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GM Maize 'Has Polluted Rivers Across the United States'
An insecticide used in genetically modified (GM) crops grown extensively in the United States and other parts of the world has leached into the water of the surrounding environment.
Activists fly a kite to protest against the cultivation of genetically modified maize. (AFP) The insecticide is the product of a bacterial gene inserted into GM maize and other cereal crops to protect them against insects such as the European corn borer beetle. Scientists have detected the insecticide in a significant number of streams draining the great corn belt of the American mid-West.
The researchers detected the bacterial protein in the plant detritus that was washed off the corn fields into streams up to 500 metres away. They are not yet able to determine how significant this is in terms of the risk to either human health or the wider environment.
"Our research adds to the growing body of evidence that corn crop byproducts can be dispersed throughout a stream network, and that the compounds associated with genetically modified crops, such as insecticidal proteins, can enter nearby water bodies," said Emma Rosi-Marshall of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies in Millbrook, New York.
GM crops are widely cultivated except in Britain and other parts of Europe. In 2009, more than 85 per cent of American corn crops were genetically modified to either repel pests or to be tolerant to herbicides used to kill weeds in a cultivated field.
The GM maize, or corn as it is called in the US, has a gene from the bacterium Bacillus thuriengensis (Bt) inserted into it to repel the corn borer beetle. The Bt gene produces a protein called Cry(12A)b which has insectidical properties.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, analysed 217 streams in Indiana. The scientists found 86 per cent of the sites contained corn leaves, husks, stalks or cereal cobs in their channels and 13 per cent contained detectable levels of the insectidical Cry(12A)b proteins.
"The tight linkage between corn fields and streams warrants further research into how corn byproducts, including Cr(12A)b insecticidal proteins, potentially impact non-target ecosystems, such as streams and wetlands," Dr Rosi-Marshall said.
All of the stream sites with detectable insecticidal proteins were located within 500 metres of a corn field. The ramifications are vast just in Iowa, Illinois, and Indiana, where about 90 per cent of the streams and rivers – some 159,000 miles of waterways – are also located within 500 metres of corn fields.
After corn crops are harvested, a common agricultural practice is to leave discarded plant material on the fields. This "no-till" form of agriculture minimises soil erosion, but it then also sets the stage for corn byproducts to enter nearby stream channels.
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Show AllOK, I will dig up that article. It was pretty shocking to compare what OCA was saying about the bill, and then reading the actual bill. It was the most egregious lying I have ever seen posted on progressive sites.
Ah, I am finding some interesting things that I didn't know before. I was sure that I had seen the article full of misinformation about the farm bill at the OCA website, but it apparently is not there anymore. However - it was at OCA at one time:
http://transitioninaction.com/forum/topics/urgent-farm-bill-endangers
I also suspected that a right wing think tank was feeding OCA and other organic organizations misinformation, and it turns out that this is true as well.
Linn Cohen-Cole a Disinfo specialist - The Monsanto Connection
http://transitioninaction.com/forum/topics/urgent-farm-bill-endangers
http://www.atlanticfreepress.com/news/1/9566-the-monsanto-connection.html
Here one connection between the OCA contributor Cohen-Cole and a liberatrian think tank:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/During-a-world-food-crisis-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-080723-548.html
This is preliminary and I will have to spend a few days tracking down the leads on this. I suspected that libertarian and right wing think tanks were steering the organic movement, but this is the first time I have found an actual channel for that. Cohen-Cole is the person who spread the lies about the farm bill, and that article was posted online by every organic group and sent around as an e-mail alert at the time.
You've given links from everywhere except organicconsumers.org
From this post on OCA: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17355.cfm
"For the record, Organic Consumers Association does have an alert on HR875. As OCA points out in our Action Alert, we cannot support a "food safety" bill unless it provides protection or exemptions for organic and farm-to-consumer producers and cracks down on the real corporate criminals who are tampering with and polluting our nation's food supply.
Having said that, OCA supports aspects of HR875 that call for mandatory recalls of tainted food, increased scrutiny of large slaughterhouses and food manufacturers, and hefty fines against companies that send poisonous food to market. The now discredited ultra-libertarian notion that companies or the "market" will regulate themselves is not only ludicrous, but dangerous, whether we are talking about the banking system or the food and farming sector."
And on several pieces of legislation: http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17092.cfm
Have fun.
If you read the articles I linked to, you can see that it was posted at OCA at one time, that I wasn't the only one who saw it there. They may have taken it down, which would be to their credit, and they did post qualifying remarks cautioning people about some of the absurd claims people were spreading around about the bill. I have seen it happen a number of times that when articles are challenged by people from the ag community, they get removed without comment at OCA and other sites. What is significant here is the tracing the source of the misinformation. If we can close down the paths by which libertarian and right wing essays are getting published and distributed by the organic community that will be a good thing.
As you can see from the statement you quoted, OCA is still supporting the right wing de-regulation exemption ideas - "exemptions for organic and farm-to-consumer producers." Those would be the last sort of businesses we would ever want to exempt from regulation, for obvious reasons. There are thousands of real farmers, small family operations - as opposed to "cottage industry," part timers, hobbyists - who sell direct to consumers and who are under the health and safety inspection regimen. No one sees this as some terrible burden, rather they see it as a good thing for everyone.
Exempting organic operations from public health and safety regulations and inspections can only accelerate a trend we are already seeing - they are becoming less safe, less sustainable, and less responsible to the community than so-called "conventional" growers. I had a chance this week to met with a toxicologist here recently - a neutral observer, if anything sympathetic to organic as he and his family belong to a local organic CSA - and he described the deteriorating conditions in the few orchards in the state where people are attempting organic, the decline in soil quality and the health of the trees. I also spoke with the state ag department inspector about the new exemptions here in Michigan. He said that when there are food borne illness outbreaks from these operations - and there is certain to be an increase in incidents - it will just be more difficult to trace them and respond. Who would not want their food facilities and farming operations inspected and why?
Maybe OCA is coming around. That would be a good thing, and I am more than willing to reconsider my opinion.
Wow. "occurs naturally" is the calling card of industry. Mercury 'occurs naturally' . . . arsenic 'occurs naturally' . . . lead 'occurs naturally'. Each statement of which has been used at some point by either a coal plant or cigarette manufacturer.
If something that 'occurs naturally' is good that would imply that something that does not 'occurs naturally' is bad. The gene splicing franken-food fiesta that's going on now has never occurred throughout the history of this planet.
That's bad.
Oh, stop it. I didn't say it was good, I said that it was presented in a highly deceptive and misleading way.
I am opposed to GMO. I am also opposed to sloppy, inaccurate, ignorant and misleading opposition to GMO, since it hurts rather than helps the cause.
Procter and Gamble found the need for candles waning in the early 20th century so they converted their product into Crisco. Now the highest death rate in the US is from heart disease and strokes.
Monsanto's false propaganda that they are feeding the world, their only in it for the profits. Meanwhile they are damaging the soil and water. Similac managed to put junk baby formula product out on the market to replace breast milk does anyone know what's in that stuff? Melomine a chemical added to boost the content of protein in formula, was taken off the market in China because of infant mortality caused by kidney failure. Frankensteins loose. Nature has taken along time to perfect its systems to sustain life, manufacturing chemicals mixed up in a lab is no quick fix.
locally grown, seasonal, organic produce can't go wrong. it's tasty, healthy, and competitive in price.
I agree with the "seasonal" recommendation, although canned and dried produce should not be overlooked. In rural areas, the general public is amazingly alert to the seasons for everything. City folks, not so much.
"Organic" and "local" are no guarantee of anything, and both of those models have collapsed and are unsustainable. I would say that "local" and "organic" means you are more likely to get lower quality, less safety, less energy efficiency, and less sustainability. We have one grower in the county, among several hundred family growers, a transplant from the city, growing some veggies and touting local, organic, sustainable. There is absolutely no doubt that in terms of freshness and quality, in terms of energy efficiency, labor exploitation, and in terms o toxic effects on the environment that operation is significantly worse than any other fa in the area. It is built in to that model. You can call your workers "interns" but it still amounts to unpaid labor. You can call it "local" but when you have 50 members of the CSA all driving their personal vehicles from 5-40 miles away to pick up one bag of veggies you are not very energy efficient. You can call yourself "organic" and therefore only use natural poisons, but a poison is a poison and Rotenone and heavy metals are extremely hard on the environment. Not to mention that your farm becomes a vector for disease and insect infestations that can spread to your neighbors.
whenever i checked for government statistics about any corporate products, i found practically none.
no crime can be established against non-existing statistics.
that was the design.
The USDA keeps an enormous amount of statistical data through the NASS.
The National Agricultural Statistics Service
http://www.nass.usda.gov/
whenever i checked for meaningful government statistics about any corporate products, i found practically none.
no crime can be established against non-existing statistics.
that was the design.
whenever i check for meaningful government statistics about any corporate products or services, i find practically none.
remember toyota, which rejected every individual report of excellerator mal-function as abberant, leaving no public record?
i often check with my AG's office over various issues, and they tell me there's one or two complaints, if any at all, about any particluar issue, and they inform me that they take no action until the number reaches a critical level, which is a sure way to discourage me from filing a complaint. and the issue dies right there, with the number never reaching the critical level.
no crime can be established against non-existing statistics.
that is the design.
Monoculture crops - corn, soybeans, wheat, rice, etc, are all hybrids. There are many varieties of these crops, but they don't always have the content - high oil as in soybeans, for example, that producers are looking for. Once the crop has the characteristics the producers want (or tell growers and users this is the real stuff...)millions of tons of seed go out. GM or not, once a bug or germ learns to like a monoculture crop, it's smörgåsbord time. Seed companies want easy-to-sell varieties; growers need consistent results, processors want consistent product. Industrialized agriculture, for all the alleged "efficiencies", is just a money machine.
Actually soybeans are not a 'hybrid.' If one saves the seed and replants it, it does grow true to type. This is increasingly illegal since companies want to recoup their investments and make a profit of course.
You may not be growing hybrid soybeans, but surely you're not saying there are none? There are hybrid soybeans in production.
Do you understand what "hybrid" means? (Not saying that you do or you don't, and not trying to pick a fight.) Do you know what hybrid fruit is, and how it is produced? Hybrid corn? Soybeans are self-fertile and grow from seed true to type, ergo not a hybrid crop. Yes, Chinese researchers successfully produced hybrid soy a while back.
"Hybrid," by the way, is not the same as GMO. Hybrid fruit requires no human intervention of any kind.
"Hybrid fruit requires no human intervention of any kind."
Then why is it that most of the "hybrid" is manmade? Your argument is like saying that plastics are "all natural" as if they grow on trees.
Hybrid - an organism that is the offspring of genetically dissimilar parents or stock; especially offspring produced by breeding plants or animals of different varieties or breeds or species; a mule is a cross between a horse and a donkey.
All deciduous fruits are hybrids, always have been. Aboriginal fruit trees are hybrids. They are produced by crossing two varieties. (It is impossible not to cross two varieties.)
Every seed in every apple produces a different variety, the product of the parents (fruit is not self fertile.) Every seed is a hybrid. Desirable varieties are propagated by grafting, never grown from seed.
None of the fruit hybrids are "man made." There are breeding projects, yes, which consist of controlling pollination - netting off a block of trees so the bees only spread pollen between two varieties - and then planting all of the seeds from all of those resulting apples, each of which will be a distinct variety, and then raising them until bearing, and then assessing the fruit on those trees. That is the way it has always been done.
Yep, we are as Monsanto claims, feeding the world through advances in agro tech. What a joke. So what exactly are we feeding the with GM corn? We are fattening cows, whos digestive system does not like corn. So we shoot them up with anti biotics. We feed, chickens and pigs while hungry people world wide would love a little grain for their bread, tortillas, etc. We make high fructose corn syrup and put it in everything under the sun. Burbon might be the safest corn product around. Big Ag is the only thing being fed and I doubt if they eat anything they produce. What we grow and why is as important as how we grow it. Oh, and don't forget green ware, disposable cups made from GM corn that are biodegradable. It is estimated, however that over 90% of these items never find a suitable environment to breakdown.
If Americans spent as much effort growing their own vegetables as they do tending their lawns(with moweres, blowers, pesticides, herbicides, moss begone, sprinkler systems etc) we could put Monsanto out of business and possibly bring back family grocery stores.
YAY!
Food not Lawns!
Way to go , INSANTO. Poison and kill, that's all you know, nothing of life.
CD featured an interview with Percy Schmeiser by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now that should be of interest to anyone who missed it.
As a Hoosier by birth, I feel free to say:
"Earl Butz bite me!"
We must get off of industrial corn, and back to communities growing their own, truly local food.
Only one planet this time around, sorry....
From Dr John Ikerd's* "Reclaiming Rural America" :
[http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/Sioux%20City%20-%20Reclaiming%20Rural%20America.htm]
"...It’s not enough for just a few people in a community to conclude that something is wrong; there has to be a community consensus that change is necessary. It’s not enough for just a few people to have a new vision for the future; there has to be a common vision of a better future for the community. Finally, the people of a community must have a shared hope that their common vision is possible, that together they can create a new and better future for themselves and for their community.
The process of community change is made even more difficult by the fact that real change is rarely initiated by those in positions of greatest influence. The people with political and economic power have gained their positions of influence because the status quo is working for them. They may be willing to tinker around the edges to appease their critics but they are quite logically defensive against any real change. So, change in rural America will have to come from the common people. The current approach to economic development isn’t working for them and isn’t going to work for them in the future. They have a strong incentive to change. Change in rural America will take a revolution of the common people, beginning with revolutionary thinking. This revolution must begin by confronting the truth about rural economic development.
The most common approach to rural economic development today is reminiscent of “imperial colonization.” The only real difference is the nature of the colonizers and the colonized. Large multinational corporations are extending their economic sovereignty over the affairs of rural people under the guise of economic development. These corporations use their economic and political power to dominate local economies and local governments. Irreplaceable and precious rural resources, including rural people and rural cultures, are not being developed but instead exploited to enhance the wealth of corporate investors. These corporations have no commitment to the future of rural areas; they are only interested in extracting the remaining wealth from rural places. This is corporate, economic colonialism."
*Professor Emeritus of Agricultural Economics, University of Missouri Columbia
College of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources
for your further reading pleasure, how about?:
http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/Nuffield%20-%20Industrial%20Agriculture.htm
http://web.missouri.edu/~ikerdj/papers/Michigan%20--%20CMU%20-%20Rethinking%20Sustainability.htm
The effect of herbicides, pesticides and synthetic fertilizers on the biology and structure of the soil is important. The soil is where plant and animal debris/waste is converted from complex molecules that can't be used by plants into simpler molecules that are plant nutrients. This change is done mainly by microbes. These bacteria and fungi also make soil minerals more available, form symbiotic networks with roots to increase access to nutrients and reduce the likelihood of disease by competing with plant pathogens. This SOIL BIOLOGY relies on plant matter and some manures to thrive.
Soil STRUCTURE is largely dependent on a more stable form of soil carbon called humus. Humus is long lasting carbon that increases the ability of the soil to hold and exchange nutrients with plants (CEC), to absorb and hold water, to cut erosion, to aerate the soil and to stimulate plant growth. It determines the 'quality' of a given soil for agriculture. Conventional ag largely ignores soil life and views soil as a 'container' for adding fertilizers. Any action such as heavy tillage, pesticide use or some fertilizers that kills the soil life or reduces the Soil Organic Matter will negatively impact productivity. For resources see Building Soils for Better Crops—Sustainable Soil Management, by Fred Magdoff and Harold Van Es; The Biological Farmer – A Complete Guide to the Sustainable & Profitable... by Gary F. Zimmer; and the Midwest Organic & Sustainable Education Service (MOSES), online at www.mosesorganic.org
I would add this: some farmers have high organic matter and relatively level land, and are able to use many different forms of tillage and methods of farming. I, on the other hand, have variable soil and quite a bit with low organic matter. My no-til methods should improve this land. I rotate corn and beans. I realize that a rotation involving more crops would be even better. However the need for more specialized equipment and lower cash income is a definite drawback.
The no-till methods you employ are beneficial in arresting soil erosion, but the chemicals you use are doing nothing to enhance the soil flora, as it were. Robert Kremer, a microbiologist with the USDA Agricultural Research Service and an adjunct professor in the Division of Plant Sciences at the University of Missouri, has been studying the effects of glyphosate on soil chemistry for the last twenty years. He is regarded as one of the foremost authorities involved in glyphosate research. Dr Kremer has this to say about Roundup Ready systems and soil biology:
"We started in 1997 wanting to see if this new system, Roundup Ready, would change the production of nematodes in soybean. We started looking at organisms in soybean roots and saw microorganisms colonizing the roots. We suspected that glyphosate was having an impact. There was a root fungi problem that seemed to be encouraging sudden death syndrome (SDS).
We saw the increase of these fungi in the Roundup Ready (genetically modified) system, both soybeans and corn.
This system is altering the whole soil biology. We are seeing differences in bacteria in plant roots and changes in nutrient availability. Glyphosate is very systemic in the plant and is being released through the roots into the soil. Many studies show that glyphosate can have toxic effects on microorganisms and can stimulate them to germinate spores and colonize root systems. Other researchers are showing that glyphosate can immobilize manganese, an essential plant micronutrient.
The most obvious impact is on rhizobia, a bacterium that fixes nitrogen. It has been shown that glyphosate can be toxic to rhizobia. (Nitrogen fixing bacteria are important to soils because nitrogen is the most commonly deficient nutrient in many soils.)"
Thanks, interesting stuff. I was aware of the problem with manganese. Luckily my soils have plenty and overcome this problem. SDS was a minor problem in our area this year, really for the first time. This and the potential for a nitrogen fixation problem are of definite interest to most farmers. I will be looking for more info.
I see Kremer and the U of Missouri has had lots of interesting research going. Good for them.
„The Greatest Danger Is Not Ignorance, But The Illusion Of Knowledge“. (Albert Einstein)
„Facts Do Not Go Away Just Because They Are Ignored.“ (Aldous Huxley)
The (naturally occuring) Bt organic farmers use CANNOT be compared to the Bt in transgenic corn.Why?
While the spray is being degraded by UV-light rather rapidly, and the toxin becomes activated by an enzyme in the digestive tract of the insect, the inserted gene in Bt-plants produces the toxin in every single cell of the plant 24/365. (Some plants produce their own insecticides or insect repellents but only if they are actually attacked, not all the time and certainly not with detrimental effects to the soil)The promoter that keeps foreign genes switched on permanently, can also influence native genes and who controls that ..?
The toxin is even exuded by the roots and can stay in the soil for months where it harms the mycorrhizae and thus reduces the quality of the soil:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mycorrhizae
http://www.greenpeace.to/publications/Bt-maize-in-Europe-2009.pdf
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/GE-maize.php
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/secretGMcrops.php
WHY GENETIC ENGINEERING IS MADNESS
GENETIC ENGINEERING is based on FALSE ASSUMPTIONS:
• Each gene is an independent unit of information. Each gene adds one trait to the build-up and behaviour of the organism.
• The information of each gene is expressed straightforwardly without any kind of interaction.
• The genes are stable. They do not change unless mutations occur because of damage such as radioactive irradiation. Therefore the genes are normally passed to the next generation without any changes.
• Genes or sets of genes cannot change in response to the environment.
http://www.i-sis.org.uk/paris.php
http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Monsanto_and_the_Campaign_to_Undermine_Organics
"Human subtlety will never devise an invention more beautiful,
more simple or more direct than does nature
because in her inventions nothing is lacking, and nothing is superfluous.”
Leonardo da Vinci (engineer, scientist and painter)
Wonderful post. Thank you.
From the article and the comments, first a big thank you to Bliss Doubt, non placet, and the rest for setting the record straight.
Another big difference between health care in the USA and health care in Europe has to do with food. In other nations, farmers protest and even burn anything GM or chemically affected and passed by Monsanto. Here we have the "Greg R" farmers of this nation who irritate us with all this "happy talk" about GMO. To make matters worse, neither my uncle nor I have had any luck getting any of our pols to listen. A few would give lip service about needing to save small farms but nothing about stopping Monsanto.
Even at local gatherings or countryside get togethers, it can be hard to convince people not to fall for the GM/GMO propaganda. For every two people I can convince of growing both locally and naturally, 4-5 of them will irritate me with nonsense about "Monsanto reaching out to local growers" and none of them are farmers. In fact, the pro-GMO people don't bother even bother gardening ! Then there is all this "happy talk" all over the net that local farms are booming while the depressing truth shows otherwise. Add it all up and this nation lives in a fool's paradise.
thank you, Jennifer
I have to take exception to that. There are two of us presenting a differing - though not necessarily oppositional - view on these issues. I do not think either of us are distorting or misrepresenting "the record" so that it would need to be "set straight."
Neither GregR nor I have said anything that can fairly be characterized as "all this 'happy talk' about GMO."
If you want people to listen to you on this subject, you need to have a better handle on what you are talking about. If you are going to immediately dismiss those who can help you with that and smear them, it is going to be impossible to stop the efforts by the corporations to gain ownership control over food crops. This battle is too important for us to go at it half-assed and poorly informed.
For your own information, Greg R is not helping us by irritating most of us with his callous talk and he does this every time the topic on GMO gets brought up. What do you think the purpose of GMO is, to make better crops? Certainly not in a nation that believes in disaster capitalism. The proponents of GMO lie through their teeth but when push comes to shove, the crops grown are worse than if they were grown naturally meaning less nutrition but more profits for those fat slob "farmers" ! Does it make you happy that government allowed Big Agri to crush small farms and then add insult to the injury by going after those small farmers? I can tell you more if you wish but right now I am getting too tired to explain.
Heh. I thought he was being a lot nicer that I have been.
If you read my posts, I explained what I think the purpose of GMO crops is. Did I ever say that GMO made better crops? I am in a position to say with much more confidence and authority than you that the purpose appears to be control through ownership of food crops, and that is what I did say.
Trust me, I am quite well informed about the way that the government, especially since the Obama administration was installed, is going after small farmers, the way in which the government is controlled by pharmaceutical companies and food corporations and I am certain that I have much more knowledge and much more to say about that than you can imagine.
You complain that Greg is irritating you. Do you have any idea how irritating it is to those facing paramilitary raids on farms by government swat teams on various pretexts to hear someone whine about some small dairy selling unpasteurized milk that is in a minor tussle with the local health inspector - in a recent case one that was not maintaining sanitary standards and was infested with the very bacteria that had caused a disease outbreak? That was a recent debate here.
It is very irritating to be lectured condescendingly - "I can tell you more if you wish but right now I am getting too tired to explain" - on this subject by people who are not as well informed as the ones whom they are lecturing. Surely you can be sympathetic to that.
It is irritating to hear farmers called "fat slobs" and blamed for a system over which they have little control and in which they make the smallest share of the overall food profits.
Please, not the raw milk nonsense. Certain Libertarian activists have been pushing that one around here. A farmer should have the right to sell his filthy, listeria contaminated swill anywhere, and when, he wants to, right? No one ever gets typhoid fever, diphtheria, septic sore throat, scarlet fever, dysentery, Q-fever, brucellosis, or tuberculosis anymore--at least not much. Let's bring back that unregulated raw milk and tell the gov'ment whar ta go!
Why should anybody have to have a USDA inspected facility, and worry about sterilization, temperature control, and animal health?
If I milk it, I should be allowed to sell it, and if it isn't any good the market will decide! God Bless America and the forty Holsteins standing up to their hocks in mud and muck outside the milking parlor.
Damn it, that's the American Way
i dedicate this posting to my good friends:
Coxiella burnetii, E. coli 0157:H7, Listeria monocytogenes, Salmonella typhimurium DT-104, Campylobacter jejuni, and Yersinia enterolitica.
Yours is the nonsense. Incidences of food borne illness from raw milk dairies are way overshadowed by illnesses caused by conventional food production overseen by USDA. Incidences of food borne illness from contemporary raw milk dairies are practically nil.
I've been an advocate of safely produced raw dairy products since the days Alta Dena Dairy challenged existing prohibitions, and, successfully became one of the first licensed commercial raw milk producers in the nation. That's the point, safely produced product.
You misread a bit of sarcasm on my part, although the Holsteins standing up to the hocks bit is an all too common reality around these these parts.
Not all raw milk is equal, and there really are some cases in my region where families have refused all inspections of their facilities, have maintained dubious sanitation conditions, and still insist upon the right to peddle their product.
Let me tell you, I've see the farms around my county---I wouldn't buy raw milk from any of them.
Yes, and I favor the re-legalization of unpasteurized cider. However, in order to have that and protect public health will require increased regulation and inspection, not less regulation and inspection.
Business interests, using naive and ignorant organic activists as on-the-ground shock troops, succeeded in getting exemptions from regulation and inspection for so-called "cottage" food producers here. The big money people know that this is a "foot in the door" to eliminate all regulations that protect public health.
I'd love to see raw, unfiltered cider back, too---and in glass!
Not so sure where the push for pasteurization is really coming from.
My own opinion is that it stems from those who stand to gain from irradiation processes. Raytheon and others poured big money into developing the technology.
Irradiation using Cobalt 60 and Cesium 137 was an attempt to deal with nuke plant waste, but the public got wind of it and cowered away for the time being. However, other 'cold pasteurization' methods using electromagnetic energy have found their way into food processing plants. Seems that if they can get the public spooked enough over food borne pathogens, Cobalt-60 and Cesium-137 just might win general acceptance. That's the scenario I see playing out.
Interesting speculation. You may be right.
Odwalla in California, an organic producer, was using mules to turn their press and that one nasty strain of E. Coli got into their cider and caused a couple of deaths. There was then a big fear-mongering media circus for weeks, and that was the end of almost all of the small cider producers here.
You are presenting a false choice. There is no guarantee that a raw milk producer will voluntarily follow safety protocols, and no guarantee that a pasteurized milk producer won't.
You present a false choice. There is no guarantee that the USDA works for you and me, or that good safety protocol is used by conventional dairies and producers of other foods. Decoster ring a bell for you? Tainted almonds? Peanuts? E. coli in the spinach? Listeriosis from pasteurized milk in Massachusetts?
Like the whole conventional dairy industry, you are creating a false bogey.
You are making the libertarian argument, in opposition to public health and safety regulations and inspections. That is fine, but I disagree with you on that.
Is the fact that the agencies have been stripped of funding - as is the case with state ag departments and the USDA - or corrupted by corporate interests - as is the case with the FDA and Land Grant colleges - a good reason to eliminate the role of government in the protection of public health and safety?
What is the "false bogey" I am creating? Before public health and safety inspections and regulations do you really think things were better?
I actually believe in good regulation, but when pharmaceutical companies pay user fees to the FDA, that agency no longer works for you and me. It works for the pharmaceutical companies who continue to make mega-profits selling dangerous and faulty drugs. USDA answers to lobbyists from multinational agriculture, when it doesn't answer to government that is bought by lobby. That's why this country has a legal amount of dead rat that can be found in your ketchup, and a legal level of cow shit ground up in your hamburger.
duplicate
You don't know the half of it when it comes to the FDA.
The USDA is still independent and reliable for the most part. No comparison to the FDA.
The agencies don't answer to lobbyists. What has happened is that people from industry are appointed into top management positions.