At a ceremony at the White House on Tuesday, First Lady Michelle Obama announced the launch of the ‘Let’s Move’ campaign to end childhood obesity in the United States, an epidemic she said is costly and a threat to national security.

“A recent study put the health care cost of obesity-related diseases at $147 billion a year,” Mrs. Obama said. “This epidemic also impacts the nation’s security, as obesity is now one of the most common disqualifiers for military service.” (Read more from cnsnews.com)

There is no idea more un-American than the idea of a draft — the notion that my life is a tool for the ambitions of government. The first lady’s comment smacks of the same tyrannical idea.

Listen to the pretty blonde lady at the end. The logic of government subsidized medicine leads seamlessly into government control of our diets.

In a study released by the International Journal of Biological Sciences, analyzing the effects of genetically modified foods on mammalian health, researchers found that agricultural giant Monsanto’s GM corn is linked to organ damage in rats.

. . . .

Monsanto gathered its own crude statistical data after conducting a 90-day study, even though chronic problems can rarely be found after 90 days, and concluded that the corn was safe for consumption. The stamp of approval may have been premature, however. (Read more from huffingtonpost.com)

This story is interesting because of how different political ideologies interpret it. The socialists call ‘corruption’ and say we need stricter enforcement, righteous people working at the FDA, severe punishments, and in general, more government.

Libertarians like me agree that this is corruption, but point out that corruption is inevitable when government has a monopoly on approving foods. More liberty is the answer. Here are some suggestions:

· Make it legal for milk producers to label their milk rBGH-free, or artificial-hormone free, etc. The consumers will ultimately decide.

· Do NOT pass the “food safety” legislation for which Monsanto is so vigorously lobbying. All it will do is cut down on competition.

· Legalize competition with the FDA. Dozens of private food approval organizations will arise. For example the Organic Foods Consumer Association, would resume certifying food as organic. Food producers will strive to get approval of the most trusted ones. The consumer will ultimately decide.

The righteousness of government bureaucrats will fail us every time. Freedom works best.

Over, and over. Regulation doesn’t protect us. It eliminates competition for big businesses.

Shana Milkie and her husband Pete Crusbach pay a little extra for a gallon of milk.

“It works out to the equivalent of $7 a gallon for the milk,” says Milkie.

Shana and Pete and their three children all drink unpasteurized milk, often called raw milk. That means it’s unprocessed. The milk goes from cow to cup.

“From about here up is cream so we shake it up before we drink it to mix up the cream and the skim milk,” says Milkie.

Since they started drinking raw milk 6 years ago they’ve seen an improvement in their overall health. Not enough to pin entirely on milk, but Pete says it’s definitely a factor. He says it tastes better too.

“Once you’re used to the taste of raw milk, you taste pasteurized milk, it will taste burnt. It tastes horrible,” says Crusbach.

Ted Beals is a pathologist trained at the University of Michigan and an advocate for raw milk. He says pasteurizing milk might make it safer to drink, but it also kills all the good stuff.

“This milk actually has beneficial bacteria in it,” says Beals, “Fairly large numbers of them and those are essentially all killed off by pasteurization.”

In 1948, Michigan became the first state to require that milk be pasteurized before it can be sold in stores. Pasteurization heats milk to about 140 degrees, which kills off harmful bacteria. The process is backed up by government health organizations.

Casey Barton Behravesh is with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Chances of raw milk being contaminated are much higher than for pasteurized milk so avoiding raw milk is your best option,” says Behravesh.

The CDC, the Food and Drug Administration, and the Michigan Department of Agriculture all say raw milk is unsafe for human consumption. The only legal way to buy raw milk in Michigan is through what’s called a cow share program. Customers pay for a portion of a herd and can then buy the milk. Richard Hebron runs a cow share program with the Family Farms co-op in Vandalia, MI.

In October of 2006, Hebron was stopped by the state police while delivering raw milk.

“Pulled over by a state police officer. And was accompanied by the MDA. And then we were escorted to a rest stop where they searched the truck and took all the contents,” says Hebron.

Hebron was never charged with a crime, but he was fined 1,000 dollars for transporting raw dairy across state lines. Ted Beals admits there are risks to drinking raw milk.

. . . .

“You can’t belittle the fact that there are people that might get sick from unpasteurized milk,” says Ted Beals, “But from a public health point of view the relative risk doesn’t make any sense at all.”

It’s impossible to study possible health benefits of raw milk because the FDA considers it a dangerous food. Most raw milk drinkers believe that buying unprocessed milk is the right of an informed consumer. And they believe the benefits are worth the risk. (Read more from publicbroadcasting.net)

The administration has not produced a full-fledged plan to meet that objective, but White House and Agriculture officials said in recent interviews that they are developing policies. Among the first is a decision to use $85 million freed up by Congress as part of a recent appropriations bill to experiment with ways to get food to more children during the summer, when subsidzed school breakfasts and lunches are unavailable. The government’s next significant forum for debating how to improve access to food is scheduled for the coming year, when Congress is to renew the country’s main law covering food and nutrition for children. Meantime, the White House has been convening frequent meetings with officials from several federal departments — including Education, Health and Human Services, Housing and Urban Development, in addition to Agriculture — that deal with youngsters’ well-being. (Read more from washingtonpost.com)

Here’s a crazy fucking idea: How about stop arresting people who want to grow and sell their own food???

-A state agent from the Ohio Department of Agriculture pressured the Stowerses to “sell” him a dozen eggs, then returned with a SWAT team to detain the family’s children and confiscate food supplies.

-The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund

The word for this is protectionism:

Late last week, Maryland’s Dairy Industry Oversight and Advisory Council sent three recommendations to Governor Martin O’Malley. The council is charged with developing recommendations for the Governor on ways to improve the economic viability of Maryland’s struggling dairy sector.

The recommendations are:

* Fully fund the Maryland Dairy Farmer Emergency Trust Fund as soon as it’s fiscally possible;
* Establish uniform gross weight limit rules for raw milk haulers on state and federal highways;
* Not allow the sale of raw milk in the state.
(Read more from americanagriculturist.com)

A lawsuit brought by an Ohio family whose children were held at SWAT-team gunpoint while their food supplies were confiscated is scheduled to go to trial this week.

John and Jackie Stowers are suing the Ohio Department of Agriculture and the Lorain County General Health District over the raid on their “Manna Storehouse,” an organic food co-op that operated in LaGrange.

The Stowerses and their 10 children and grandchildren were detained in one room of their home for six hours while sheriff’s officers confiscated 60 boxes of fresh farm food, computers, phones and records, including USDA-certified meat from the children’s mini-farm, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs.

The state and county are accused of 119 counts, including unlawful search and seizure, illegal use of state police power, taking of private property without compensation, failure to provide due process and equal protection and a multitude of constitutional rights violations, including the right to grow and eat one’s own food and offer it to others.

. . . .

At that time, a state agent from the Ohio Department of Agriculture pressured the Stowerses to “sell” him a dozen eggs, then returned with a SWAT team to detain the family’s children and confiscate food supplies. (Read more from www.wnd.com)

I’ve been paying more attention to Food Freedom issues. Food Freedom is interesting because, like the War on Drugs, it’s an issue where the hippie, I-♥-socialism crowd agrees with the liberty crowd. We agree on the problems, but, unsurprisingly, recommend exact opposite solutions.

Last month, I watched The World According to Monsanto, which is available for free online in ten parts:

The movie presents very strong evidence i.m.o. that genetically modified (GM) foods got a pass from the F.D.A.’s testing despite indications that they caused health problems. Scientists in the U.S. and Britain lost their jobs for insisting on publishing findings suggestive of the dangers of GM foods.

Shelly Roche makes the case against GM foods in this short video:

It also seems that Big Media (surprise, surprise) has been complicit in suppressing the dangers of GM foods. During last year’s epidemic killing honey bee the mainstream press unanimously ignored the possibility of GM foods killing the bees, even when speculating about long lists of possible causes.

Fox “News” spiked the Monsanto story and fired a pair of journalists:

Anyway, back to the documentary. I could imagine the socialists in the audience saying “We need more rules! We need better rules! We need stronger government!” This is the socialist approach to everything — the force of government.

In fact, government is not our protector from powerful companies like Monsanto. Government is their enabler through the granting of privilege and elimination of competition. This has always been the case. More than anything else, realizing this made me a libertarian. Government doesn’t protect me from the powerful, it protects the powerful and grants them privileges.

To my socialist friends, I would point out:

- Monsanto has written seed laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in terms of fees and paperwork that having normal seed becomes almost impossible. (source) More freedom would legalize competition.

- Much legislation is designed to cut down on Monsanto’s competition:

More freedom would legalize competition.

- Obama has put a former Monsanto vice president in charge of America’s food safety: Obama appoints Monsanto fox to guard food safety hen house.

- In much of the country, it is illegal to label milk “hormore free” or “rbgh free”. (source) Again, more freedom would legalize competition.

The failures detailed in The World According to Monsanto, and evident elsewhere suggest to my libertarian mind that we should get rid of the F.D.A.. Government is incapable of regulating something so important with such incentive for corruption. Private organizations like the Organic Consumer Association would do a much better job, and we would have the liberty to decide for ourselves whom to trust. Private organizations will believe in their cause and be passionate about it.

What am I personally doing about my food? I joined my local co-op, which helps me avoid GMOs, at least in my groceries.

Want more advice? Top 4 Ways to Identify & Avoid Genetically Modified Foods:

1. Look at the PLU sticker on fruit.

• 4 digits = conventionally grown
• 5 digits beginning with 9 = organic
• 5 digits beginning with 8 = GM

2. Buy local and talk to your farmers. (85% of prepackaged/processed foods contain GMOs)
3. Avoid the four top GMO crops: soy, corn, canola & cotton seed.
4. Encourage “GMO free” labeling. (which, I think, is illegal)

At first I struggled to understand everything Vandana Shiva was saying.

At about 7:30, she dismissed the idea of seeds being intellectual property. Regardless of whether or not I agree with her, I think she oversimplifies it. Monsanto genetically modified seeds to make them grow certain chemicals in them which kill harmful insects. So, there was some intellectual innovation. This issue is covered in today’s other post.

11:00 – The Austrian Economist in me cringeD when she suggests Monsanto’s seeds are causing crop failures, because I thought she was suggesting that government needs to keep farmers from using them? If the seeds are unproductive, the free market would remove them from use.

20:00 – Here and elsewhere she talks about the destructiveness of new technologies. I remained confused about this, as the free market would get rid of harmful technologies.

The first glimpse of evil I comes at 24:00, when she talks about an agreement between U.S. and Indian governments and Monsanto, but I’m confused again at 26:30. If organic farmers are 10x more productive, why are their neighbors still using Monsanto seeds? The free market is the best arbiter of ideas.

The heart of the problem finally becomes clear at 36:00. The Indian government seems to be preventing farmers from saving seeds. She says “there is no need for state regulation.” Okay. Now I’m with her. Like all regulation, the Indian government’s seed regulation is an attempt to eliminate competition for big companies, in this case Monsanto, by preventing farmers from saving seeds.

From 36:00 until she finishes her talk at 43:00, she speaks about seeds from a freedom perspective.

“If we don’t have seed for nutrition, we won’t have nutrition. If we don’t have seed for climate-resiliance, we won’t have climate-resiliance. And if we don’t have seend for freedom, we won’t have freedom.”

I lover her passion.

from translate.google.de

“Some say that if farmers don’t want problems from Monsanto, they simply shouldn’t buy Monsanto’s GMO seeds. But it isn’t quite that simple. Monsanto contaminates the fields, trespasses onto the land taking samples, and then sues, saying they own the crop.

Meanwhile, Monsanto is taking many other steps to keep farmers and everyone else from having any access at all to buying, collecting, and saving of normal seeds:

1. They’ve bought up the seed companies across the Midwest.

2. They’ve written Monsanto seed laws and gotten legislators to put them through, that make cleaning, collecting and storing of seeds so onerous in terms of fees and paperwork that having normal seed becomes almost impossible.

3. Monsanto is pushing laws that ensure farmers and citizens can’t block the planting of GMO crops even if they can contaminate other crops.

4. There are Monsanto regulations buried in the FDA rules that make a farmer’s seed cleaning equipment illegal because it’s now considered a �source of seed contamination.�

Monsanto has sued more than 1,500 farmers whose fields had simply been contaminated by GM crops.” (Read more from articles.mercola.com)