OK! I joined the group because I just can't pass up participating in this thread.
First, let me say that I am no friend of corporate food production - nor am I a friend or fan of PhRMA. I truly believe that profits always far outweigh any and every other consideration in those sectors. But, I live in Texas and dare not say anything about how cattle are raised or fed out in feed lots. I don't have Oprah's money nor a Dr. Phil to get me out of lawsuits.
Here's what I want to share with the group. My dad was born in 1894 and was raised in an orphanage in NC that raised most of its own food. He married in 1924 and raised a large family - I'm the ninth of nine. He opened and ran his own business for just about a year before the market crash of '29. He was in his mid 30s and had babies to feed. His solution was to spend the last cash he had to buy implements to plant a garden and to lease a small piece of land on which to do this. He also bought a cow, a couple of pigs, chickens and ducks. He moved to the 'country' - 2 or 3 miles from the center of town. From that time on, he always raised almost all of the vegetables that the family ate. WWII and Victory Gardens were old hat to him if new to many who were 1 generation removed from the family farm. Sometime in the late '30s, dad got work (he was a printer and typesetter) but he went to work an hour and half early and left equally early in order to come home and work his gardens until nightfall. My earliest memory of his gardens are of 2 city lots which were plowed every Spring my a rented mule - literally. I remember that he composted all leaves and plants to make the soil richer - long before Rodale who claimed to have invented the process. He continued to raise much of our food until about '55 as he became older and less capable of sustaining the energy.
With that perspective, I must tell you that my dad had completed a year of college in 1910 before he turned 16. He was a very intelligent man and his work forced him to be well read. His children forced him to be a hard working provider. We had wide ranging conversations about many things. Being the last of the bunch, I was allowed much freer rein than the oldest - mostly because dad realized that responsibility is taught by example and not by fiat. One of the topics we discussed at length - because I had to do a paper on the topic in grade school - was the impact of mechanization and factory farming on the average diet. Although this was long before the back-to-the-land and hippie movement, there was much written about the subject by then. Much of it was not supported by scientific experimentation. Most of the conclusions drawn by learned men - and fully supported by my dad's own opinion - was that the explosion of heart disease and cancer in the 20th Century had to be due to environmental factors. But what environmental factors affected the entire nation? Food supply, the air, and electromagnetic pulses. All of these things became drastically more compacted and affected greater numbers of people in greater degree in the 20th Century than in any earlier period of mankind's history. Food production was basically a family farm affair for much more than half the population until the early 20th. Factories belching pollutants into the atmosphere were almost unknown prior to about 1840. Production of electricity and the following use of radio technology are both early 20th Century phenomena. Dad concluded that these had to be very large factors adversely affecting the nation's health. He was particularly concerned about preservatives placed in processed foods to give them longer shelf life. Even then, many were known to be carcinogens. Later he became concerned about cattle routinely being given antibiotics - substances that he lived most of his life without!
He passed away in early '65. Since that time, countless studies have concluded that there are health-damaging products added to our food. The food processing industry has - as has been pointed out - bought and paid for the FDA. The pharmaceutical industry covered what the food producers didn't in that purchase. The FDA is a sham. It is fully and completely controlled by the political will of the industries it was supposed to regulate because politicians feed off the contributions of those industries. It takes only a small amount of time and effort to discover the truth of these statements. I urge you to investigate yourself. The effort will be well-spent to inform you . . . but it might make you think differently about public servants.
First, let me say that I am no friend of corporate food production - nor am I a friend or fan of PhRMA. I truly believe that profits always far outweigh any and every other consideration in those sectors. But, I live in Texas and dare not say anything about how cattle are raised or fed out in feed lots. I don't have Oprah's money nor a Dr. Phil to get me out of lawsuits.
Here's what I want to share with the group. My dad was born in 1894 and was raised in an orphanage in NC that raised most of its own food. He married in 1924 and raised a large family - I'm the ninth of nine. He opened and ran his own business for just about a year before the market crash of '29. He was in his mid 30s and had babies to feed. His solution was to spend the last cash he had to buy implements to plant a garden and to lease a small piece of land on which to do this. He also bought a cow, a couple of pigs, chickens and ducks. He moved to the 'country' - 2 or 3 miles from the center of town. From that time on, he always raised almost all of the vegetables that the family ate. WWII and Victory Gardens were old hat to him if new to many who were 1 generation removed from the family farm. Sometime in the late '30s, dad got work (he was a printer and typesetter) but he went to work an hour and half early and left equally early in order to come home and work his gardens until nightfall. My earliest memory of his gardens are of 2 city lots which were plowed every Spring my a rented mule - literally. I remember that he composted all leaves and plants to make the soil richer - long before Rodale who claimed to have invented the process. He continued to raise much of our food until about '55 as he became older and less capable of sustaining the energy.
With that perspective, I must tell you that my dad had completed a year of college in 1910 before he turned 16. He was a very intelligent man and his work forced him to be well read. His children forced him to be a hard working provider. We had wide ranging conversations about many things. Being the last of the bunch, I was allowed much freer rein than the oldest - mostly because dad realized that responsibility is taught by example and not by fiat. One of the topics we discussed at length - because I had to do a paper on the topic in grade school - was the impact of mechanization and factory farming on the average diet. Although this was long before the back-to-the-land and hippie movement, there was much written about the subject by then. Much of it was not supported by scientific experimentation. Most of the conclusions drawn by learned men - and fully supported by my dad's own opinion - was that the explosion of heart disease and cancer in the 20th Century had to be due to environmental factors. But what environmental factors affected the entire nation? Food supply, the air, and electromagnetic pulses. All of these things became drastically more compacted and affected greater numbers of people in greater degree in the 20th Century than in any earlier period of mankind's history. Food production was basically a family farm affair for much more than half the population until the early 20th. Factories belching pollutants into the atmosphere were almost unknown prior to about 1840. Production of electricity and the following use of radio technology are both early 20th Century phenomena. Dad concluded that these had to be very large factors adversely affecting the nation's health. He was particularly concerned about preservatives placed in processed foods to give them longer shelf life. Even then, many were known to be carcinogens. Later he became concerned about cattle routinely being given antibiotics - substances that he lived most of his life without!
He passed away in early '65. Since that time, countless studies have concluded that there are health-damaging products added to our food. The food processing industry has - as has been pointed out - bought and paid for the FDA. The pharmaceutical industry covered what the food producers didn't in that purchase. The FDA is a sham. It is fully and completely controlled by the political will of the industries it was supposed to regulate because politicians feed off the contributions of those industries. It takes only a small amount of time and effort to discover the truth of these statements. I urge you to investigate yourself. The effort will be well-spent to inform you . . . but it might make you think differently about public servants.
