In Nazi Germany during the 1930s, the big challenge among Germans was to prove they weren’t Jewish. They scrambled to produce certificates of baptism and show family trees that documented they weren’t Jewish. It didn’t take much to fail–a half-Jewish grandfather, or a father with a questionable cousin.
A bitter joke circulated in Germany at the time: “‘What kind of women do German men like best?’ Answer: ‘No, not blondes. Aryan grandmothers!'” Aryans, of course, were pure Germans, the new German super breed.
In Michigan right now, owners of small pig farms are being asked to do something akin to what Germans had to do in those awful times: demonstrate that their pigs aren’t of impure breeds, don’t possess any of nine characteristics that essentially describe pigs that fall outside the mass-produced ones favored by the Michigan Pig Producers Association. The list includes ear, tail, and skeletal appearance.
And just to be sure anyone can eventually be tripped up, there’s a loophole at the end in case something isn’t covered: “Other characteristics not currently known…that are identified by the scientific community.” As we know, if you provide enough funding to enough people in the “scientific community”, you can come up with the declaration you want.
To avoid discussion of such unpleasantries, the Michigan authorities and their allies in the pork industry are stirring up lots of dust. Indeed, since I wrote about the situation there earlier this month, there’s been even more dust swirling about.
Natural News came out with an article about “armed raids on small pig farmers” that called for arrests of the government raiders. The article seems not to have been completely accurate–Michigan authorities were apparently checking on whether pig breeders were slaughtering their own pigs, not actually doing the slaughtering.
The Michigan Department of Natural Resources responded with a carefully worded denial. It said it had not conducted armed raids and hadn’t been killing hogs. It added this explanation:
“The Invasive Species Order is not an attack on farms. In fact, the order is intended to protect Michigan farms. The animals at issue are not traditional farm pigs. The Invasive Species Order prohibits a particular species, Sus scrofa Linnaeus, commonly known as Russian boars, Eurasian wild boars, or razorbacks. This species is the terrestrial equivalent of Asian carp. The swine are incredibly destructive omnivores that destroy wildlife habitat and carry diseases that threaten domestic hogs, other livestock, wildlife and people. The owners of heritage pigs are not affected unless they own a Russian boar or Eurasian wild boar or a hybrid of a Russian boar or Eurasian wild boar.”
The state’s intent remains clear. Certainly we know that wildly roaming pigs can cause destruction. Feral pigs were even blamed as possible sources of the 2006 E.coli O157:H7 spinach outbreak in California. But to compare them to Asian carp seems extreme, since the fish can’t easily be domesticated on farms like heritage pigs can.
Big Ag’s Michigan Pork Producers Association similarly denies it is trying to stamp out small producers:
“Since the DNR began enforcement, opponents of the ISO have stepped up their efforts and rhetoric by embarking on a vicious misinformation campaign alleging that MPPA and ‘Big Ag’ have conspired with the DNR to put small, niche pork producers raising hogs outdoors out of business. We cannot stress enough that this is utter nonsense and absolutely untrue. Neither MPPA nor the DNR have any interest in deterring niche producers from continuing to operate as usual, unless the producer is using the breeds or types of hogs prohibited by the ISO, or crossing those prohibited breeds with domestic breeds to circumvent the ISO.”
Some of the best analysis on this situation is being offered by a food lawyer, Jason Foscolo, who said recently:
“The jitters coming from the heritage breeders within the state are therefore entirely justifiable. Every heritage breed that is commercially raised exhibits one or more of these (nine) ‘feral’ traits. Several of the prohibited characteristics are present in the purebred Mangalitsa for example, porcine royalty once served at the feasts of Habsburg princes.
“The plain meaning of the Order and its subsequent clarification would therefore allow the Department to morph a hog of the noblest, pedigreed heritage into a nuisance. Such animals could be destroyed by government decree based on the presence of an indefinite number of physical characteristics.
“It thus appears the Department composed the list of feral characteristics with complete disregard for the qualities of heritage breeds of livestock, phenotypic or otherwise. The Order prohibits the precise qualities that make them such important parts of a diversifying food system.”
It’s not a big stretch to figure out what’s behind this effort at genetic selection and scapegoating of heritage breeds. As more people exit the conventional food system, and seek out heritage breeds of pork, and other meats, the commodity producers lose market share. Foscolo isn’t quite ready to grant that the marketplace is shifting as profoundly as I see it shifting, but he notes that the PPA views the “heritage breeders as weirdo dilettantes, a novelty act, and they just dont understand the kinds of markets the heritage breeders are trying to develop. They look upon heritage producers with ridicule, if they even look at all. You do not need to invent a conspiracy theory to resent arrogance like this. For the time being, the commodity culture is the one with a seat at the table, calling the shots and drafting the regulations.”
In the meantime, there are a number of initiatives to change the situation. There is a petition campaign opposing the Michigan DNR campaign, launched by Victoria Bloch of Los Angeles (and one of the Rawesome Three). There is at least one court fight going on, involving a breeder of heritage pigs; according to a post by farmer Mark Baker, the breeder last week convinced a local judge to reduce the DNR’s authority to enter and monitor the breeder’s facilities. The heritage breeders will have a long fight ahead of them, but it is a fight worth fighting. Mandating genetic purity is rarely a progressive move, whether in people or animals.
It’s one thing to make the feral pigs running wild and destroying property, illegal and fair game for eradication. But don’t go into people’s businesses, where the animals are carefully raised, domesticated, and fenced in, and force them to be destroyed. Unfortunately, that’s where our monopolistic corporate food producers are headed, toward getting their government stooges to do the dirty work of getting rid of the competition.
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Interesting timing, as Walter Jeffries, the owner of Sugar Mountain Farm in Vermont, has just succeeded in raising $25,000 on Kickstarter to build a new butcher shop. Jeffries has created a sustainable business raising pastured heritage pigs and selling their pork privately.
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The Food Rights Workshop in Minneapolis May 13 is filling up fast, so if you are planning to attend, sign up ASAP. It’s 2-5:30, with dinner following. A great program of speakers on tap.
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Kristin Canty, the producer of the documentary “Farmageddon”, reports the movie is now available for rental or sale on Amazon.
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Here is a photo from the inspection by agents from the California Department of Public Health and the Department of Food and Agriculture today (Tuesday) at Organic Pastures Dairy Co., which he describes in his comment following this post. The agent at left, according to McAfee, was wearing a bullet-proof vest and a second agent was armed.
“What happened to protection against unlawful seizure of private property?” you ask ? … go back and take a good hard look at the photographic evidence obtained during your so-called “civil rights movement” = jackbooted federal guardsmen invading state precincts, enforcing the Central Party line with fixed bayonets. Set that alongside the membership card of Rosa Parks in the Communist Party of USA, and her state funeral, ie. apotheosis as one of the gods of the modern pantheon … triangulate that with the status of the one presiding over your tragic country now – Barry Suetoro – protoge of card-carrying communist Sol Alinksy. Indeed: “this is no longer the America that my ancestors began.” America slumbers-on, while those who try to awake her are profiled by race traitors in high places as “conspiracy theorists + domestic terrorists”
It sounds so romantic to buy cows and produce raw milk. The reality is that he now has to look in the mirror and live with the fact he may have almost killed one of his own children. This poor man is living a nightmare. I can guarantee you this family will never consume raw milk again. Home pasteurization is a better way to go.
Like Fosco says, this technically outlaws all heritage pigs, so now the system can go after any small pig farmer at any time.
http://ddr.nal.usda.gov/bitstream/10113/39397/1/IND44305252.pdf
http://www.marlerclark.com/pdfs/AVMA_caseybahravesh.pdf Pg 8 is data for pasteurized milk and pg 7 for raw milk. This data was presented at the AVMA conference in the summer of 2009.
It does make me wonder in the raw milk outbreaks (where they couldnt find the E.coli in the milk) if they would have found Shiga toxin Stx2?
http://www.oregonlive.com/health/index.ssf/2012/04/raw_milk_from_wilsonville_farm/3826/comments-10.html
Reading the comments after the story shows how hateful and uninformed the responders are in reference to the parents for giving their kids raw milk. Keeping in line with their thoughts, those parents who gave their kids any foods and the kids became ill, are awful parents and shouldn’t have children.
Kudos to the farmer.
The general public is misinformed about many foods/health facts. During the cantaloupe outbreak, commenters (I would guess more that 75%) posted on various news sites, that those sickened “should have washed the cantaloupe” and they would have avoided getting sick. Washing the fruit would not have helped. The same was posted during the spinach outbreak.
It boils (pun intended) down to education… where the food comes from/processing, how it is raised, what goes on and/or in it, the environment, etc.
There was a problem with linking to particular comments from the home page, because the comments were going to a second page after the first 90. The comments page has been adjusted, so it will take more than 90 comments to prompt a second comments page. That means you should be able to call up a particular comment that scrolls by on the home page by clicking on it.
As for responding to a particular comment, just click on “Reply”, so your comment appears below that comment.
Thank you David for this posting!!!! We will pass the link on to our neighbors.
She is a huge supporter of raw milk and kefir. She shared with the group the critical importance of building and maintaining the GUT and its imunity and living bacterial colonies.
We talked alot about fecal transplants and how they save 92% of C-Diff patients lives.
It was not Eat Shit and Die….it is Eat Shit and Live!!
How is it and Why is it that an ex- paramedic, now organic raw milk dairyman and a clinical biologist are now joining forces and saying and teaching this???? The story is now full circle…
Medicine for chronic disease and infections is failing and it is now clear that true medicine is being forced to circle back to reality and the immune system.
Hypocrates: Let food be your medicine and medicine be your food…and …do no harm.
Wow…what purist western trained doctor does that now a days.
Mark
I am so glad that I was able to attend this presentation as I now have a new health store to go to rather than Whole Foods & Sprouts. Their offerings are incredible! I will definitely be doing my shopping there instead. By the way, did you happen to try one of their freshly made organic sandwiches? Absolutely yumo delish!!
Old Butch
John was in the fertilized egg business
He had several hundred young layers (hens) called ‘pullets’ and ten roosters to fertilize the eggs.
He kept records and any rooster not performing went into the soup pot and was replaced.
This took a lot of time so he bought some tiny bells and attached them to his roosters.
Each bell had a different tone so he could tell from a distance which rooster was performing.
Now he could sit on the porch and fill out an efficiency report by just listening to the bells.
John’s favorite rooster, Old Butch, was a very fine specimen, but this morning he noticed Old Butch’s bell hadn’t rung at all!
When he went to investigate, he saw the other roosters were busy chasing the pullets, bells-a-ringing, but the pullets, hearing the roosters coming, would run for cover.
To John’s amazement, Old Butch had his bell in his beak so it couldn’t ring.
He’d sneak up on a pullet, do his job and walk on to the next one.
John was so proud of Old Butch he entered him in the Saint Lawrence County Fair and he became an overnight sensation among the judges.
The result was the judges not only awarded Old Butch the “No Bell Piece Prize”, but they also awarded him the “Pulletsrprise” as well.
Clearly Old Butch was a politician in the making. Who else but a politician could figure out how to win two of the most coveted awards on our planet by being the best at sneaking up on the unsuspecting populace and screwing them when they weren’t paying attention!
Vote carefully, the bells are not always audible!!!
You can sure see how mankind ( Bacteriosapiens ) has turned on the lights and covered our earth.
What a gloriously small place to live together…..what a bacteria and water covered marvel.
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap120305.html
Mark
Mark, isnt a fecal transplant just thata transplant. They are not eating the shit. It is being inserted at the other end and being transplanted into the large intestine where shit belongs.
People are not eating a shit smoothie to cure C Diff.
The FDA has a policy against testing of pasteurized milk for any pathogens. Instead they have a policy of testing for “five log kill step” indicators ( negative phosphatase enzyme tests ). If the phosphatase enzyme is gone,….then they assume that the bad bugs are dead.
Any change to the PMO ( pasteurized milk ordinance -the Processors bible )must get-by the NCIMS political committee that votes the change. Horizon, Deans Foods, Land-O-Snakes….they all sit with the FDA and decide these matters. The last time I attended an NCIMS convention, a suggestion to start testing for heat resistant pathogens was made…the answer was this: Oh God no….we might find heat resistant pathogens and we would all be screwed. The best way to find bad things is to look for them…the easiest way to avoid them ( at least temporarily ) is to avoid the subject and deny their existance. After all….”there is no evidence” ( famous PhD political spin treatment ) that these heat surviving bacteria exist…cause there have been no studies. No studies because they are intentionally not funded.
Can I puke now. If this kind of rhetoric was ever exposed to the public and the public understood what it means…there would be a serious dollar voting change. Well….News Flash. the word is out and pasteurized milk is failing. Pasteurized Yogurt and cheeses doing mostly ok….but dead milk…it is dying a terrible 100 year old death.
National Endowment for the Humanities 2012 Jefferson
Lecture.
Text:
http://www.neh.gov/about/awards/jefferson-lecture/wendell-e-berry-lecture
Video
http://events.tvworldwide.com/Events/NEH2012JeffersonLecture.aspx?VID=events/neh/120423_NEH_Jefferson_Lecture_KennedyCtr.flv&Cap=events/neh/120423_NEH_Jefferson_Lecture_KennedyCtr.xml
Blood transfusions? When you hang each unit you hope it isn’t contaminated with HIV, Hepatitis or any other disease/bacteria. It does happen, more than tptb admit. The contamination depends on many factors; the lab obtaining the blood correctly, the lab doing the cultures/testing correctly, the donner acknowledging any known/unknown discrepancies, handling/storage of the blood, time with hanging the blood, matching correctly with patient, etc. With each unit of blood infused, you increase your chances of a reaction. http://www0.nih.go.jp/JJID/62/265.pdf
Thank you for the lecture.
Ken
I pray our Country will progress towards such equitable ends.
Marietta Pellicano
“Jay Cole, former federal inspector who works with the FDA Group, says, Any food can be reconditioned.
If words are repeated enough, they will sink into peoples brains. When the masses wake up, there will be forced change.
This morning we were greeted by a white van and seven investigators and inspectors from CDFA and CA DPH. Some wearing bullet proof vests, booties, hairnets, lab coats, concealed weapons and others just being themselves. All had big smiles and good attitudes. As always…the OPDC team was welcoming, considerate and helpful.
Why the surprize official visit and the big entourage? They said that: Since January there have been 13 reported cases of campylobacter in CA. None required treatment or hospitalization. The DPH investigators told us that some of these cases where associated with Claravale and some were associated with consumption of raw milk from other sources that included Cow Shares in the Northern SF bay area . Some of the consumers had reported drinking OPDC raw milk. No recall of products….they were just on a search for a matching DNA Campylobacter….the smoking gun.
With 80% of poultry carrying campylobacter….it is everywhere. There are 7,000 cases of campylobacter reported to doctors everyday…it is a crisis. But is it really a crisis….I say…only in the minds of those that would capitalize on sterilized foods and depressed immunity.
Campylobacter is normal bacteria found in the environment and found in the intestines of mammals all over the place. It does not like exposure to oxygen and dies rapidly when exposed to air. But…with germiphobic Americans in immune depression and lacking campylobacter immunity….the focus is all on raw milk. No focus on poultry. No focus on cats and dogs and pets. Just raw milk. In fact the state has a special questionaire with OPDC and Claravale names custom printed on the headers…that is how special we are.
There is no sane person that I know that wants to entertain armed, head-to-toe covered white gloved white lab coat wearing agents that charge $100 for the honor of taking samples from every hole and every crevice of our business not to mention every other unmentionable place.
Yep…pretty secure niche we have here. This is a day in the life at OPDC. The only bad thing is that our team was totally distracted from our projects for the day and we will get a $1500 bill for inspectors we did not call for or need. Why is raw milk so expensive?….do the math.
My son always asks me….why did we not just plant almonds. It would have been so much easier and we would not have armed agents on our farm. I know why….we serve the higher moral ground of humanity and the next generation that relies on raw milk to prevent immune depression and Asthma and GERD and IBS and C-DIFF and every other immune related illness that is killing us all.
All of our products have tested perfectly and no campylobacter anywhere. It was mentioned by one of the agents that it is common for consumers to mention OPDC as their official raw milk in order to protect their illegal source of raw milk. All they need is treatment and they do not want to get their farmer in trouble….so why not just conveniently just say Claravale or OPDC. Fascinating to hear this.
Now I feel like the whipping boy.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/consumer-reports-chicken-salmonella-campylobacter-bacteria/story?id=9210116
I have added a photo Mark McAfee sent, to the end of my original post, above, showing inspectors at Organic Pastures Dairy Co.
How kind of them to blame another dairy to protect their own. I hope their karma comes back to them quickly to help them rethink that strategy.
Perhaps the agents involved might like to read an article in the January 2012 issue of Applied Environmental Microbiology 2012 Mar;78(6):1733-45. Epub 2012 Jan 13.
“Occurrence and persistence of bacterial pathogens and indicator organisms in beach sand along the California coast.”
Yamahara KM, Sassoubre LM, Goodwin KD, Boehm AB.
SourceDepartment of Civil & Environmental Engineering, Environmental Engineering & Science, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA.
This report documents the presence of fecal indicators and bacterial pathogens in sand at 53 California marine beaches using both culture-dependent and -independent (PCR and quantitative PCR [QPCR]) methods….Fecal indicators and pathogens were poorly correlated to one another and to land cover. Sands were dry at the time of collection, and those with relatively high moisture tended to have higher concentrations or a more frequent occurrence of both indicators and pathogens. ….The following order of persistence was observed (listed from most to least persistent): Campylobacter > Salmonella > somatic coliphages > enterococci > E. coli > F(+) phages……Microcosm experiments demonstrated that both indicators and pathogens were mobilized by wetting with seawater.” We could probably find similar results for most beaches around the populated areas of the world.
Campylobacter was in higher concentrations in the beach sands of Marin county and Monterey bay. Does the special questionnaire from the CDFA/CA DPH ask the affected persons if they walked along a beach sometime before their illness?
David – is there a preview post function that can be activated on this new site. The comment window is very narrow. It is difficult to proof read one’s post with so small a viewing area.
As the name implies, fecal transplant involves taking the stool of a healthy person and putting it into the colon of an infected person. The goal is to restore the natural balance of good and bad bugs in the gut and eliminate the bothersome diarrhea.
The FMT was done by colonoscopy (insertion of a lighted flexible tube into the colon), a common method, Brandt says.
Overall, however, he considers the results good news. The 91% success rate, he says, is ”terrific. Nine out of 10 people doing this succeed, and remember these are resistant cases.”
“The procedure can be carried out via enema[6], through the colonoscope[7], or through a nasogastric or nasoduodenal tube[8]”
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2012/01/whats-driving-interest-in-at-home-fecal-transplants-to-cure-disease/251793/
A scope will not get into the small intestine from the anus. Wonder how the big pharm companies will try to patent poop.
http://www.activistpost.com/2012/05/pesticide-exposure-found-to-lower.html
As if we didn’t know this already.
Now we have to deal with GMO rice with human genes being used!! Unbelievable!