There is currently a bill before the house of congress called the food safety and modernization act. Now depending on who you ask this bill is for the benefit of different groups. Purportedly it is to benefit all of the consumer citizens of the United States to protect us from unsafe foods and outbreaks of disease such as the recent salmonella scare. My gut instinct tells me different. I fear that this bill is to further centralize corporate power for big Agribusiness. In the way that governmental oversight will exert undo pressure on small cottage farming industry and producers of supposed “unsafe foods” such as raw cheese, raw milk, and organic non-irradiated meats and vegetables. This bill is under review for the next two weeks by congress before the Christmas recess. If the bill becomes law only time will tell if my gut instinct is correct, however by then it will be too late. If you are in favor of less government control over what you put on your dinner table and are in favor of eating “unsafe” foods such as raw cheese, raw milk, and local produce like I am, then I urge you to contact your state congressman NOW.
With that I will leave you with a passage from the Book Nasty Brutish and Short?
The first happy lesson gleaned from a study of traditional diets is that healthy food can and should taste good; that we can put butter on our porridge and cook in lard, that it’s ok to consume whole milk, fatty meats liver and onions, shrimp and lobster even insects, if you like to: That heavenly sauces made from bone broth and cream confer more benefits than pills and powders and ersatz low-fat concoctions, the stepchildren of technology, pawned off as health foods.
Wisely used, technology can take the drudgery out of cooking, and help us bring properly grown and prepared foods to the marketplace. Wrongly used, technology produces breads that are soft and sweet rather than sour and chewy; coca-cola rather than cottage industry lacto fermented brews, bouillon cubes rather than homemade broth; sugar embalmed ketchup with infinite shelf life rather than enzyme rich condiments and pickles preserved to last a few months in a way that adds nutrients, instead of taking them away.
The second lesson is that healthy eating is good for the ecology. The building blocks of a healthy diet are pesticide-free foods raised on a mineral-rich soil, and healthy animals that live free to manure the paddocks of thousands of farms, rather than suffer in factories, confined to misery and disease. The road to health starts with a willingness to pay a good price for such food, thus rewarding the farmer who preserves the land through wise farming practices, rather than the agribusiness that mines the soil for quick profits.