When I think about the Greg Niewendorp affair, what seems to hit me first isn’t the involvement of the state police, or the irritation of the sheriff, or Greg’s tough talk, but rather it is his view that depleted soil is causing the bovine TB problem in his area of Michigan. Soil deficient in important minerals creates pasture that is similarly deficient, which leads to cattle (and deer) that are deficient—and thereby susceptible to bovine TB—in his view. (Actually, I’ve read previously of studies showing that today veggies contain fewer nutrients than those raised 50 and 100 years ago, though it wasn’t clear if the cause was depleted soil or genetically managed veggies.)
The relationships between soil, plants, animals, and humans seem so obvious as a I write this, but I think to many of us city folk, born and bred on a diet of industrialized agriculture and medicine, and its supposedly miraculous seeds and drugs and instrumentation, the notion that something as fundamental as depleted soil could be at the heart of the bovine TB problem, along with other nutritional problems, is nothing short of astounding. As I’ve written before, Greg has compensated for the depletion by providing his animals with mineral supplements.
Two factors account for my astonishment. (And here’s my industrial agriculture mind at work):
First, there is a disconnect in our (nonfarm) minds between plants, animals and people. It doesn’t occur to us that if animals are deficient, then they are susceptible to disease, just like people are. It stands to reason also that the meat and milk such nutritionally deficient animals produce will be deficient, or pathogenic. And if such products are treated via pasteurization or irradiation, well, they will be even more deficient.
Second, there is this faith in the scientific-health establishment. If they say it’s pathogens that are at fault, and all we have to do is wipe out the pathogens, well, they should know. That also feeds further into the disconnect—the pathogens are made to seem separate from the animals and people—“invaders.” Never mind that the science is bought and paid for by the businesses that stand most to benefit from this perception.
I’m going to take this idea a little further, based on some of the comments in response to my posting about the raw-milk-NAIF issues not falling neatly into liberal-conservative labeling.
I am coming to the realization that a divide is emerging in American society over health and nutrition. On one side are the vast majority of Americans, who live primarily on processed foods, for their convenience and salty or sweet taste; these individuals, if they worry at all, worry mainly about limiting fat and cholesterol. They retain faith that medical technology or miracle drugs will make them well if they get sick. To them, people like Greg Niewendorp are wackos, pure and simple.
On the other side are the rapidly growing numbers of people who have concluded that their health is linked inextricably to consuming unprocessed whole foods that strengthen their immune systems, and to avoiding Big Pharma and Big Medicine as much as possible. These individuals may not have bought completely into things that Greg is preaching, but they are at least open to hearing about them.
I’m not sure where this all goes, politically speaking, since the inexorable trend has been toward what Dave Milano describes as “a people nurtured by a maternal government and paternalist businesses.” More troubling is that the divide looks to be increasingly divisive, given the growing numbers of examples of abusive behavior by the governmental authorities toward the producers of the unprocessed foods.
Just look at the CNN report that came out last week (http://www.cnn.com/2007/HEALTH/diet.fitness/08/27/obesity.study/index.html?iref=newssearch) indicating that two-thirds of U.S. adults are obese or overweight, according to the fourth annual report from the Trust for America’s Health. That’s the myth of cheap food at work, hopefully entering it’s final phase! How much longer can the country continue to operate when there are more unwell people than healthy people? How much longer can our health insurance premiums continue to increase 7% to 15% a year before they are finally financially un-affordable?
We can break the cycle by simply walking away from the grocery store, recognizing the myth of cheap food and frequenting local farms and farmer’s markets. One of my favorite quotes is by Buckminister Fuller – "You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete." That’s exactly what we are doing – resurrecting an older paradigm that produces good health and satisfying food. I moderate a couple of Yahoo groups and about once a week I get inquiries from people around Ohio who are looking for raw milk or traditional foods, and I direct them to the nearest herdshare or WAPF chapter. I believe that more and more people will recognize the benefits of our positive feedback loop – slightly more expensive traditional foods lead to good health, healthy and developmentally-superior children and ultimately lower to non-existent medical costs, which ultimately produces more demand for raw milk and farm foods.
content.nejm.org/cgi/content/full/357/10/960?query=TOC
Here are a few quotes from her book that touch on the topic David is talking about regarding modern medicine.
I have to laugh when people ask me if I do alternative, herbal, acupuncture, or holistic medicine. No, I reply. We do state-of-the-art medicine. In other words we find the biochemical, nutritional and environmental causes and cures rather than blindly drugging everything. Sure, herbs are gentler, safer and more physiologic than drugs, acupuncture opens blocked meridians, and holistic attempts to incorporate many diverse non-medical modalities, etc. But there is no substitute for finding the underlying biochemical causes and cures. This is real medicine. This is where medicine should and would have been decades ago, if it had not been abducted by the pharmaceutical industry.
Over 87% of physician experts who write the treatment guidelines (dictating for physicians how they should treat every disease) receive some compensation from the pharmaceutical industry.
If you remember nothing else about the gut, remember this: The intestinal lining houses not only half of the immune system for the whole body, but also half of the detoxification system.
It is no small coincidence that hormone damaging chemicals are everywhere and that breast and prostate cancers are on the rise, and thyroid is the third most commonly prescribed drug in the U.S.
There is no such thing as diseases of aging. Disease merely results from undiagnosed nutrient deficiencies and bioaccumulation of environmental chemicals to the point of symptom production.
If we are lucky, when the total load of environmental pollutants exceeds the detoxification ability of the individual, only minor symptoms or disease results. This is a gift: a golden opportunity to nip it in the bud. Clearly any symptom is a God given opportunity to reduce the total body burden or total load of environmental and dietary triggers in order to turn back the hands of time and bring about a cure at the same time.
Because environmental poisons overwhelm our ability to detoxify them, they slowly accumulate. How high the total body burden or total load of chemicals gets, determines how fast we will go downhill with disease. How much are you exposed to, how protective your diet is in antioxidants, and how strong your detoxification system is determines how fast and how many of these unwanted chemicals you can harbor without showing any symptoms. We dont get cancer or a heart attack overnight. We spend our whole lives stockpiling for it.
One other comment. I worked in molecular biology from 1975-1997, spending 18 years as a laboratory director/Senior Scientist for a large pharma company. My lab was involved in parasitology research. We discovered the genetic mutation that conferred resistance to a wide class of drugs (benzimidazoles) in parasitic nematodes of sheep. We used the DNA from the mutated gene to show on DNA isolated from single worms-quite an education picking worms out from the innards of ruminants- that all sheep herds harbored a subpopulation of worms carrying the mutation. Of interest was the observation that sheep-even with dense populations- raised using pasture rotation and good husbandry developed immunity to worms and could control the natural levels of infection. Herds raised in confinement, and subject to reinfection, were heavily burdened, had limited immunity, and had to be subject to drug therapies to control parasites-these herds had high populations of resistant worms through drug selection. The confinement animals also were subject to other respiratory diseases. Moreover, they just looked unhealthy. One colleague said something like,"Yep, unhealthy animals are just….unhealthy." He also said that "Drugs are for making and not for taking," noy a popular philosophy at a major pharmaceutical company.
There is much to be said for good husbandry practices, nurturing the earth, and appreciating that our existence is dependent on a few inches of living soil