Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@gilanet.com>]

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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