EU bans claim that water can prevent dehydration.

Yes, you read that right. Since it has not been proven that water actually prevents dehydration, it would be misleading to label the bottle with that claim so such language is now banned in the EU. Really.

Yes, it took them three years of study to negate a previously undisputed fact. That implies that it wasn’t a fact. Am I anti-science if I still believe water is good for me?

As noted, history will not be kind to these folks.

The Raw Milk Freedom Riders – Milk and Cookies Rally is scheduled for Tuesday, November 1, 2011 at FDA headquarters in Silver Spring, MD. The ride is beginning in PA, where participants will legally purchase raw milk, then illegally drive it over state lines. You go! Break a dumb law!

Speaking of dumb laws and people who do not know how to responsibly use their power, a farm-to-fork event got raided by the health department for no good reason.

In the years since this compact between huge corporations and the government began, we’ve seen an increase in chronic illnesses, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and a glut of some of the most hideous phood products in history. We’ve seen the methods of food production become more industrialized and along with that, an increase in pollution, soil depletion, and food contamination and a decrease of nutrient density. We’ve seen a decrease in the number of farms and farmers while the remaining farms are concentrated in the hands of a few corporations.

In the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t been to any of the Occupy locations (although there’s an Occupy New Haven) and I’m waiting to see more before I decide if the occupations are a good idea, but I do agree with the premise: that it is time for the 99% to stop tolerating the greed and corruption of the 1%and their purchase of our legal and political systems.

So, I’m occupying the kitchen. As you may know, I am a local foodie (locavore) year ’round. Every dollar I don’t spend at Stop and Shop is a dollar that goes to the actual producers in my town, state, region. I like handing those dollars directly to the people who did the work. I realize that one person eating locally does not effect vast and sweeping change, but I believe in what Margaret Mead said: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever does.”

I live in New England and I’m no Eliot Coleman (even in the summer), so I count on others to raise my food for me. So, at this time of year, I’m working like a squirrel, storing food for the winter. (More of a pre-occupation than an occupation.)

I invite you to Occupy the Kitchen too. Try putting at least one local food away to consume over the winter. It doesn’t matter what or how—you can freeze it, can it, dehydrate it, ferment it, whatever you like. In addition to being additive free, each item you put by is one less item you have to buy from a Big Corporation.

My Occupy the Kitchen project today was dried garlic. I peeled and sliced the garlic and dried it in the dehydrator at 120 degrees until they were crispy. I’ll grind them in a spice mill and have my own garlic powder.

There are lots of resources available for putting by foods, including your search engine if you don’t want to buy a book. I’m personally fond of Put ‘Em Up, by Sherri Brooks Vinton. I hope you’ll decide to try this at least once.

There are some good reads on the Internet on the intersection of the food movement with the Occupy movement. Steph Larson at  Grist has a great article:

I believe one fundamental way to rebel against an unjust economic system is to grow my own food. This way, my primary means of sustenance is out of the hands of corporations. Most food sold in grocery stores — even organic food — is owned by a few, very consolidated agribusinesses. Growing your own food undercuts their power.

The 99 percent movement has been criticized for not having a specific policy agenda, but I agree with George Lakoff; this is about a lot more than policy. It’s about our collective values as Americans. Growing food, bartering, and supporting local businesses are only a few of the many ways to wrestle power away from corporations and put it back in the hands of the people.

Also check out the articles by Kristin Wartman at Civil Eats as well as Tom Philpott at Mother Jones, where he says, “Because Big Food makes Big Finance look like amateurs.”

As it happens, there’s going to be an occupy against big food event at Zucotti Park (Occupy Wall Street) on October 29 at 1 PM.

In closing, I leave you with this image of my current favorite sign from the occupation:

. .

Note: This post is shared at Hartke’s Blog Carnival.

Michael Schmidt began a hunger strike on September 29 to continue his efforts towards engaging a “constructive dialogue about the issue of non-pasteurized milk in Ontario and Canada.”

Last year, Schmidt was charged with selling and distributing raw milk. It is illegal in Canada to sell or distribute raw milk. It is however legal to consume raw milk from your own cows. Schmidt and the raw milk consumers had a cowshare arrangement where the consumers own the animals and Schmidt cared for them.  In turn, the consumers were provided with the milk from their own animals. Schmidt was found innocent of those charges. However, recently, the decision was reversed and Schmidt was found guilty.

On October 18, Schmidt sent a letter to Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario. You can read it at The Bovine or The Complete Patient.

For the Michael Schmidt Solidarity Raw Milk Fast, a group will be assembling in front of the office of Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario. They are asking for people to express solidarity with Michael’s fast by consuming only raw milk for the 24 hours. If fasting is not possible, they ask that at some point in the day, you raise a glass of raw milk to salute Michael.

Additionally, concerned people of the US and Canada are being asked to write to Dalton McGuinty, Premier of Ontario.
Dalton McGuinty, Premier
Legislative Building
Queen’s Park
Toronto ON M7A 1A1
1-800-387-5559
Fax: 416-325-3745

If you’re on Facebook, you can join the Support Michael Schmidt group.

For a while, people were posting comments on Premier McGinty’s Facebook wall to take the meeting with Michael Schmidt. At first, McGuinty’s people were deleting comments, now they’ve disabled commenting.

There are numerous places to get the back story as well as other ways to get involved:

• Amanda at Traditional Foods has an excellent summary of the facts.
• Food Renegade has a post with specific actions you can take.
• Cheese Slave also has a post with specific actions you can take.
• Hartke has a particularly moving and insightful post.
• Midlife Farmwife also has a particularly moving post.

In Michael’s own words (as posted over at The Bovine):

I have been fighting since 1994 for the right of men, women and children in Canada to be able to make the simplest and most important of all choices -what they eat.

Thank you Michael.

If you don’t have the time or stomach to watch, here’s the synopsis: Butchers pay companies to take away the parts of the cow that cannot be fed to humans. This is usually used to make chicken and dog feed. But thanks to good old Yankee ingenuity, some clever entrepreneurs figured out how to take these remnants and separate the fat so they could access the remaining meat. They “cleanse” that meat in an ammonia solution to kill the e.coli, salmonella, and other pathogens. Then they grind it and it looks just like ground beef.

By law, up to 15% of this pink slime can be mixed into regular ground beef. This filler is popular with fast food chains and grocery stores. Since the ammonia is a processing agent and not an ingredient, there’s no requirement to list it on the label.

Still wondering if my local beef is worth the price? The real question is: Are our legislators and administration officials worth their price?

UPDATE:

I’ve been asking “my” farmers for their assurance. The following farms confirm there is NO pink slime in their ground beef (and that means no ammonia in or on any of their meat either):

• Grayledge Farm
• Laurel Ridge Farm
• Eagle Wood Farms

Note: Not all the replies are in yet and I will continue to update this list.

If “your” farmers have given you their assurance, please post it in a comment. Thanks.

You would think that the biggest problem in the world today is that locavores and other foodies are elite:

• Civil Eats
• The  Atlantic
• Eric Schlosser in the Washington Post
• And more. And lots of blog retorts as well.

I recently remarked elsewhere on the InterTubes that it’s fascinating that with animal poo on my shoes (because I really do know my farmer), I’m elite!

Unfortunately, name-calling really works as a tactic for marginalizing different thinking, particularly when it’s gaining traction. (How many people call themselves liberals or feminists any more?) Once a good idea starts to recognized as a really good idea, it has to be neutralized to maintain the status quo.

I refuse to be shamed back into the industrial food system. I’ve decided to embrace my elitism.

elite: A group of people considered to be the best in a particular society or category, esp. because of their power, talent, or wealth.

Looks to me like elite is good. Notice that snobbery is not part of the definition as the naysayers would have you believe. Nope. Elitism is all about exceptionalism. Imagine that: exceptionalism in your chosen endeavor is a positive attribute!

So, just how elite am I? My category of exceptionalism is good local food: wholesome, sustainable, nutrient-dense, non-toxic, not mass-produced, community-oriented, and healthy. As it happens, I am exceptionally talented at finding good local food—likely due to my willingness to spend the time and effort to do so. I am one of the best locavores that I know. I don’t insist that everyone do as I do, but if anyone wants to, my Web site that tells you everything I’ve learned about it. If this qualifies me elite, I acknowledge the compliment!

I pwn 3l33t.

Interesting. I didn’t know:

• The food bill is $412 billion from 2008 to 2012.
• There are an enormous number of absentee farmers getting subsidies. Some of them are not even living.
• 60% of farms do not get any subsidies.
• The top 10% of farmers take 74% of the money (Wow, sounds like regular life with the top 1% of Americans having ¼ of the wealth)
• 22 of the 435 congressional districts get half of all the farm subsidy money. Yes, the people on the sides are paying for the people in the middle. But that’s not news and it’s not limited to farming.
• We the taxpayers pay for both the insurance premiums and the claims for disasters! (We did a similar thing in the bank bail out—are we stupid or what?)

Here are some things I want in (or out from, as the case may be) a food bill:

• Remove the rich absentee farmers and the dead ones from the subsidy roles.
• Stop subsidizing ethanol.
• Stop subsidizing monoculture farms and tax them for the damage they’re doing to environment.
• Reward farms that are sustainable and leaving the land better than they found it.
• Invest more into organic and permaculture farming

There’s more information at the Environmental Working Group site, like:

23 of members of the 112^th Congress (or their family members) signed up for taxpayer-funded farm subsidy payments between 1995 and 2009.

EWG maintains a subsidy database. Texas is #1 and Iowa is #2 in getting subsidy money. Connecticut is #45 and none of the farms on the list are farms I recognize from the markets.

If you haven’t seen it yet, I hope you’ll take the time to do so now.

In other news, the USDA is cracking down on faux organic food from China. Doesn’t the USDA get that with all this GMO deregulation, there won’t be organic USA food anymore?

Clearly, the disconnect that exists between the USDA and the FDA is now enjoyed within the USDA itself.

Here are a few that run the spectrum:

• Jill Richardson at La Vida Locavore
• Sima at Sky Dancing
• Tom Philpott at Grist
• Ronnie Cummins at Organic Consumers Association
• Gary Hirshberg(Stonyfield) at Huffington Post

On the outside chance that this is the first you’re hearing about it, here’s the deal:

WASHINGTON, Jan. 27, 2011 – The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) today announced its decision to grant non-regulated status for alfalfa that has been genetically engineered to be resistant to the herbicide commercially known as Roundup.

“After conducting a thorough and transparent examination of alfalfa through a multi-alternative environmental impact statement (EIS) and several public comment opportunities, APHIS has determined that Roundup Ready alfalfa is as safe as traditionally bred alfalfa,” Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack said. “All of the alfalfa production stakeholders involved in this issue have stressed their willingness to work together to find solutions. We greatly appreciate and value the work they’ve done so far and will continue to provide support to the wide variety of sectors that make American agriculture successful.”

We’re crossing a threshold with alfalfa. All the previous GM crops are wind pollinated. Alfalfa pollen is far more mobile. The Atlantic sums it up most succinctly:

If you eat meat or dairy, you indirectly consume alfalfa. It is a leading source of hay for cattle. In terms of acreage, alfalfa is the United States’ fourth biggest crop behind corn, soybeans, and wheat. It is also notoriously promiscuous, and its pollen can be carried by bees and other insects for five miles, making it all but certain that the GMO crop, designed to survive applications of Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide, will contaminate much of the country’s conventional alfalfa. Because GMO products are not allowed in USDA-certified foods, it could become all but impossible to produce organic milk and meat in many areas unless organic farmers switch to less desirable sources of forage.

And it’s not like there’s a reason to do this. From OrganicAuthority.com:

Michael Pollan, author of In Defense of Food and featured expert in the Oscar nominated film Food Inc said, “It’s hard to understand why the Obama administration would put the organic industry at risk for the sake of an unnecessary and soon-to-be obsolete product like Round-up Ready alfalfa. This is a bad solution to a problem that doesn’t exist, since 93 percent of alfalfa hay is grown without any herbicide at all.”

As Joel Salatin said, “We’ve become remarkably adept at hitting the bullsey of the wrong target.”

The effects are devastating and far reaching. This is the proverbial toothpaste out of the tube. Think about it. How can you ever be assured of organic milk again?

So why? Who would do a boneheaded, unsustainable, likely irreversible thing like this and why?

According to Grist, the White House pressured Vilsack to approve GMO alfalfa.

The Obama administration Thursday abandoned a proposal to restrict planting of genetically engineered alfalfa, the latest rule-making proposal shelved as part of the administration’s review of “burdensome” regulation.

According to Civil Eats, In Stunning Reversal, USDA Chief Vilsack Greenlights Monsanto’s Alfalfa.

Obama is trying to establish himself as an eminently reasonable, pro-business sort of president — you know, not the sort of fellow who would let things like the Wall Street banking meltdown, the Upper Big Branch coal-mine disaster, the BP oil spill, or any other notorious lapse in government oversight stand in the way of the business of doing business.

Psst…alfalfa is not salmon.

For more information on this issue, check out the Non-GMO Project.