Healthy soil and sustainable growing

["Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>]

We Can't Reform Health Care without Reforming Food
October 28, 2009 05:45 PM
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/we-cant-reform-health-car_b_337615.html

If and when health care reform finally passes, we will have successfully 
ameliorated only half of the crisis. The treatment half. The next step has to 
be focused upon doing something about the poisoned filth we've collectively 
nicknamed "food." Without any real changes in how our food is produced, the 
health care system will continue to bloat and fall apart. Not unlike the 
insides of an average American body.

Corporate agribusiness has invested nearly $1.2 billion (and growing) on 
lobbyists -- more money than even the defense lobby. Naturally, much of this 
lobbying has been aimed at deregulating how food is processed and 
manufactured, as well as how corporate agribusinesses raise and process 
livestock. It's an industry that's entangled in everything from Big Tobacco 
to human trafficking and illegal immigration.

Most recently, and speaking of poisoned filth, you may have watched as Rick 
Berman was eviscerated by Rachel Maddow on MSNBC a few weeks ago. In case you 
missed it, Berman's Center for Consumer Freedom is financed by corporate 
agribusiness, among others, and tasked with deceiving the public about 
everything from high fructose corn syrup to transfat, mercury levels in fish, 
obesity issues, food labels, and tobacco laws. CCF is all about confusing the 
public by muddying scientific fact and skewing the debate onto ridiculous 
tangents to the point where it's difficult to tell the difference between 
what's healthy and what's crap. It's Glenn Beck's rodeo clown strategy 
applied to food.

The consequence for you and me, of course, is that the food is becoming 
increasingly toxic, both in terms of what goes into our bodies, and in terms 
of how deregulation and deception is hurting the economy. What good is health 
care reform if we're still being fed poison? What good is an economic 
recovery if big business is still gaming the system?

Here's a perfect example of what they're getting away with. In Ohio next 
week, voters will be deciding on a ballot measure known as Issue 2.

As I'm sure you're aware -- and I'll spare you the gruesome videos -- 
corporate farms maximize profit by packing as many animals into ridiculously 
tight spaces. Imagine being forced to live out your life in the equivalent of 
a high school gym locker. While confined and unable to move, the animals are 
injected with a variety of hormones, antibiotics and other medications. 
Medications designed for animals, not humans. They're force-fed grains laced 
with pesticides and other chemicals. And when they're not eating 
chemically-tainted grain, they're often fed the remains of other animals -- 
old or sick animals that aren't shoved through the system and turned into 
food for humans (we often share food with, you know, our food). The list of 
atrocities is lengthy, but the end result is that a variety of unhealthy, 
possibly deadly toxins and diseases wind up, unannounced, on our mouths.

The Humane Society:

    ...the American Journal of Epidemiology reported that people who eat eggs 
from hens confined in cages are 250% more likely to contract Salmonella. The 
extreme confinement of animals is also a major factor in the emergence of 
diseases like H5N1 and H1N1 (bird and swine flu).

And that's with the Department of Agriculture, along with public 
participation in oversight, keeping an eye on things.

Issue 2, however, would for all intents and purposes replace federal 
regulation with something called the Livestock Care Standards Board. The 
thirteen member board would be appointed by the governor and would include 
members who have skin in the game. The stated goal of the board would be to 
regulate how animals are kept. So it sounds like it's a good thing. They're 
going to protect Babe and his cute barnyard friends!

But that's not how it'll work.

Naturally, the board will be susceptible to intense lobbying and coercion 
from the usual corporate villains. Imagine Rick Berman types unleashing their 
evil fury of confused logic and lie-mongering on a small 13 member state 
board, as opposed to the massive and monolithic federal government. The end 
result will be conditions that are far, far worse than they are today -- 
producing food that's even more dangerous, and all of it overriding the 
authority of the federal government.

While sounding wholesome on the surface, Issue 2, to paraphrase Grover 
Norquist, is designed to shrink regulatory oversight so it's small enough to 
be drowned in a bathtub. Corporate agribusiness will be able to run the show 
and maximize industry profits by continuing the very practices that Issue 2 
claims to repair. And it'll all be codified into the Ohio Constitution. 
Ultimately, any attempts to reverse course will have to clear much larger 
hurdles.

And here's the really scary news.

    "We've tried to model this in a way that other states can look at it," 
said Jack Fisher, executive vice president of the Ohio Farm Bureau 
Federation. "This involves farmers, ranchers, everyone in the food chain."

Oh good. So instead of spending large sums of cash lobbying Congress and the 
federal government, Big Food and corporate agribusinesses will be able to 
focus their efforts on small states and their quaint little livestock boards 
-- crushing them and reprocessing the remains into liquid form and dumping 
them into the factory feeding troughs. Not literally, of course. I hope.

So while this may seem like a small issue about animal welfare in one state, 
it's actually step one in a process that will make an already deadly national 
crisis even worse.

Much like we've witnessed with the health insurance cartel and Wall Street, 
without a strong regulatory body keeping an eye on even the smallest details, 
we all end up screwed in the process. Opponents will suggest that regulation 
only makes everything more expensive. But I would rather pay a little more 
for a pound of beef than to suffer through Stephanie Smith's ordeal with E. 
Coli:

    Then her diarrhea turned bloody. Her kidneys shut down. Seizures knocked 
her unconscious. The convulsions grew so relentless that doctors had to put 
her in a coma for nine weeks. When she emerged, she could no longer walk. The 
affliction had ravaged her nervous system and left her paralyzed.

Corporate profits and cheap food to put on your families -- or bloody 
diarrhea, a nine week coma and paralysis. Hmm. That's a tough call. Let's 
have a small, vulnerable livestock panel decide!

Sorry, no.

If Issue 2 is written into the Ohio Constitution next week, it'll be that 
much more difficult for Americans to remain healthy, with or without 
reforming the health care system. Help us out, Ohio, and vote against this 
thing.