Get Angry, Get Informed, & then get yourself cooking...

I'm just a bit curious why folks aren't angry at the quality of our food supply. Too many either laugh off the concern as nothing more than a hippified leftie playing canary in the coal mine; OR too many are more sidetracked with protests about What War We're in Today. Or, the rest simply ignore it all & pretend it's not happening.

Just because you don't know your beef comes from a CAFO & you don't know what a CAFO is, doesn't mean it ain't happening. (CAFO= Concentrated Animal Feeding Operation)

We're in the biggest fight for our life, folks: a war over what we eat.

We can protest Iraq & Afghanistan all we want. Those are things we, currently, have not much say in & when we go to peace marches we're just sending the wrong message to our Troops who deserve our support & NOTHING ELSE. You should have marched BEFORE. Shake your head & disagree with the politics-- I do, but I won't say a word against our Troops. Hate me if you want.

Then there are those tea-baggers. The folks who claim "I voted for the American" & those who threaten their own party with the likes of Sarah Palin & Ron Paul. Those nit-wits should be picketing Monsanto-- NOT the GOP. Now, I'm no fan of Newt Gingrich (who didn't even know that the bloody shoe bomber Richard Reid ISN'T an American, but a Brit)-- but, last I checked, didn't he pose questions to Monsanto before Clinton allowed them to introduce GMOs into our food supply? Maybe Gingrich wasn't concerned with the impact on our food & health, maybe he was more concerned with undermining a nice & cozy relationship the Clintons had with Monsanto; after all wasn't Hillary's law firm involved with the chemical giant? But the point is, he questioned them when no one else did.

The tea-baggers don't care about us. They care about BIG BUSINESS & the FREE MARKET. Well the free market got you GMOs & mercury in your food. Thank you, but no thanks. The Free Market has created a society where the Chemical Company becomes the Food Industry Giant who hands over a plethora of 'customers' to the Health Insurance Industry. What's better for these Corporate Giants, a society of healthy Americans who eat seasonal food, take responsible care of themselves & their country, OR a legion of unhealthy, overweight, diabetically inclined HFCS addicts? When we can't see ourselves making a change for our own health-- do it for your kids. Who wants a nation of diabetics with behavioral problems?

Those peace marches & tea protests serve to distract us from one thing: who is really controlling our nation.

We need to wake up & READ our fraking food labels. Inform yourself. Don't trust that just because it says Natural that it's Natural-- or because it reads Organic it means organic. (Do a search on Horizon --the nation's leading producer of Organic Milk--& you'll see they're no better than what you get in your supermarket, only double the money; they use feedlots, CAFOs, & hormones AND HFCS is listed as a "natural" ingredient...really? caustic soda (the mercury contaminated element in making the stuff) is natural?)

Granted, it took me over 3 hours, but I searched on all our major food brands-- from eggs to milk to sugar-- & got info on where my food comes from & what's in it.

I'm looking for recipes to make my own food-- when in the past I'd just buy something ready-made because it seemed easier. But, what's easier, really? Buying a package of throat drops that contain HFCS or throwing some honey & water in a pot, & essentially making lozenges the old fashioned way?

I'm not telling everyone to be Martha Stewart, just be informed & realize that the "easy" way out, isn't really that easy.

Nuff ranting for now.
~Jessie

Food Fascism, Monsanto, and Hillary Clinton= the Death of Organic Farming by Jessica Burke

Editors Note: This was originally posted as a Facebook Note July 5th 2009
Anthony & I were just made aware that HR 875 & S425-- bills that endeavor to control contamination in our Nation's food supply-- both being introduced to Congress this year-- will effectively force Organic Farmers, small-time growers, and even private citizens with their own gardens, into industrialized farming. Organic Farming will become illegal. Violators of these bills will face $500,000 in fines AND up to 10 YEARS in prison. And, I think that's FEDERAL prison since raising organically grown food would then be in violation of FEDERAL LAW.

And, the very notion that Hillary Clinton was in Monsanto's pocket; put this horror of a bill in motion has made it almost impossible to breathe. I knew that Bill Clinton introduced rGBH & GMOs but, that Hillary Clinton's centralized food safety department-- what she thumped on the campaign trail-- would essentially be Monsanto putting their hands into OUR pantries and OUR Gardens is even more horrifying... on a variety of levels. This, in many respects is even more upsetting and more shocking for EVERYONE than what's going on in Iran, or North Korea, or even with our economy. Our food is a direct link to our health. To force small growers & organic farmers into industrial farming is to force more people to the unemployment line. These bills will KILL many small businesses that have thrived on an organic lifestyle. These bills will affect the health of millions of us now, and millions of us in the future. GMO's are killing agriculture as we know it and are producing food with next-to-no nutritional value. In an attempt to eradicate food contamination, these bills will eradicate the ONLY forms of food production that produce NON CONTAMINATED FOOD. It's not enough that Swine Flu has been traced to an industrialized pig farm? Or that the e-coli in our tomato crops may be linked to sewage sludge used as fertilizer? Now, we'll be forcefed Monsanto's chemical stores through our food, and possibly jailed for growing basil and thyme on the terrace.

These bills takes away our freedom and hands our dinner tables over to big business. And, not just big business in general (because folks have been eating Baconaise and Sausage/Pancake rolls on a stick for some time), but ONE business: Monsanto. They are the nation's leading pesticide & industrial food chemical co. I also recall reading that they have their hands in industrial animal rearing (all those tasty antibiotics), GMO's, rGBH, pesticides, and on and on. I thought our nation had Anti-Trust laws...

Read all about it here: Linn Cohen-Cole's article "THe New York Times Misses a coup over organic farming set in motion by Hillary Clinton." It's even scarier that it dates from February.

Write your congress representatives & sentators. Write the President. If you value good food-- those Dems, Republicans, Indies, EVERYONE who wants to know where his or her food COMES FROM-- and not just the liberal, hippie tree huggers (of which I am one, like you didn't know)...but everyone who values their personal freedom-- FIGHT THIS BILL.

Here are links to the bills themselves:

H 875

S 425

The shocking thing shouldn't be boiled down to political affiliations. It should be boiled down to a violation of freedom. Growing your own food-- unhindered by toxins-- is as fundamental a HUMAN right as breathing.

Of course, if you prefer Baconaise &; Sausage/Pancake rolls on a stick, then feel free to move onto the edge of the cliff with the other lemmings.