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Subject: Healthy soil and sustainable growing

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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] forwarded message from Joel Salatin
  • Date: Tue, 18 Jan 2005 22:40:16 -0700


forwarded message from Joel Salatin

Virginia has now declared war on food choice and small farmers.
Governor Mark Warner, who had tabled and not acted on a set of new
goat cheese and cooling regulations forwarded to him by the General
Assembly and the Virginia Department of AGriculture and Consumer
Services (VDACS) a year ago, suddenly signed them into law during
Christmas. Many of us believed we had successfully defeated these
with the governor's long inaction. These two laws, 106 pages long,
known formally as @VAC 5-531 and 2 VAC 5-501 make it illegal to
milk your own animal and drink the milk.

I just attended the Old Dominion Slow Food (of which I am a member)
annual meeting convivium south of Charlottesville Sunday and spoke
at length with the new leader, Rowena Morrel who edits In the
Kitchen magazine. She admitted ruefully that Slow Food in the U.S.
has taken an extremely nonpolitical stance, but she would like to
change that.

Several members of the group are enraged about this new action by
the state, and I believe Slow Food needs to understand that the
industrial powers that be are doing all they can to eliminate
heritage foods from our diet. Although I do not milk cows or make
cheese, my sector of the local food system lost this battle in 1968
when all the community abattoirs were put out of business. The
noose has tightened consistently since then so that now practically
no local neighborhood food system exists.

We are holding a demonstration at the capital on Thursday morning,
10:30-11:30 a.m. to protest this action and ask for relief.
Several of us have met with the new Secretary of Agriculture,
Robert Bloxom, but to no avail. Slow Food has many well connected
members. This is not a Republican or Democrat issue. It is a food
choice issue. For more information, request action alerts from the
Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association at
<vicfavoice@earthlink.net>

All for now.

Joel
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  • [Livingontheland] forwarded message from Joel Salatin, Tradingpost, 01/19/2005

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