Preserve our right to whole foods

Times Argus
October 30, 2007
Original Article Here

We are the masters of our own destiny, the undertakers of our own undoing. While we bravely fight (read: create) the enemy "over there," over here, our own neighbors are committed to doing us in. While most of us are cowering in the bunkers of our fear of "them,' the real terror threat is the attack on our most vulnerable and sacred resource – our food supply; ruthlessly, relentlessly and with the utmost impunity.

They poison our food with chemicals, and then destroy what nutrients are left with irradiation. The wild foods that miraculously got away are captured, interned, interrogated and genetically engineered into obedient soldiers of misfortune.

And if that weren't enough, the elected representatives of California, in all their infinite, sun-bleached wisdom, have again targeted whole foods at their finest. No longer will Californians be able to access real, whole, raw milk, with all its vitality and nutrients intact; what small bastion of hope was left for real food security and optimum health was legislated away when Gov. Schwarzenegger signed legislation setting new standards for raw milk requiring 10 coliform bacteria per milliliter or less.

This standard does nothing to increase the safety of raw milk, but it will make the production of organic raw milk in California nearly impossible. While many centuries of human beings have been consuming raw milk and somehow escaping the grim reaper, the California legislature, they know better.

Coliforms are not pathogenic. They do not cause disease. Turns out, they actually act very effectively to protect raw milk against pathogens like E. coli 0157:H7. Coliforms make vitamin K, B-1, B-2, B-6 and B-12 and without coliforms, and the beneficial colicins they produce, we would die.

Good thing we're putting a stop to that! While Californians may have a few weeks left to pad their supplies of raw milk and butter while they're still available on supermarket shelves, Vermonters are meeting clandestinely behind barns and hay bales, making illicit transactions to preserve the health, wellness, security and autonomy of their families, farms and communities.

We've been fighting the wrong enemy for far too long. Tell the California Legislature to wise up and defend, not destroy, our access to whole foods. Then turn around and tell out own governor to do the same. In fact, just go out and get what you want and need from your local farmer despite their efforts to disarm and pasteurize us. Our strength, our future, is in our convictions. It's in our guts, our fields, our farms and it's in our hands!

Michael Feiner

Roxbury