I didn’t even hardly take any pictures.

But guess what, we’re moving forward.

Today on the California Report they were talking about how the new healthcare legislation is going to affect Central Valley farmers. I am sympathetic to all independent farmers, organic or not, but the outcry about their new burden is the wrong outcry. It makes me sick that we, as a nation, stare at the prices on supermarket shelves, nodding approvingly when they go down, squealing like stuck pigs when they go up even fractionally, without a thought to the true cost of that food. The billions of lost tax revenue for government subsidy and environmental cleanup could go to our schools, our bridges, our arts and our sciences: we are getting screwed for Monsanto. We talk about farm laborers, legal or not, like a commodity. We spend millions on fucking dog toys and we can’t acknowledge, as a society, that these human beings are entitled to a living wage and access to health care.

But chicken parts are 79 cents a pound, so it’s ok.

Listening: Radio Paradise: listen, and give them some money!!

>Did you hear the news? The White House is planning to have an “organic” garden on the grounds to provide fresh fruits and vegetables for the Obama’s[sic] and their guests. While a garden is a great idea, the thought of it being organic made Janet Braun, CropLife Ambassador Coordinator and I shudder. As a result, we sent a letter encouraging them to consider using crop protection products and to recognize the importance of agriculture to the entire U.S. economy.

So here’s the deal, people, you know how this works. Here’s the online petition:

[Um, click here.](http://act.credoaction.com/campaign/wh_garden/?r_by=-1980621-3eR0YFx&rc=mailto)

And if you’d be so kind, please [click here](http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/) and email the first lady, letting her know that she’s a rockstar and we love not only the garden, but her finger in the eye of agribusiness.

Listening: “The Psychic” The Crash Test Dummies God Shuffled His Feet

>U.S. Food Safety No Longer Improving

Holy crap, I’m amazed.

You can read Captain Obvious’s assessment yourself, but *my* favorite moment was when
>Dr. Tim Jones, state epidemiologist in Tennessee, said that many of the easy improvements in the nation’s food-safety system had been made.
>“You can only tell people so much to wash their cutting boards and wash their hands,” Dr. Jones said. “I think we’re running out of things to do to make dramatic improvements.”

As if **that’s** the problem. How about not processing 40% of anything in one place? So that way, when the company succumbs to profit over civic duty- with a healthy dose of help from the USDA- not everybody in the world has to stop eating pistachios (or peanuts or tomatoes or spinach)?

Listening: Depeche Mode “Personal Jesus” Violator
That’s how I roll.

I’m not a naturally positive person, but I try, and try hard to look for the good in things. And as much as I have never been a follower, it fills me with great joy and pride that America finally, again, has a leader.

Listening: Somewhat coincidentally: “Every Breath You Take” The Police Synchronicity

Nevermind the fact that King Arthur has been the go-to flour for serious home and commercial bakers for umpteen years, nevermind that it was products like King Arthur Flour that put TJ on the map to begin with. Trader Joe’s has closed the supply chain and limited the availability of an American-made quality product, just like its big brother, Wal Mart.

In a very sweet and non-offensive way, PJ Hamel gently flipped TJ’s the bird by besting some of their processed baked goods with [a little number of her own](http://blog.kingarthurflour.com/2009/03/02/say-it-aint-so-joes/).

I would **much** rather eat PJ’s cookies.

Listening: “Lola” Chris Smither Train Home

[Cleve Jones is a goddamn hero.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ylcXE62p78)

Listening: NPR, even though [I'm pissed at them](http://joemygod.blogspot.com/2009/03/npr-gays-conducting-witch-hunt.html) right now

Basically, it’s a registry for livestock, where a RFID (radio frequency identification) device is placed on each animal, which can theoretically track diseases back to herds or even individual animals. Sounds good, right? **Wrong**. Here’s why:

First of all, the system won’t even work the way it’s ostensibly supposed to. The idea is that if there’s an *E Coli* outbreak or something, the lot numbers on the meat could trace back to the herd and those animals could be tested and either segregated or destroyed. That, of course, is assuming that that meat can be linked to living animals, which is very unlikely since **so much** of the meat in this country is frozen and processed into so much “food” whose shelf life rivals chia pets.

But let’s take a step back and see what this is **really** about. It’s about the USDA’s specialty: **the genocide of the family farm**. By developing standards for huge factory farms and then shoving them down the throats of respectable small farmers, huge agribusiness, er, um, I mean the USDA managed to kill about half of what was left through the 80s and 90s. This is one more tool in the executioner’s bag.

The next big, red flag is that the government is trying to collect information on a massive scale, not just about feedlots, not just about working farms, but all those hobby farmers out there with two horses, a pig, a cow or three or four chickens. People have even been registered without their knowledge under the false pretenses of a survey. It looks like Michael Johanns (former secretary of agriculture under our most recent moronic president) spent some time around the water cooler with Donald Rumsfeld.

Do I sound mad? I am.

Am I using hyperbolic language? I am.

You know why? **These effers are worsening our already dire food crisis**. We are walking on a wafer of ice that already has beef, tomato, spinach and peanut shaped cracks in it.

NAIS has been around since 2005, and I know it’s hard to believe, but no one in the senate called to tell me about the NAIS provision in the new ominbus spending bill (Barbara, where’s my love??). While we narrowly avoided having NAIS meat mandatory in school lunches (guaranteeing that school lunches would be made out of factory-farmed shit), there is still 14.5 million festering in the budget to fund this nonsense. The budget has passed, but it’s not too late to amend the NAIS funding OUT. I need you to write your congressmen and women to take that funding away. When we’re trying to balance a budget, why are we funding a program most of its industry is totally against?

I’m sending [Babs]( http://boxer.senate.gov/) and [Di]( http://feinstein.senate.gov/public/) an email looking something like this:

>Dear Senator,

>Thank you for all your hard work on the new omnibus spending budget. As your constituent and supporter, I appreciate that this was not easy. However, it’s not too late for you to make it even better.

>As you may not be aware, the budget still contains $14.5 million for funding the unnecessary and controversial National Animal Identification System, or NAIS. Large numbers of people within and without the cattle industry are against NAIS, as are the most of the congresspeople from the top cattle-producing states.

>An amendment is being introduced that would strip this funding, and I ask you to support it.

>Respectfully yours,

>Joe Fish, Long Beach CA

You can find YOUR senators and reps at [senate.gov]( http://senate.gov/) and [house.gov]( http://house.gov/), respectively. LET THEM KNOW.

If you’re still not sold, or would like further reading, check this stuff out. Strange bedfellows, I know, the Rural Heritage Journal and a liberal queer from the Republic of California, but it’s crazy times.

[NoNAIS.org]( http://nonais.org/)

[General Information from a small farm perspective](http://www.ruralheritage.com/stop_nais/index.htm)

[Creepy story about Big Brother sniffing around your stuff]( http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=53913)

[The Liberty Ark Coalition]( http://libertyark.org/), anti-NAIS advocacy group

[Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance](http://farmandranchfreedom.org/content/), small farm advocate

Last but not least, is the wonderfully unapologetic though controversial [Weston Price Foundation]( http://www.westonaprice.org/splash_2.htm).

Oh, and lest I forget, the organization that reminded me to do this, the [Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund]( http://www.ftcldf.org/), a hero of an organization who helped the raw milk movement in CA, among many, many other things. Get your [“The Revolution Will Not Be Pasteurized”]( https://www.farmtoconsumer.net/AdultRevolutionNew.asp) T Shirt today!

And no, I’m not including the USDA’s NAIS page, which you can find yourself easily enough. The last time I read it I had the heebeegeebees for a week. Just like in the Grinch when CindyLou Hoo asks “Santa” where he’s going with the tree. **Shudder**.

What I want to be listening to: “Jones’s Ale” sung by Alan Lomax on the Smithsonian Folkways American Folk boxed set. Grrr!

**Too** funny.

Listening: “White Crow” (from the sadly defunct) Slainte Mhath (from their one and only [and fantastic]) album, VA

Here’s my response:

To whom it may concern (I guess Elena Conis and her editors),

Your article on raw milk today is severely lacking in a number of things, including facts. Frankly, it reads like an advertisement for a huge dairy company.

Pasteurization is necessary to keep fresh milk products for inordinately long periods of time, ostensibly for our safety, but mainly to monetize it as a commodity for large, sometimes international, dairy companies. The safe handling of unpasteurized milk can only be done on a local level, with a short supply chain. Local farming with short supply chains doesn’t include profits for ADM or Albertsons, only for the farmer and whomever sells his milk.

People have been eating raw milk for thousands of years. While boiling fresh milk for the benefit of infants is a practice known since antiquity, ubiquitous pasteurization became a crutch for huge, unsustainable and unsanitary dairies. In today’s world, with what we now know about bacteria and animal husbandry, raw milk can be produced safely and easily monitored- just in case- for children and adults with normal immune systems. More people are sickened each year by eating expired Bisquick than by raw milk.

Raw milk is not for everyone, and not practical in every situation, but it is immoral to take away someone’s right to eat something that they want to eat, especially something known to be good and wholesome for them. As for your specious indictment of the “European body of research” in support of raw milk, I would remind you that Europe is, in fact, part of the industrialzed world, and their research into food and medicine has time and time again bested US research which is so often funded by the industries supposedly being regulated.

You close your article with Lloyd Metzger, a food scientist, saying that for beneficial bacteria we should eat yogurt. Does he, and do you, really believe that yogurt- much of which is made from powdered milk- is the same as something that came directly from a living animal, something that we have been eating since before we invented the wheel? Next time you might want to consider the viewpoint of the millions-strong movement for safe, local and sustainable agriculture before you run to industry-funded science to prove the position you clearly had before setting pen to paper.

Thank you.

Joe Fish, Long Beach CA

Effing people.