Saturday, August 22, 2015

Ridiculous and Dangerous Food Laws from Big Brother

The other night, at the open house for Siskiyou Vital Medicine, a conversation arose with a gentleman very interested in our farm operation. The question came up.. "what about the laws?". Its a common question, and one which the average citizen has no concept of just how bad things are... especially for small farmers. Today I ran across this true story which exemplifies just how out of control our government has become.

To summarize, the first story is about a dairy farm in florida. They had a GREAT idea! something unique... make REAL skim milk. They took fresh whole milk from their cows, pasteurized it, and then skimmed the fat off the top. The result was bottled as "skim milk". Simple, right?  well not so fast.. the government agencies got involved and demanded that they change the label or stop producing the product. Their claim is ... well.. there are no words... read it yourself:

DACS has decided what is commonly known as skim milk—whole milk with the cream skimmed off—cannot be called “skim milk” unless it is artificially injected with vitamin A. DACS has demanded that Mary Lou either inject vitamin A before she can call it skim milk, or use a confusing and misleading label that calls it something it is not: Non-Grade ‘A’ Milk Product, Natural Milk Vitamins Removed. Mary Lou suggested other labels that would ensure customers her skim milk is only pasteurized skim milk, not just a “milk product,” but DACS rejected each one.


This I no joke! The government would not allow the dairy farm to sell true natural skim milk labeled "skim milk" because the government has defined skim milk as a product with different attributes then.. well.. skim milk!

The technicalities here are this.. removing the fat from milk removes the fat soluble vitamins. So to compensate, artificial vitamins are added back into the skim milk to the level approved by the government.  Skim milk is.. skim milk with added artificial vitamins.  That means that legally true skim milk is not... skim milk.. it is an inferior product that must be labeled as "artificial".

How far we have come... This is just an example of how ludicrous our government has become in logic and reach into personal lives. They are actively redefining nature and natural products.   Believe me.. this is not the only one! Plenty of products sold in stores are so far removed from natural, but yet since it is now "normal", the natural is deemed "artificial" and even dangerous.

This, my friends, is what small farms must deal with on a regular basis!

Another example is at the bottom of the references article... a sausage maker in Colorado that shut down totally because the government didn't like their natural "process", although no one ever got sick, there were no complaints, and no evidence of any danger. It was just.. "not normal". There was never an issue of safety alt all, only process.

In August, the USDA imposed additional requirements on Il Mondo Vecchio’s production methods. After two months of sharing information and collaboration back and forth between Il Mondo Vecchio and the USDA as well as various attempts to modify the production methods,” the owners announced, “Il Mondo Vecchio has determined that the impact of the regulatory requirements on dry cured sausage products was detrimental to the quality of the product and therefore, Mark and Gennaro are forced to close the[ir] doors.”

So here is another case where the government regulations and power reached so far into personal lives that a business shut down rather than degrade their product quality to be compliant with the government standards. And I repeat.. this was NOT about food safety or complaints.. it was only about points of process outside of safety.

My friends... the government must be stopped. Do some research and you will find that so many of the things we assume are simply not true, not real, or not possible. Logic no longer prevails. Innovation and quality are squashed in the name of conformity.

Yes.. farms are under attack legally... they come and go regularly... America is literally "biting the hands that feed them".



Here is the link to the full article: 

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/20/govt-to-creamery-your-milk-is-entirely-too-natural-to-not-be-labeled-imitation/

http://hotair.com/archives/2015/08/20/govt-to-creamery-your-milk-is-entirely-too-natural-to-not-be-labeled-imitation/


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