Goodbye farmers markets, CSAs, and roadside stands.

[JohnyCanuck]

by Linn Cohen-Cole

SNIP

So, look again at what has been exciting us - Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands. - and realize that they are not only wonderfully healthy but fun and naturally community building. And more, they are a real economy and deeply democratic - and just at a time we need something that works economically, that supports our democratic rebirth, and that protects food itself and our easy access to it.

And it is all those things that threaten the corporations ... which is why we now have these massive "fake food safety" bills in Congress. Everything is going under thanks to these fools, and they wish to be there like vultures to make sure that every drop of blood that can be sucked out of our resources and us, is theirs. To wit, they must get rid of such good and innocent things and yet truly powerful things as:

Farmers markets. Local farmers. Real milk. Fresh eggs. Vegetable stands.

And how will those who contaminate our country's food with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and more, do that? Why, by setting standards for "food safety" that are so grotesquely and inappropriately and even cruelly applied to a local, independent farmers and ranchers that there is no way they can manage. Imagine your being faced with a 100 page IRS form and facing a million dollar a day penalty for screwing up. That would be in the ball park of the impossible complexity mixed with threat facing our farmers. Imagine having the government and corporations deciding every single thing you can do and must do in your kitchen and backing that up with the threat of 10 years in prison for screwing up - though you have never made anyone sick, and those corporations have. Imagine being surveilled 24 hours a day by GPS tracking devices that feed into ... a corporate data bank, one they have now moved out of the country so no one here can have legal access to see what is in it.

Imagine the devil himself - or a whole boardrooms of them, dressed in suits - defining the only safe and healthy food in this country as dangerous and burdening hard working farmers with more work then anyone could bear, while his own, their own, food is so dangerous at this point that in the last 10 years alone, diabetes has gone up 90% .

And how did they get this far with such a scheme to apply insane industrial standards to every farm in the country? Through fear of diseases and of outbreaks of food borne illnesses, both of which they cause themselves.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Goodbye-farmers-markets-C-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090303-287.html

[Metta]

1. This is simply corporations lying again and not caring who gets hurt.

Happy karma.

[JohnyCanuck]

3. Profits come 1st, 2nd, and 3rd; consumer protection brings up the rear.

Unregulated Capitalism Harms The Country These Six Ways

by Rev. Bill McGinnis

Unregulated profit-seeking corporations cannot be trusted to protect the Public, because their main objective is to make profits, not to be a do-gooder for the Public. Whenever profit-making conflicts with the Public interest, profit-making wins! Thus they become Predators on the Public, not Protectors of the Public.

This is not a radical idea, but an obvious fact, if you think about it. Profit-seeking corporations exist to make a profit, and the more profit, the better. Anything which increases profits is good for them; and anything which decreases profits is bad. So they try to do whatever is necessary to make profits. This is the essence of Laissez-faire Capitalism: that profit-seeking corporations should be left alone to do whatever they choose to do in order to make profits.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Unregulated-Capitalism-Har-by-Rev-Bill-McGinnis-090303-799.html

For those with broadband, watch this Youtube video in which two investigative journalists working at a Fox station explain how they were fired for refusing orders to change a report on the potential dangers to consumers of drinking milk contaminated with Monsanto's artificial bovine growth hormone product. After Monsanto threatened their station and Fox News with lawsuits and a withdrawal of advertising dollars, management had stalled putting the report on the air and then ordered them to falsify the report to make it less damaging to Monsanto. Eventually the two reporters were fired when they wouldn't comply.

[omega minimo]

2. A choice b/w Victory Gin or Victory Garden

:bounce:

[The Wielding Truth]

4. The states won't go for this.

[Cessna Invesco Palin]

5. OMG RFID TURNIPS.

This fearmongering is really, really going over the top now.

[Pooka Fey]

6. Local food and community is America's only hope for the future. n/t

[get the red out]

7. They will be defeated

For instance: the city I live in is planning a multi-million dollar downtown enclosure for the farmer's market. Why? Because it is incredibly popular and the one thing that gets people downtown every Saturday for 6 months out of the year. Any mayor who caused harm to the farmer's market wouldn't do well in re-election.

Farmer's markets have become important to their areas, they create an environment of commerce. People who show up at farmer's markets will shop in the businesses nearby while they are in the area.

[knitter4democracy]

12. We thought that about the stupid lead thing, too.

I thought for sure that, with all the outrage, it would go down. It didn't.

[lukasahero]

8. May I recommend EVERYONE interested in the issue read "Animal, Vegetable, Miracle"

I thought I knew what was going on. I knew nothing.

[eppur_se_muova]

9. Thanks, that was already on my short list.

Together with "In Defense of Food" and "Stuffed and Starved".

[lukasahero]

16. "In Defense of Food" is also good

Haven't heard of 'Stuffed and Starved' but now I have something to look for! Thanks.

You may already know alot of the facts in 'A,V,M' but I have been seriously blown away by it. (I had the same experience reading 'Perfectly Legal' - I always think I know so much more than I do. ;) )

Plus, it's BK so it's eminently readable and very funny.

[Profprileasn]

23. "Diet for a Small Planet" is good too.

[tabbycat31]

25. also read 'The Omnivore's Dilemma"

by the same author as in defense of food. Food Politics and Fast Food Nation are also good ones.

Good to know about Stuffed and starved, adding it to my list. Thanks :-)

[angstlessk]

10. In Florida many many years ago, even roadside vendors HAD to

wax their citrus fruit. It was outrageous, but enforced!

[knitter4democracy]

11. They did it to the toy makers and resale shops.

That phony-balony lead testing crap is putting a ton of small businesses under, and no one's talked about how it'll kill band in school. Brass instruments have lead in them, more than the new regulation allows.

So, this doesn't surprise me--they're trying to make it so all we can buy from is Walmart with its imported crap. Well, let me tell ya, I'll still buy from my farms, even if I have to do it under the table.

[glitch]

13. Well, the War on Terror brand is tarnished, the War on Drugs is passe. Here comes the War on Food?

K & R

[Profprileasn]

24. Gov't control

Is this what happens when gov't controls stuff? Does everything go awry?

[knitter4democracy]

26. No.

This is what happens when the corporations control the gov't controlling stuff. That's when things go awry.

[Profprileasn]

28. Complicated

Guess I misunderstood your original point

[beltanefauve]

27. Uh, no

The problem is Corporatism, not government.

[JohnyCanuck]

14. Educating Congress: Do Not Supress Organic and Small Farmers and Ranchers; Natural Food Products

Farmers Under Attack...

This urgent message is from our correspondent, Linn Cohen-Cole on February 17, 2009:

We have less than two weeks to stop the take over the farms and ranches.

H.R. 875 and S. 425
We need to rally people immediately.

The new administration is pushing new farm controls through Congress as fast as possible and have coordinated the bills so there will be no debate and the committee meetings are closed.

Transparency, change, undoing Bush's regulations, giving the public time to comment, grassroots anything? Our entire food system and thus our health is being decided without the public knowing and those who do know have zero access and the media is absent and they are moving at warp speed to sew this up.

SNIP

Schoolmarm approach to punishing farmers out of farming.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-and-the-Schoolmar-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090214-935.html

Bills being rushed through Congress, set to destroy organic farming.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Monsanto-bills-being-rushe-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090217-758.html

Linn Cohen-Cole is a dedicated researcher and "Paul Revere" of health freedom. At her urging, we've set up an Action Item for you to send an unmistakable message to your representatives in the Senate and the House. We must educate Congress that you do not want organic and small farmers regulated out of existence. You do not want "Big Agra" regulations, perhaps necessary to protect the public when dealing with large scale agra business, applied to organic and small family farms and ranches or to natural and organic food products, including Dietary Supplements.

http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714

[Orwellian_Ghost]

15. K&R

Have you seen this?

A New Report From the Oakland Institute Issues a Challenge to Western-led Plans for a Genetically Engineered Revolution in African Agriculture

Voices From Africa
African Farmers & Environmentalists Speak Out Against a New Green Revolution in Africa

Oakland, CA: A new report from the Oakland Institute, Voices from Africa: African Farmers & Environmentalists Speak Out Against a New Green Revolution in Africa, issues a direct challenge to Western-led plans for a genetically engineered revolution in African agriculture, particularly the recent misguided philanthropic efforts of the Gates Foundation's Alliance for a New Green Revolution in Africa (AGRA), and presents African resistance and solutions rooted in first-hand knowledge of what Africans need.

The report finds a lack of accountability, transparency, and stakeholder involvement in philanthropic efforts such as AGRA. "Despite the Gates Foundation's rhetoric of inclusion and the claim that their investment in agricultural development benefits the growing majority of the world's poor who rely on agriculture, a leaked Gates Foundation confidential report on their Agricultural Development Strategy for 2008-2011 actually emphasizes moving people out of the agricultural sector," said Anuradha Mittal, Executive Director of the Oakland Institute and the editor of the report. "Their intention is to reduce dependency on agriculture, but their strategy report does not specify where or how this new 'land mobile' population is to be reemployed," she continued.

AGRA claims to be an "African-led Green Revolution," and features Kofi Annan at the helm as its chairman; however, African civil society has rejected the idea that one man can speak on behalf of over 50 countries and 680 million people. It is also not apparent from the foundation's Agricultural Development Strategy report whether--or how--the Gates Foundation consulted with African farmers before launching their multi-million dollar development strategy for the continent. Some of the foundation's external advisors have long partnered with biotech companies: for example, Ruth Oniang'o is featured on Monsanto's website claiming that there is an urgent need for food biotechnology in Africa, and Gates Foundation potential grantee Calestous Juma has urged the G8 to put biotechnology on the agenda for for Africa and discard the application of the precautionary principle because it interferes with the development of new technologies.

"Africa does not need dumping of food aid by rich countries that destroys local efforts to produce. Not the imposition of industrial-style agriculture based on chemicals and 'high-yielding' seeds, with the paradoxical outcome of greater production of a few food crops accompanied by even worse hunger and environmental degradation," said Diamantino Nhampossa, a contributor to the report and Executive Coordinator of the União Nacional de Camponeses (National Peasants Union) in Mozambique and member of the Via Campesina's International Coordinating Committee for the Africa Region.


<snip>

Download a copy of the report at http://www.oaklandinstitute.org/voicesfromafrica/pdfs/voicesfromafrica_full.pdf

[WhiteTara]

17. the mis education of secretary vilsack

who never met a gmo that he didn't love.

[Faryn Balyncd]

18. K&R- Perhaps a good goal would be to stop or repeal any law written by corporate interests.

[Raster]

22. That would be an excellent goal. A corporation and it's "interests," while enjoying the benefits of

immortal personhood, make lousy citizens and neighbors. Corporations exist to make money. Plain and simple. They do not breathe polluted air nor drink contaminated water. A corporation does not know the agony of sacrificing a child to the corporate bottom line.

[1]

19. obama would never let this happen...

[Quantess]

20. We'll see.

K & R

[Lucky Luciano]

21. Wow...Impressively outrageous. I love farmer's markets! nt