The issues around Greg Niewendorp’s resistance aren’t easy to communicate to folks at large. You find this out when you are quizzed by someone who’s not had regular involvement. I spoke a couple days ago with a local reporter covering Greg Niewendorp’s case, and she had a number of excellent questions–I sensed she really was trying to understand the situation.
Her basic question: Why shouldn’t he be required to test his animals?
I tried to explain about his rights, and how he sells directly to customers who don’t care about the test—in fact, would prefer he didn’t do the test because they don’t want some chemical residue in their meat. Besides, there are all kinds of examples of federal and state government agencies exempting small businesses from environmental, labor, and other regulations that are too costly or cumbersome to administer.
“But isn’t this different?” she asked. “If his animals are carriers and brush up against deer, they can spread the disease to other farms. Isn’t this a public health issue?”
That launched me into the matters of animal health, human health, and rights. If the animals are healthy, they are not as susceptible to bovine TB, I said. Greg has come up with a mineral supplementation program for his animals to compensate for deficiencies in his region.
“Why doesn’t the MDA investigate this?” she wondered.
Well, maybe it has something to do with money, I answered, as in U.S. Department of Agriculture money that finances the bovine TB testing program. Plus, as the comments to my last post point out, you can’t always believe the agency’s findings once you are in its crosshairs. They raided Richard Hebron based on a family that got sick, and without any proof, assumed raw milk was the culprit (when it probably wasn’t).
But there’s more to it than that, I found myself saying. Increasing numbers of people want to buy meat that hasn’t had the injection for bovine TB. Just like they don’t want meat with the antibiotics and hormones common to feedlot animals. They don’t want meat that’s been corn fed. (There’s an interesting article in today’s New York Times about that subject.)
In fact, they don’t even want the U.S. Department of Agriculture inspection, and many of the other stuff the officials are doing to ‘protect’ us. It’s the same as with raw milk. (Now I was really revved up.) People don’t want milk that’s been through required processing. They want milk with the bacteria and enzymes and protein exactly as it came from the cow. They get all the protection they want by buying directly from farmers who carefully monitor their farms’ production, and haven’t had to go through all the government requirements.
All of which led me into the germ theory, at which point I think I had exhausted the poor reporter. But as others suggest, keeping the media limelight on the MDA people, along with legal pressure, are the main tools at hand to get a shot at fairness.
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The discussion about appendices, following my post about the one-year anniversary of the Richard Hebron milk raid, got me thinking about tonsils.
When I was a kid, the big medical fad was to remove children’s tonsils, since they weren’t considered to be all that important. I had mine removed at age 5 (and my throat infections disappeared for many years). Of course, we have since learned that they are important in heading off a variety of serious infections, and I likely would have been better off having my immune system rejuvenated instead.
I’m not suggesting that appendices not be removed when they become inflamed, since a ruptured appendix is highly dangerous. It’s just another reminder to be skeptical when the medical experts say about one organ or another—“Oh, it doesn’t really do anything.” As the song says, “The hip bone’s connected to the thigh bone, and the thigh bone’s connected to…” And caring for them all is probably worthwhile.
Several of the studies we looked at noted that drug-resistant infections are increasing. (One of the most widely appreciated is methicillin-resistant staph aureus, or MRSA, which is now moving from nosocomialhospital-acquiredto community-acquired). The question around the table: What do we do about it?
For my part I brought along a CDC report of a well-referenced presentation by Dr. Stuart B. Levy of Tufts University School of Medicine, called Antibacterial Household Products: Cause for Concern. Heres a great line from the reports summary:
Scientists are concerned that [Antibacterial Household Products] will select bacteria resistant to them and cross-resistant to antibiotics. Moreover, if they alter a person’s microflora, they may negatively affect the normal maturation of the T helper cell response of the immune system to commensal flora antigens; this change could lead to a greater chance of allergies in children. As with antibiotics, prudent use of these products is urged.
Dr. Levys report clearly and effectively made the case that hyper-sanitization can both create a more pathogenic environment and weakened immune systems. I figured that that information, along with some discussion of the better-understood notion that liberal antibiotic use has similar negative effects, would turn a small tide. But the consensus opinion at the end went the other way: We ought to be using suppressive therapy to control skin infections in athletes. That means prophylactic antibiotic useantibiotics when there is no sign of infection. In other words, what we need is more of the same thing thats making everybody sick to begin with.
Davids reporters questions, the FDAs and CDCs opinions, and federal, state, and local enforcement officials actions, are supported by a very faulty and dangerous foundational belief that biological tinkering will make us healthy. The longer that foundation is intact, the longer we will suffer.
From a psychological perspective this has not so much to do with providing a quality product, which Greg has produced very little of in his 30 years of "farming" but is more about a deep seated drive to go agaisnt authority figures.
He has had his 15 seconds of notority and will fade into oblivion.
Many work within the system of alternativve farming and successfully produce a quality product.
Read this guys selfdescribed senario of his battle…lone rider on the horse, rain slicker etc….like a Spagetti Western. Don’t give him any more attention..please.