Food, Health, and the environment...

As those of you who are friends with me on Facebook know, or who know me in Real Life, know that what we have done to our food supply is an increasing concern with me. I read a lot of blogs, and there is a lot of information on either side. There are 'studies' funded by the corporations and big agribusiness, and there are legitimate studies. Then the people in our government who are supposed to help keep us safe are also seemingly on the boards of some of these companies...can we say conflict of interest?

I read yesterday of a case where two dairy farms went out of business because of what they were putting on the soil, , and then this morning of .

It worries me. We have the technology for safe food, and for safe raw milk. But we get neither, because we have gone to big agribusiness... And there isn't a good control when things get so large. We end up with too much poop, too many bacteria, stronger bacteria, mold, and icky stuff. With pesticides and growth hormones on everything. And we have pills in the water, fumes in the air, and chemicals in our water. People become scared to eat salads or have lettuce on their sandwiches, so we get fatter, because the only things that are safe to eat are cooked to death. And it becomes a vicious cycle, because our bodies are less and less able to cope with bugs... and you can't eat this, you can't eat that... and the more crap we eat, the more crap we poop, the more junk gets into our environment...

And you know, this is why I buy from the farmer's market. This is why I buy raw milk in the summer from the farmer. Because at least this way I know where it comes from. I know its not coming from a huge conglomerate, that it hasn't been trucked around in the hot sun in a metal tank... I know its been picked fresh, and that if the eggs have a little poop on them, it can be washed off... but they haven't been sitting around for ages. They are fresh. And the poop at least is going back into the soil in a nurturing way, environmentally.... the way its supposed to. The raw milk folks run out of milk. Because the cows and sheep only produce a certain amount, and its not being artificially extended.

But we have the technology, the ability, to have safe food. I don't believe all the hype about raw milk, but I do think that it does lose nutrients being trucked around, or coming from unhealthy animals... and you can taste the difference.