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When a bunch of Montana ranchers worried about the effect Mad Cow was having with their ability to send beef to Japan, one or two SMALL processors here decided to test EVERY steer. USDA threatened them with all sorts of fines or closure if they would be so horrible as to voluntarily TEST EVERY STEER.
They not only don't care if bad meat reaches the consumer, they THREATEN small businessmen who try to lessen fears by raising standards.
Fuel cost- ah, now there's a mess. Takes diesel to till, plant, harvest and get to market. Custom combiners (bands of traveling specialist for you city kids) are not even coming to many grain producing areas. Grain sits and decays. Your food is sitting in fields here and there, making what gets to market cost you more and more.
USDA is one of those agencies bushco is destroying by appointing incompetent or just plain destructive upper management. As with other agencies, they are getting very top heavy and not hiring enough people to do the field work. That's FOOD INSPECTORS to you civilians. ;) From the top, the agenda is to make it less likely ANY problem with ANY of your chow would get noticed.
Early in 2001, the GOP Congress ripped the law requiring country of origin labeling. At that time, slightly over 40% of the foods in most grocery stores came from overseas.
Why would they decide you and I didn't need to know where the food comes from? Two guesses: 1) LOTS more of your food was coming from multi-national corporate farming giants and LOTS more was coming at you fast. They WANT the independent farmer out of business. Now, most family farms ARE corporations, yes indeedy. That is because the way tax laws and other legal hoops are written to benefit CORPORATIONS. So, to stay on the land, most family farmers are incorporated. It helps, but they are still disappearing from the land. GIANT AGRA buys lawmakers who make laws that hurt the smaller producers (who are MUCH better land stewards generally) and they sue family farmers here and in 3rd world nations alike. They just can't get enough.
The GOP just doesn't want you wondering just where your food comes from. If you knew, you would see how INSECURE the nation is because of all the imported foods.
Why does GIANT AGRA want you to not worry about origin so they can shove more imported food down your throat? Bigger profits!
Ah, that brings us to reason 2) Lower labor cost and less environmental/safety regulation to deal with. They can sell poison and make big bucks while paying shit wages to the workers they displace and then poison with bad farming methods/chemicals/water contamination.
The fewer family farms there are here, the more dependent you are on multi-national corporations for your daily bread. If you hate BIG OIL having control of your gas tank, consider: BIG AGRA is getting a strangle-hold on your belly.
I ask your indulgence as I skip back a bit. Momma IS tired and this is being written as stream of thought rather than actually composed.
bushco cut inspectors. 'Who cares what you eat' is pretty much the attitude. Well, we are JUST NOW considering the problem of about 95% of all imports NOT being inspected.
Not enough inspectors in the meat plants, processing plants, hell, even out in the fields where things grow GUARANTEES more tainted food will get into our markets. Not enough inspectors in US ports? Not only DITTO for the foods, but you could send in FRIGGEN armies with weapons in those trailer containers!
Ever watch work at a dock? Ever see a documentary about modern port operations? The cargo comes over already packed into locked containers. Those are loaded, by huge cranes, onto semi trucks or rail cars and off they go, across America. More and more big ports have automated systems which require VERY SMALL crews to unload those huge ships.
And not enough inspectors. Inspectors, whether on the ships, dock, in meat plants, in canning plants, testing soils and water in the fields where your kid's fresh veggies are growing, cost money. Yep, boots on the ground cost and the boots of inspectors on the ground are just as important to the security of ALL Americans as the boots of our troops on the ground.
Money. Yep, it costs money. BUT, the corporations that such services are being privatized to don't want to spend money on payroll. It is much easier to steal larger sums via obscure hardware for war than when you have to actually pay boots on the ground to assure that America's food is safe.
Sorry for the rambling, disjointed rant, Tom, my lad. You know I am capable of better. What I lack in form tonight, I hope I made up for in passion. ;)
America, they don't care that you are eating crap, literally.
And they want the independent food producers out of business here and overseas. They are tying up water globally. They are patenting seeds and suing farmers here and in 3rd world nations who dare to do what farmers have done for tens of thousands of years, save seed to plant for next year's crop. They are all too happy to SELL seed (which many in 3rd world) can't afford. And a lot of what they sell has a 'kill gene' so any farmer who dares violate the law against saving seed can't use it. They want only mega-corporations to have the ability to sell you food. They want every penny they can squeeze out of you
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