Feds Fight Against, Raw Milk?

 How far should government go in ensuring our food is safe?  Well the Washington Times shows how far the Feds would go.

A yearlong sting operation, including aliases, a 5 a.m. surprise inspection and surreptitious purchases from an Amish farm in Pennsylvania, culminated in the federal government announcing this week that it has gone to court to stop Rainbow Acres Farm from selling its contraband to willing customers in the Washington area.

There comes a point where food regulation does more harm than good. Everyone in our country should be able to choose where there food comes from, and how it's produced.  This is the third such story I've read in the past 2 years.  I'd guess there are more such cases that are unaccounted for.  But what do you think?

“I look at this as the FDA is in cahoots with the large milk producers,” said Karin Edgett, a D.C. resident who buys directly from Rainbow Acres. “I don’t want the FDA and my tax dollars to go to shut down a farm that hasn’t had any complaints against it. They’re producing good food, and the consumers are extremely happy with it.”

The way I see it, whether you are for raw milk or not, the real question here is do we want our taxpayer dollars funding this kind of control?  Read the rest of the article here.

Support Local Food: Take This Short Survey

Being interested in helping develop a market for local food, i've created a quick Food Survey that everyone should fill out.  I'm interested to see the results, and I hope to post them here in the next few days.

Forward: An Interview with Joel Salatin

There's a lot to be said about our food industry, and those picturesque landscapes printed on shrink-wrapped packages of meat don't even begin to tell the whole story.  However, questions are beginning to fly, ones that need answers.  The voice of the people is growing ever louder, demanding the truth, as we drive full speed further away from the link to our food.  Many have found the answers, although perhaps to their distaste.  Yet one man may possibly understand the problems we face with our food more than any other, Joel Salatin. if you haven't heard of him before, he has been running his family farm Polyface Farms, providing real food from happy animals to local only customers.  Guardian.co.uk did an interview with Joel that's worth a read.

Salatin explains. "What happens is all these things we're seeing – campylobacter, E coli, mad cow, listeria, salmonella, that weren't even in the lexicon 30 years ago – that is the industrial paradigm exceeding its efficiency. So these Latin squiggly words that we're learning to say – bovine spongiform encephalopathy – are nature's language screaming to us: ENOUGH! And the question then is: what will it take for us to listen? And my contention is that Wall Street is still wearing conquistador mentality and uniforms, and nobody is listening to the pleadings of nature saying: 'Enough.'"

The interview is a really good summary of what is an amazing success story.  However, to get a more in-depth story I strongly recommend the book: The Omnivore's Dilemma.  Joel has written a ton of books explaining his operation.  he is also featured, in a sense, in the movie Food Inc. which you can watch at your pleasure here.