn't
come back.
After the war we had a country needing food, and a chemical industry that
had just been given a huge boost by the war, but with a lack of farm
workers.
Solution, better living through chemistry - and big bucks.
Farming methods started being taught in colleges (funded by big chem bucks)
using chemical fertilizers and other chemicals gradiently increasing in
amounts. And later county extension workers trained by these same colleges
were put into the farming communities for 'advice' - i.e. what chemicals to
use and when. This was a brilliant marketing technique by agri-chem biz.
This killed a lot of the natural fertility of the soil - soil is a micro
ecology of microorganisms and inorganic and organic minerals and organic
matter - with the microorganisms converting the inorganic minerals to
organic ones so the plants can uptake them. When they get killed off, plants
need the fake fertilizers to grow anything. When they uptake the fake stuff,
they are doing so without those wonderful minerals, so the food isn't nearly
as nutritious or healthful.
Plants growing with fake stuff are weaker and attract naturally the bugs
that have been on the land for eternity to kill off the weak so only the
strong survive. Thus the need for more and more chemicals to kill the bugs
so production stays high. And the old reliable seeds were not producing big
enough corn ears or pretty enough tomatoes, so the money went into
hybridization to overcome the problems caused by the above. And later when
that wasn't working well enough, genetically modified organisms were created
which are never tested long term on people or animals first but which make
it to market looking great (but having nowhere near the mineral content or
anything else of heritage, organically grown produce). This put more money
in the hands of the corporations who funded all that research.
Farming stopped being the little family farm and became BIG BUSINESS, using
big farm equipment, big amounts of chemicals, and big banking concerns. And
as the population grew, and cheap food was demanded, more and more was
demanded from the ground and the farmer's production.
Now for the soil to grow food, it has to be supplied the fake stuff or it
won't grow enough per acre to make it profitable. And make no mistake,
farming has become big business to the banks. Farmers can't grow hardly at
all without bank loans now. It used to be farmers were prosperous, saved
their money, and passed this affluence onto their kids. That is rare now. It
costs tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars each year for a farmer to
stay in business being loaned from the banks.
Come up a few years.
The banks in cahoots with the big corporations wanted to take over the
farming industry and totally control food production and they did that by
raising interest rates on farm loans so high that it took all the profit in
the '70s on. This forced the last of the little guys out of business and the
land into the hands of the big agricorporations, or forced the little guys
to go into partnership with the agricorp boys in the form of animal
factories raising thousands of pigs or chickens in long horrible buildings.
Animal husbandry has taken on another entire face by these same boys and
girls, with genetically modified cows who produce many times the milk the
old ones do, and chickens and other animals so they can be industrialized.
This means profit.
However they found out these animals in the big factories and feed lots got
sick a lot more because of being packed in like sardines, having no
exercise, and fed food that wasn't natural for them (like feeding ground up
animal parts to cows). The solution was to feed them antibiotics all the
time and hormones to speed their growth, again because they grew faster and
bigger on this regimin. But you know that if you feed a kid junk food, he
sits in front of the TV all day and never gets any exercise, the next thing
you know, he's on psych drugs because he gets into unnatural emotional and
energy behaviour. So, the solution is to feed more drugs and more chemicals
and more wierd food, which all costs a lot more money than grass in the
field, but which doesn't produce the quality of food in the animal. But it
keeps the price of food down.
Also, cow's milk naturally contains growth hormones because calves must grow
fast. However, for beef as food, and milk cows to get big enough fast enough
to warrant the cost of raising them, they are given extra growth hormones -
more profit. Unfortunately, many of these hormones are not natural, make
their way into the meat and milk, and produce wierd reactions in children.
Ever wonder why our little girls can get pregnant when they're 8 years old?
That never happened when I was young. It's because they are maturing faster
from the hormones in their food.
That delicious looking steak in the grocery store looks exactly like the
ones we ate when I was a kid. But the difference in the quality of the
product is greatly different unless the meat was grown on untreated, organic
grass, and not fed chemicals and hormones. The levels of good Omega 3 oils
in grass fed beef is much greater than that from grain and commercial feed
fed cows just to name one difference.
So, it's about commercial production in agri-biz. If you want good food,
raise and grow it yourself, or support your local farmer who does it right.
There are some coming back into the business of farming now, but they need
our help by patronizing them. Their food may cost a bit more, but the
difference in your health by not having to spend money at the doctor makes
up for it. Just not having artificial hormones in meat, milk and cheese can
make the difference in a woman going through menopause between an easy go of
it, and problems. This I know from first hand experience.
So, we have to take back our food production from the big agribiz
corporations into our own hands and/or good local sources if we want to
remain healthy.
Di
----- Original Message -----
From: "Diana Liu" <[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>; <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, February 19, 2009 1:13 AM
Subject: Re: [Community_garden] manure
In addition to the lack of oversight of the hygiene at the food processing
point, could some of the "food borne" outbreaks be the overuse and abuse of
antibiotics in live stock that caused bacteria to develop resistance? Wasn't
there an outbreak may be about two years ago, where they traced the source
to be the nearby live stock (I can't remember exactly what it was though). I
heard that some livestock were given antibiotics just because (actually they
called it preventive measure), since we don't want to have sick calves. Now
would you give antibiotics to your child who's perfectly healthy to prevent
him/her from getting sick? Or give breastfeeding mothers growth hormone, so
that they can produce more milk to feed their children? Some things just
totally make no sense to me!
Wasn't there a news report about the fact that we are now discovering more
antibiotics or other medicines in our water source. What's that all about?
Of course, we are told that it's trace level and water is safe to drink.
Perhaps it reflects that we are living in an unhealthy society with many
people needing to be medicated.
~
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