On the heels of the new Food Safety Modernization Act, which threatens the health of Americans and the livelihood of small and organic farmers, comes a wonderful story from the UK: The European Union is actually co-funding a $2.8 million campaign to spread the word in the UK that organic food is better for you. Continue reading “UK to Run Huge Campaign to Convince Citizens that Organic Food is Better”
Tag: Food Safety Modernization Act
Why focus on health freedom? Because our future is worth protecting, says Health Ranger
Reprinted from NaturalNews. We’ve been covering health freedom topics with great intensity lately, and that has taken away from our typical coverage of natural cures, herbal remedies, medicinal foods and so on. Some people are asking why we’ve shifted our focus, and I want to answer those questions with clarity and determination.
It’s one thing to know HOW to use herbs and superfoods, and there’s a wealth of knowledge to be gained in that area. But it’s another thing entirely to have ACCESS to those herbs and superfoods without being criminalized or harassed by the government in the process. I would say that unless you have access to those healing remedies, all the knowledge in the world of how to use them makes no difference.
Our access to natural healing remedies, superfoods and herbs is under constant threat. For example, the FDA has outlawed supplement companies and food companies from offering scientifically-validated free speech about their products. If a cherry company links to a scientific study on its website, providing a scientific basis for clinical evidence that cherries can help prevent gout, for example, the FDA sends them a threatening letter claiming they may be subjected to criminal prosecution, have their products seized, and even thrown in prison for selling “unapproved drugs.” (http://www.naturalnews.com/019366.html)
Both local and federal authorities, meanwhile, have declared war on raw milk producers, treating them like drug dealers with armed raids, arrests and criminal prosecutions. If milking a cow and selling that milk to your neighbor is now a federal crime, what other foods or natural substances might the feds go after next? (It looks like they may soon outlaw the selling of breast milk!)
With the passage of the recent Food Safety Modernization Act, the FDA will be moving forward with so-called Codex Alimentarius harmonization. It’s written right into the bill text (http://www.naturalnews.com/030863_f…). This law also requires the FDA to set up enforcement offices in foreign nations to run a global food safety scheme that will try to pasteurize, irradiate or fumigate virtually all foods entering the United States. This is an effort to kill these foods and destroy most of their nutritive qualities. “Safety” is just the excuse to sterilize your food.
This same law also gives the FDA authority to inspect and shut down backyard gardeners, small local famers, small greenhouse operations, people who sell items at the farmers’ market, and so on. No, these groups are not automatically exempt from the bill as was claimed by bill proponents: They must “apply” to be granted exemption by the FDA — a process requiring them to produce tax returns, safety documentation and a pile of paperwork that the FDA can choose to declare “insufficient.”
With our health freedoms under attack, it’s crucial that we take a stand and support our Natural Law rights (God-given rights) to grow our own food and medicine, to buy food and natural medicine, and to sell what we grow to our local neighbors and community members. All these rights are under assault by the federal government, and if we don’t work to oppose the tyrants who want to take away our access to healing foods, herbs and supplements, we may end up living in a nation where vitamins are outlawed (or at least the natural, food-based vitamins are), herbs are regulated off the shelves and local farmers’ markets are shut down.
Instead of getting your food from a neighbor, you’ll have to get it from a food factory that passes the FDA’s “safety” inspections even though it’s still injecting aspartame, sodium nitrite and MSG into its food products. (The FDA considers all those chemical food additives to be “safe,” believe it or not.)
Why protecting our freedoms is crucial to our health
If we do nothing and stay silent, it is guaranteed that our access to natural remedies and honest food will be stolen from us by tyrannical bureaucrats who incessantly work to protect the financial interests of Big Pharma and the sick-care industry. They don’t necessarily want you to be well. They don’t want you to buy local food. What they want is to turn consumers into cattle, where they feed you dead, processed foods and then make a fortune off the degenerative disease that inevitably develops as a result.
And they especially want you to do what you’re told and stop questioning vaccines. Stop questioning the chemicals in the food. Just eat it, swallow and buy into it.
What I seek to do, on the other hand, is protect our food freedoms by alerting you when those freedoms are under attack. I aim to expose the true agenda of the FDA and Big Government tyrants who are trying to take away your raw milk, take away your access to nutritional supplements and censor the truth about how natural remedies can prevent and even cure serious disease.
Health freedom protection is a team effort
In addition to NaturalNews, other health freedom organizations are also part of the leading edge of this fight: The Alliance for Natural Health (www.ANH-USA.org), the Natural Solutions Foundation (www.HealthFreedomUSA.org), and to some extent also sites such as the Farm-To-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (www.FarmToConsumer.org). Alex Jones even covers health freedom on his show (www.Infowars.com), and then goes on to warn about the Fed, FEMA camps and other similar topics. Authors such as Naomi Wolf, Lew Rockwell, Ed Griffin, Dr Gary North and many others are beating the freedom drum on other fronts that are just as important (the Fed, the police state, etc.).
We are, collectively, your early warning system. We are alerting you to the very real threats that are headed your way, and we’re trying to prevent the tyrants from taking over. The TSA is now shoving their hands down your pants at the airports (who would have even imagined that a decade ago?). The FDA is threatening walnut company founders with prison time for telling the truth about the health benefits of walnuts. The Fed is giving away trillions of dollars to foreign corporations. The President is granting health care waivers to McDonald’s and hundreds of other corporations that will be exempted from Obamacare regulations. The CDC keeps pushing flu vaccine propaganda based on junk science while avoiding any mention of vitamin D.
Need I go on? One by one, nearly every government agency is on a power trip, seeking to expand its power at the expense of your freedom. The tyrants are running loose in America, and if we don’t reverse this dangerous trend, there is absolutely no question where we will end up because history teaches this lesson well: A police state nation run by the wealthy elite corporatists who dictate government policy and centralize power into their own hands (while stealing it out of yours).
They want power over everything you do: What you eat, what you buy, how you save your money (did you notice U.S. banks don’t let you save money in foreign currencies?), what you think (TV programming), what you read (don’t read Wikileaks or you’ll never get a government job!) and even how you live and die (sick-care monopoly). The government does not want you to have free choice over your body, your mind, your finances or your future. They want to control your choices while giving you the illusion of choice. Sure, go out a vote every two years and see if it really makes any difference. The corporations already run Congress. Whether you vote Republican or Democrat, they still call the shots at the top.
Can’t we just meditate our way out of this?
There are quite a number of “create your own reality” people who believe we can all just meditate our way out of this. The thinking goes like this: Since we create our own reality, we can just sit in our rooms and imagine the world being a better place, and it will come true. I’m not trying to make fun of this position. There is merit to it, but as much as I value meditation, positive thinking and even to some extent the Law of Attraction, it is a mistranslation of those principles to think that we do not have to take a stand in the real world, from time to time, against those who would steal our freedoms from us.
What would have happened in India if Gandhi just sat around and meditated instead of leading his people on his famous resistance march to gather salt? That the British Empire outlawed salt in India and forbade is people from harvesting it is very much the same as the U.S. government outlawing raw milk or dictating the operations of small family farms. We are experiencing an historical rise of tyranny in America, and we must rise up against it or be overrun by it.
What would have happened in colonial America of Paul Revere, instead of riding his horse to warn his neighbors that the British were coming, just sat in his living room and tried to think positive thoughts instead? Quite possibly, Americans might still be British subjects today.
If you want proof of what happens when you sit around and meditate instead of taking a real-world stand against oppression and tyranny, just look at the Tibetan Buddhists. You won’t find a more peaceful, dedicated group of wise meditators anywhere on the planet. I’ve visited Buddhist temples on high mountaintops in Asia. I’ve spent time with these people face to face, and I have incredible admiration for them. I’ve read many books written by the Dalai Lama and have incorporated several Buddhists principles into my own life. But even I cannot deny the fact that the Chinese government rolled right over them throughout mainland China, destroying their temples, arresting their priests and sending their congregation members into the gulag.
The Dalai Lama lives in exile! And why? Because the Chinese government stampeded over them. Meditation doesn’t stop bullets. And when evil is running rampant across our lands, evil must be met with force… and then stopped cold.
I’m not faulting the Buddhists for choosing meditation over armed resistance. It is a legitimate spiritual decision to avoid violence and refuse to take part in any resistance movement, but once you choose that path, the outcome is never in doubt: Big Government will roll right over you because governments incessantly desire more power, and they will always seek to secure more power at any cost. Even if it means eradicating an entire religion.
Real action is needed to preserve liberty
So for those who believe they can sit in candle-lit rooms and meditate our way out of tyranny, I thank you for your positive vibes, but I will not limit my own actions to such passivism. I know from my time in this world, having lived in numerous countries and spoken different languages around the world, that those who retain freedom are those who actively defend it. Eternal vigilance, as Jefferson said, is the price of freedom.
My goal with NaturalNews is to be eternally vigilant; to help protect our food freedoms, our access to natural healing herbs and supplements, and to secure our natural law rights to grow our own food (and medicine) and sell it to our neighbors if we so choose. Our right to grow food and to engage in free commerce of our food is a “natural law” that exists as an even higher authority than the Constitution itself. It is a law of God and nature. We are born with it. No bureaucrat, no tyrant and no government can take it away from us (but they will try).
I believe in Liberty, I believe in America’s founding principles, and I believe in the Bill of Rights. And I will fight to defend it. Nowhere in the world is there another country that is more free than America once was. This freedom is worth fighting for.
I was not so adamant about this point until recently, when Big Government began reaching down our pants at the airport and the S.510 food safety bill passed. Today, I cannot stand by idly and do nothing while our food freedoms are threatened. Codex harmonization is on the horizon. The Department of Homeland Security has us all spying on each other at Wal-Mart. The GMO conspiracy is very real and very powerful, and they want us all to eat their poisonous corn and soy products so that we become diseased and infertile.
I will resist this effort with every ounce of breath in my body. I will continue to work to expose the dangers of vaccines, GMOs, fluoride, MSG and other chemicals, and I will do my best to promote the healing properties of natural foods, healing herbs, superfoods and nutritional supplements.
We continue to grow our reach and expand our audience by the day! Our video site is exploding in popularity (www.Naturalnews.TV), our news site reaches millions of readers each month, and we have a lineup of video mini-documentaries coming in 2011 that will absolutely blow your mind.
Along with people like Jesse Ventura, Alex Jones, Jonathan Emord and James Turner (and many others), we are winning the fight against tyranny. We are Journalism 2.0 — it’s the new journalism where you can’t buy us off, you can’t control our message, and you can’t stop us because we are powered by the People who support our efforts, who believe in our mission and who absolutely will not stop until they are free.
That’s why I do what I do. That’s why I work 16 hour days and spend nearly every waking hour thinking of new ways to spread knowledge, enlightenment and a message of FREEDOM for our collective future. And that’s why I’ve been writing about health freedom rather than the specific properties of medicinal herbs and nutrients. It is crucial that we protect our natural rights to food and natural medicine, even it is means putting other projects to the side for the moment.
I thank you for your ongoing support in this mission. Our future is, in every way, worth fighting for. And with your help, we can make sure that future is one based on freedom rather than tyranny.
– Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Editor of NaturalNews.com
Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/030872_health_freedom_natural_law.html#ixzz19ifZi8w1
This Natural Food Should Not be Consumed by Anyone at Any Time for Any Reason
Milk may be a symbol of wholesomeness for most of us, but according to Time Magazine, it’s also a battleground between government regulators and natural health food proponents who want to drink whole, raw milk.
The war is a test of their freedom to choose to drink a rich-tasting beverage full of beneficial bacteria, enzymes, vitamins and amino acids, that are mostly destroyed through pasteurization, the proponents say.
But to the FDA, it’s a basic health issue: “Raw milk is an inherently dangerous product, and it really should not be consumed by anyone at any time for any reason,” a representative from the FDA tells TIME.
Unfortunately, if the FDA sergeants get their way, they’ll win the war with help from Congress and the proposed Food Safety Modernization Act.
Meanwhile, a federal court has struck down Ohio’s law banning labels on dairy products that say they’re made with milk that’s free of hormones.
As reported on NPR.org, that means companies that want to say their products are “rbGH free” and “rbST free” and “artificial hormone free” are now free to do so.
“But the bigger deal might be that the ruling challenges the FDA’s 17-year-old finding that there’s “no significant difference” between the milk of cows given growth hormone and those that aren’t,”NPR said.
“Just that sort of distinction, or lack of it actually, is part of the ongoing debate about how to label genetically engineered salmon.”
The Court of Appeals also listed the reasons why there is a difference between milk from cows given growth hormones and those that don’t get hormones – and one was that there is more pus in the hormone-treated cows’ milk than in hormone-free.
Other states have already given permission for special labels on milk, but NPR.org speculated that if the FDA approves genetically modified salmon (GM), consumer groups may use the court’s ruling to label non-genetically engineered salmon.
Dr Mercola’s Comments:
Time Magazine couldn’t be more correct when stating that “for some Americans, milk has become a test of their freedom. And they’re not paranoid kooks either; the government really is out to get them, authorizing seizures of bottles and jugs of unpasteurized milk and, in one recent case, a full-on, agents-brandishing-guns raid.”
There is indeed a war going on, and it’s threatening one of your most basic freedoms – the right to eat a wholly natural, healthful food!
The FDA has long banned the sale of raw milk across state lines, and in many states it’s illegal to sell raw milk entirely. (For more information about laws in various US states, please see this link. For information about raw milk in other countries go here.)
Why has a natural food source been banned for sale in so many areas?
Well, they claim raw milk is simply too dangerous to consume and by restricting its sale they are serving the public health and reducing the risk of illness….
Yet shockingly there’s no evidence backing up this claim.
According to CDC data, from 1993 to 2006, only about 116 illnesses a year were linked to raw milk. That amounts to less than .000002 percent of the 76 million people who contract a food-borne illness in the United States each year!
Looking at the evidence, or rather lack thereof, it is quite clear that raw milk has been unfairly singled out and targeted by the FDA, the USDA, and even the FBI, despite the fact that it’s so low on the food-borne illness risk scale it’s hardly measurable.
The recent enforcement efforts against raw milk sales is so disproportionate to the risk it poses to consumers that it defies all logic.
Is the Ban on Raw Milk Unconstitutional?
Raw milk enthusiasts and raw dairy suppliers began fighting back in early 2010, filing suit against the FDA, claiming that banning interstate sales is unconstitutional.
The rebuttal received from the FDA was shocking to say the least.
It contained the following outrageous statements, which make it very clear they believe you have no right to natural, unadulterated food:
“There is no absolute right to consume or feed children any particular food.”
“There is no ‘deeply rooted’ historical tradition of unfettered access to foods of all kinds.”
“Plaintiffs’ assertion of a ‘fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families’ is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish.”
The FDA’s brief goes on to state that “even if such a right did exist, it would not render the FDA’s regulations unconstitutional because prohibiting the interstate sale and distribution of unpasteurized milk promotes bodily and physical health.”
“There is no fundamental right to freedom of contract.”
With these assertions, the FDA essentially claims to have the authority to prohibit any food of their choosing, and make it a crime for you to seek it out.
This is simply unacceptable.
Raw Milk Safety Standards – Actually HIGHER than Those for Pasteurized Milk
It’s essential to understand the reasons why most dairy is pasteurized in the first place.
The dairy cows used to produce much of the pasteurized dairy sold in the United States are raised in such unsanitary conditions that it affects the cows’ health and hence the quality of their milk.
Factory farming conditions are the reason why the milk has to be pasteurized in the first place. If it wasn’t, it simply would not be safe to drink. This fact is also what prevents the conventional dairy industry from competing with smaller organic farms.
In terms of quality and nutritional content of the milk, you simply cannot compare the milk produced by factory farms to that of organic farm that raise their cattle on grasses and let them out to pasture. These cows are healthy, and produce high quality, uncontaminated milk that does not require pasteurization to kill off dangerous pathogens.
Still, despite the fact that grass-fed organically-raised cows are at a distinct advantage, from the get-go when it comes to the quality of their milk, organic dairy farms in most states still must meet or exceed pasteurized milk standards, without pasteurizing.
California, specifically, (where raw milk is legal) has its own special set of standards for raw milk for human consumption.
So, if it’s not really about food safety, what’s all the hubbub about?
In a word: money.
The conventional dairy industry, realizing that consumers are flocking toward raw milk because of its health benefits, has redoubled their efforts to quench raw milk sales.
You might think that if raw dairy became attractive enough the dairy industry would simply follow suit and begin producing raw products to meet the demand. Alas… this is virtually impossible because of the way their overcrowded farms are run.
You simply CANNOT drink factory farmed milk raw. It would be extremely unsafe. Their business depends on pasteurization, and that is why their powerful lobbyists will stop at nothing to persuade government agencies to keep raw milk bans in full force.
Big Dairy simply cannot compete, so to maintain their market share, they’re employing dirty tactics to destroy the competition instead.
Still, There is Good News!
In the middle of all this fascist-like drama, a federal court has repealed Ohio’s law banning the use of ‘rBGH-free’ labels on dairy products, giving raw dairy producers and consumers new hope.
This ruling means that companies that want to clearly state that their products are “rBGH free,” “rBST free,” or “artificial hormone free” are now allowed to do so.
This is an important victory that may shape the future of other genetically modified (GM) foods, such as GM salmon – the approval of which is currently being debated by the FDA.
If the salmon is approved, the next question is whether or not it must be labeled as genetically modified.
For the past 17 years, the FDA’s has held on to their initial finding that there’s “no significant difference” between the milk of cows given genetically modified artificial growth hormone and those that aren’t.
By overturning the ban on “rBGH free” labels in Ohio, it reopens the debate, which is exactly what needs to happen. In worst case, if the FDA decides not to label GM salmon as such, consumer groups can use this court ruling to label natural, NON-GM salmon instead.
Get Informed and Protect Your Food Freedom
I urge you to a take a stand to protect your freedom of food choice by joining the Raw Milk Campaign to make access to healthy raw milk a right for all Americans. You can find Local Chapters and Chapter Leaders by sending an email to: chapters@westonaprice.org.
For more information, I urge you to listen to my interview with Mark McAfee, the founder of Organic Pastures, one of the largest producers of raw milk in the United States, along with this video with health and business journalist David E. Gumpert.
You can also find lots of valuable information in Gumpert’s book, The Raw Milk Revolution, and on McAfee’s website.
Finally, if you’re interested in purchasing raw milk, RealMilk.com can help you find a high-quality source in your area.