5.5.14
Why Walmart Is a Threat to Organic Food
It’s wishful thinking. Alarm bells should be ringing now that Walmart is going organic. One Walmart executive explains it will “disrupt” the organic market by reducing inefficiencies and encouraging consolidation. Lower prices for consumers mean fewer organic farmers, declining farm incomes and agricultural wages, and remaining farmers will be forced to industrialize further to produce more goods at lower prices.
Walmart is so powerful it’s been termed a “monosopy,” meaning it can set prices for vendors.
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5.4.14
5 Dangerous Substances Big Ag Pumps Into Your Meat
The 2014 Dirty Dozen Produce List
Here’s the entire list of the Dirty Dozen, the 12 conventionally grown fruits and vegetables found to have the highest pesticide load.
- Apples
- Strawberries
- Grapes
- Celery
- Peaches
- Spinach
- Sweet bell peppers
- Nectarines – imported
- Cucumbers
- Cherry tomatoes
- Snap peas – imported
- Potatoes
EWG analyzed the pesticide tests of 48 popular domestic and imported fruits and vegetables. The results for domestic and imported nectarines, blueberries and snap peas had sharply different results, so they appear on the list twice. The full 2014 Shopper’s Guide to Pesticide list is on EWG’s website.
80 percent of non-organic U.S. apples contain harmful chemical that is banned in Europe |
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3.10.14
9 Million Lbs. of “Diseased and Unsound” Meat May Have Reached 35 States, Says USDA
Melissa Melton
Activist Post
Petaluma, California’s Rancho Feeding Corporation recalled 8,742,700 pounds of meat products in February after the USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) determined that the meat came from uninspected, “diseased and unsound” animals.
“Thus, the products are adulterated, because they are unsound, unwholesome or otherwise are unfit for human food and must be removed from commerce,” FSIS concluded.
The massive recall resulted in Nestlé voluntarily recalling a bunch of its Philly Steak & Cheese variety of Hot Pockets.
On February 8th, FSIS updated its official statement “to reflect that beef products associated with recall 13 were shipped to distribution centers and retail establishments in California, Florida, Illinois, Oregon, Texas and Washington.”
Now the USDA is saying this diseased and unsound meat may have reached as far as 35 states and Guam.
Thousands of retailers have been added to a list of companies that could have received beef products from the producer, Rancho Feeding Corp., since the February recall, the USDA said.
“The retail list has been growing as more customers have been notified,” USDA spokesman Adam Tarr told CNN Friday. “The list could expand.”
The USDA will continue to update the list so that the affected products can be removed from commerce, he said. (source)
See Related:
State of the Farm and Water Report for California; “It’s Just Not There.”
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2.28.14
Slaughterhouse woes go beyond just cancerous cattle though high end beef cattleman insist inspection was done daily by USDA
A top food safety official suggested Friday to North Bay ranchers that the “deception” by operators at a Petaluma slaughterhouse will take a long time to unravel and could make it impossible to remove the ranchers’ high-end meats from a massive recall.
The investigation of diseased and unsound animals at Rancho Feeding Corporation involves more than cows with eye cancer, as previously reported, the official from the U.S. Department of Agriculture was quoted as saying. He also reportedly said the Rancho recall involves 44,000 establishments around the nation, a figure far higher than can be confirmed from the USDA’s website.
Some who attended or were briefed about Friday’s meeting said the bar has been set extremely high for those ranchers trying to persuade the USDA that their grass-fed cattle were healthy and that the meat processed from those animals at Rancho remains fit for human consumption. The federal regulators appear so uncertain about all that went on at the slaughterhouse that they may be unable to conclude that the meat was left untainted and not tampered with.
The USDA repeatedly has refused to comment on most aspects of the recall or on the various federal investigations, but congressman Jared Huffman, D-San Rafael, has said that the U.S. Attorney’s Office is conducting a criminal probe.
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“Control the food and you control the people.”
Dr. Henry Kissinger
And quick as you can say “Solyent Green”…..and because technology has a fix for every problem they created for perpetual profiting, the Global monster “Do No Evil” firm called “Google” is seriously getting into the artificial meat creating business:
“The man who has bankrolled the production of the world’s first lab-grown hamburger has been revealed as Google co-founder Sergey Brin
The internet entrepreneur has backed the project to the tune of €250,000 (£215,000), allowing scientists to grow enough meat in the lab to create a burger – as a proof of concept – that will be cooked and eaten in London on Monday. It’s really just proof of concept right now, we’re trying to create the first cultured beef hamburger,” said Brin in a film to mark the tasting event in London. ‘From there I’m optimistic that we can really scale by leaps and bounds.’
The synthetic meat hamburger will be cooked and eaten at an event this afternoon. Among the tasters will be the Chicago-based author of Taste of Tomorrow, Josh Schonwald, and an Austrian food trends researcher, Hanni Rützler of the Future Food Studio”. (source)
3.7.14
New H5N8 Avian Influenza Penetrated Biosecurity Defenses at Korea’s Premier Poultry Research Center
3.1.14
Henry Kissinger’s 1974 Plan for Food Control … – Schiller Institute
On Dec. 10, 1974, the U.S. National Security Council under Henry Kissinger completed a classified 200-page study, “National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.” The study falsely claimed that population growth in the so-called Lesser Developed Countries (LDCs) was a grave threat to U.S. national security. Adopted as official policy in November 1975 by President Gerald Ford, NSSM 200 outlined a covert plan to reduce population growth in those countries through birth control, and also, implicitly, war and famine. Brent Scowcroft, who had by then replaced Kissinger as national security adviser (the same post Scowcroft was to hold in the Bush administration), was put in charge of implementing the plan. CIA Director George Bush was ordered to assist Scowcroft, as were the secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and agriculture.
USDA February 19th….the recall goes back a year for all pocket pizzas and other byproduct meats they use in conventional fast food sold to the masses
Hot Pockets recalled for Containing ‘Diseased and Unsound Animals’
According to an official release from the USDA:
Rancho Feeding Corporation, a Petaluma, Calif. establishment, is recalling approximately 8,742,700 pounds, because it processed diseased and unsound animals and carried out these activities without the benefit or full benefit of federal inspection. Thus, the products are adulterated, because they are unsound, unwholesome or otherwise are unfit for human food and must be removed from commerce, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today.
Folks, PLEASE: buy your food as locally sourced as humanly possible, make friends with your local produce vendors, and get back into slow cooking, to protect yourselves and those you care about as much as possible.
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USDA February 28th
(this article is bullshit. They cite “officials, sources and federal investigation says…”. Did all cows get cancer? How did they know, did they have a vet test each one and then butcher it. This is about putting small food producers and processors out of business pure and simple and is happening across the nation and globe as central planning consolidates and perfects its control of our food and water systems.
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California drought a ‘train wreck’ for Central Valley farms
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Our Brave New World of sickly Beef supply.
Is giving treated wastewater to livestock legal?
California’s drought is prompting a statewide push to let ranchers use treated wastewater for slaking the thirst of livestock, sparking health concerns and widespread confusion over whether current regulations already allow the practice.
Assemblyman Marc Levine, D-San Rafael, has introduced legislation that he said would allow ranchers to legally use treated wastewater as drinking water for cows, horses, sheep and other farm animals for the first time in California.
Levine said the state Department of Public Health, which he said has authority over the practice, has never approved a single such request.
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Source: Investigators think Rancho Feeding sold beef from cows with cancer
Federal law forbids meat from diseased cows from being sold for human consumption.
The source said the USDA discovered a crucial piece of evidence when an investigator followed a Rancho truck from Petaluma to a meat rendering plant near Sacramento. Inside were cow heads that didn’t match carcasses, the source said.
Robert Singleton, who owns Rancho with partner Jesse “Babe” Amaral, declined Wednesday to discuss the allegations.
“I cannot comment,” he said.
The slaughterhouse, which closed Feb. 9, is at the center of an international recall of all beef and veal produced at the plant in 2013, some 8.7 million pounds of meat. No illnesses linked to the meat have been reported. The company is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the USDA’s inspector general and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
The USDA has said the plant is under investigation for “intermittent circumvention” of the inspection process, which involves repeated examinations of the animal from the time it leaves the truck at the slaughterhouse through its death and processing.
A criminal investigation into Rancho Feeding Corporation is examining allegations the Petaluma plant slaughtered cows with cancer and illegally sold the carcasses as healthy meat, according to a source with knowledge of the probe.
“Basically, Rancho had figured out a way to sell meat for profit that they would otherwise have had to destroy,” said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Federal investigators believe the heads of cows with eye cancer were cut off, apparently to remove evidence, the source said. Meat from the diseased cows was then mingled with healthy meat and sold under the Rancho brand, the source said.
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Bolinas rancher Bill Niman has thousands of pounds of frozen beef in a Richmond warehouse he cannot sell after the recall of meat processed by Rancho Feeding Corp. in Petaluma. Niman maintains a breeding herd on his southern Point Reyes ranch. (John Burgess / PD)
The financial damage to North Bay ranchers — many of them raising high-end, grass-fed beef — makes the Rancho case rare among meat recalls, experts said. And to date no one has revealed such potentially huge losses as the Nimans.
The Bolinas couple, who started BN Ranch in 2007, said their company’s freezers contain nearly 100,000 pounds of pasture-raised meats, none of which currently can be sold. That amounts to more than a quarter of all the meat they processed last year at Rancho.
BN customers have returned another $40,000 worth of meat that can’t be resold. Niman said a Rancho owner told him the slaughterhouse isn’t liable for that loss.
“We’re the ones taking a big hit on this,” said Niman, 69, who also founded Niman Ranch in the early 1970s and is widely considered one of the early leaders in humane and sustainable meat production. He since has severed ties with the Alameda-based meat company that still bears his name.
The couple said the losses may put them out of business. They have asked the U.S. Department of Agriculture to review documents showing that BN managers or Niman himself were at Rancho with USDA inspectors every time their animals were killed and processed.
Must Read: State of the Farm and Water Report for California; “It’s Just Not There.”
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and the trickle down result of the Fed action that will now happen throughout each and every county in CA
Mendo’s Secret Water Meeting
This past Monday, elected officials and public services staff people from throughout inland Mendocino County met with at least five of the State of California’s highest ranking regulatory officials who deal with water issues. It was heralded as a “listening session” regarding a topic foremost on everyone’s minds in Mendo-land: the drought.
The ‘listening session,’ which took place at the Ukiah Valley Conference Center on School St., actually involved ‘listening’ only to a carefully-selected and well-placed group of people, by a carefully-selected and well-placed group of people, for a carefully-selected and well-placed group of people (in the grand spirit of American democracy). The meeting was not publicly advertised. Those not on the 100 person-or-so invite list were prohibited from attending.
Apparently, the “listening session” is part of a “listening tour” whereby these same high-ranking officials will blow through numerous California towns, receive oft-contrived statements from local officials about the water problems local residents face and how they are addressing them. If Monday’s proceedings in Ukiah are an indication, the officials will also pause long enough at each stop to issue a handful of generic statements designed to garner platitudes from the corporate press about how much they care about us and admire our resilience in the face of adversity.
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“When farmers cannot irrigate their land, their workers lose their jobs and local economies suffer. Some never recover,” said California State Grange President Bob McFarland. “Much of the world relies on the excellent produce and nuts grown in California, and our water should be used to grow this food and feed people, not wasted in a toxic extraction process to produce oil to be shipped overseas.”
California Farmers Demand Fracking Moratorium in Worst Drought in History
With drought jeopardizing California agriculture, farmers across the state urge Governor Brown to place a moratorium on water-intensive fracking.
California farmers, grappling with a record drought that’s parching their fields and livelihoods, call on Governor Jerry Brown to place a moratorium on the water-intensive extreme oil and gas extraction process known as hydraulic fracturing, or fracking. Yesterday afternoon, Shafter almond farmer Tom Frantz, California State Grange President Bob McFarland and Monterey County vintner Paula Getzelman of Tre Gatti Vineyards delivered a petition to Governor Brown’s office signed by 145 California farmers calling for a moratorium on fracking.
“Water is the lifeblood of a farm — without clean, affordable water we cannot grow food,” said the Shafter almond farmer Tom Frantz, who caught on video the illegal dumping of fracking wastewater in an unlined pit next to an almond orchard. “This drought has already put many of California’s small and midsized farms on the brink. To allow fracking on some of California’s most fertile agricultural land will further devastate California’s bucolic heritage. I don’t think this is the legacy that Governor Brown wants to leave behind.”
The farmers were joined by Jerome Waag, head chef of the legendary Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, to deliver a fracking moratorium petition signed by 171 chefs, restaurateurs, brewers, purveyors, retailers and winemakers from across California, including some of the most celebrated chefs in the world such as Alice Waters, Stuart Brioza, Chris Cosentino, Dominique Crenn, Suzanne Goin, Joyce Goldstein, Daniel Patterson and Annie Somerville.
California’s drought is particularly devastating to the state’s farmers who grow the bulk of America’s fruits, vegetables and nuts, especially those in the primarily agricultural Central Valley. The State Water Project recently announced that it would be cutting off water deliveries for the first time in its 54-year history, and the federal government announced last week that farmers should expect to receive no water from the Central Valley Project. Additionally, the price for water has increased tenfold, from $135 an acre-foot last year to $1,350 an acre-foot in the second week of February.
TABU; Towards A Better Understanding 