Forum Post: Industrialized Food for Profit Threatens Our Health

Industrialized Food for Profit Threatens Our Health

Tuesday, 02 July 2013 10:19 By David Gumpert, Chelsea Green Publishing | Book Excerpt

In a recent interview with Truthout entitled, "Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Food Rights": Shouldn't We Decide What We Eat?, author David E. Gumpert discussed the US government battle against small farmers and consumers who bypass big agriculture and engage in direct commerce.

As Gumpert's publisher Chelsea Green notes:

Do Americans have the right to privately obtain the foods of our choice from farmers, neighbors, and local producers, in the same way our grandparents and great grandparents used to do?

Yes, say a growing number of people increasingly afraid that the mass-produced food sold at supermarkets is excessively processed, tainted with antibiotic residues and hormones, and lacking in important nutrients. These people, a million or more, are seeking foods outside the regulatory system, like raw milk, custom-slaughtered beef, and pastured eggs from chickens raised without soy, purchased directly from private membership-only food clubs that contract with Amish and other farmers.

Public-health and agriculture regulators, however, say no: Americans have no inherent right to eat what they want. In today's ever-more-dangerous food-safety environment, they argue, all food, no matter the source, must be closely regulated, and even barred, if it fails to meet certain standards. These regulators, headed up by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, with help from state agriculture departments, police, and district-attorney detectives, are mounting intense and sophisticated investigative campaigns against farms and food clubs supplying privately exchanged food—even handcuffing and hauling off to jail, under threat of lengthy prison terms, those deemed in violation of food laws.

Gumpert explains the stakes of this conflict in the introduction to his book, which follows:

Sometime late in the evening of Sunday, June 17, 2012, enforcement agents at a northern Florida weigh station operated by the state’s department of agriculture pulled over a large refrigerated truck barreling down I-95. It had just crossed from Georgia into Florida, carrying a substantial load of goods, including about $45,000 worth of food from two Pennsylvania farms destined for several hundred members of three private food clubs in the Miami–Fort Lauderdale area. The agents asked the driver for his bills of lading, which are the legal documents between the shippers and trucker detailing what is being delivered and to whom.

The enforcement agents didn’t like what they saw—apparently they considered the bills of lading too terse—so the agents told the driver they needed to look inside. As one agent began opening boxes, he noticed some bottles containing brown liquid, labeled kombucha. He called for agents from the Florida Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

"Moonshine," said an agent. "That can’t be moonshine," said the driver. "Shut up!" the agent told the driver, slapping handcuffs on the man. Next into the truck were agents from the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services Food Safety Division. They opened more boxes and didn’t like what they saw either. Boxes of beef, chicken, and pork—all missing United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) stamps, indicating they came from custom slaughterhouses and not facilities regularly monitored by the USDA. Fermented vegetables and cheeses labeled in black magic marker with the most basic descriptions—sauerkraut and goat cheese. The driver was thrown into a Jacksonville-area jail, charged with a third-degree felony for illegally shipping alcoholic beverages into the state. The cargo, the hundreds of pounds of farm-fresh food, was ordered taken to a landfill. Under Florida law, food that is confiscated because of concerns about its origins and safety is usually set aside pending a court hearing. But if the inspectors judge it to be "poisonous," it can be dumped immediately. And so that Monday morning, within hours of being seized, hundreds of pounds of fresh meat, dairy products, eggs, fermented vegetables, and other foods were trucked over to a local landfill, dumped, and buried. The farmers who shipped the food, and the members of the food club receiving it, didn’t have insurance covering it, so together they were out the $45,000. In addition, the trucking company was assessed a dumping fee of nearly $2,000, which was charged to the farmers.

That wasn’t the end of the incident. Before the week was out, http://truth-out.org/progressivepicks/item/17327-industrialized-food-for-profit-threatens-our-health