--> These farms are more like an assembly line system of animal harvesting than anything resembling a genuine farm or ranch.
"Factory farming has taken the joy out of the lives of millions of calves and pigs, and billions of hens; it has driven countless family farmers off the land; it has polluted streams and rivers; it has injected massive amounts of antibiotics and other drugs into the public food supply resulting in serious health risks. It has lowered food quality," says Christine Stevens, author of the book Factory Farming, The Experiment That Failed. |  Many macadamia nut farms in Hawaii that used to exist five years ago just gave up and either sold their farms to the large nut processing companies like Hershey's or turned them into coffee farms in order break even. Some of the farms opened up bed-and-breakfasts to try to rent out their rooms just to make ends meet. Times are tough, and the centralization of power in the mac nut industry is only making things tougher.
Recently, the big food companies were only paying about 70 cents a pound to the Hawaiian farmers for their raw, unshelled macadamia nuts. |  Applegate farms www.applegatefarms.com (866) 587-5858 Lamb
Blackwing Quality Meats www.blackwing.com (800) 326-7874
Thirteen Mile Lamb & Wool Company www.lambandwool.com (406) 388-4945
Zen Sheep Farm www.michiganorganic.org/zensheep (765) 795-5526 Fox Fire farms www.foxfirefarms.com (970) 563-4675
15. Do not eat farm-raised fish.
Vital Choice Seafood www.vitalchoice.com (800) 608-4825
Rose Fisheries www.rosefisheries.com (877) 747-3107 Wild Planet www.lwildplanet.com (800) 998-9946
Fishing Vessel St. Jude www.tunatuna.com (425) 378-0680
Marine Stewardship Council www.msc. |  Support small sustainable farms, organic farms, family farms, your local food co-ops and your local farmer's market.
Another, huge step you can take is to have your own garden. Grow heirloom plants, not hybrid plants, so you can save your seeds and use them generation after generation. The very act of saving and using seeds is, in its own way, a respectful ritual for nature. Who knows? Someday you may have to depend on those seeds, because all the other corporate seeds out there have terminated themselves and can't be counted on anymore. So keep saving them, and keep them alive. | | Applegate farms www.applegatefarms.com 1(866)587-5858
Blackwing Quality Meats www.blackwing.com 330 1 (800) 326-7874 z o c u
Z
NorthStar Bison www.northstarbison.com 1 (888) 295-6332
\ Milk and Dairy (Organic Replacements)
Replace cow's milk with rice milk, fermented soymilk, raw goat's milk, or ^ hemp, almond, cashew, sunflower, or hazelnut milk.
Living Harvest™ www.worldpantry.com/cgi-bin/ncommerce/ExecMacro/livingharvest/home.d2w/report
1 (888) 690-3958
Manitoba Harvest™ www.manitobaharvest.com 1 (800)665-4367
Notmilk www.notmilk.com 1 (201) 871-5871
Nutivo® www.nutiva. |  Many organic farms also raise organic chickens, turkeys, and larger livestock. You can buy eggs from these farms and butcher your own meat.
APPENDIX B
The Right Vitamin D Tests
If you decide to get tested, work with your physician on your game plan. For the most exact dosing, you may want to have three blood tests; vitamin D3, intact PTH (parathyroid hormone), and calcium. | | Do not purchase nuts from farms that use such chemicals.
2) What is the maximum temperature your mac nuts are exposed to during drying? (The lower the temperature, the better. Most farms dry their nuts by roasting them, which of course "cooks" the nut and destroys some of its nutritional value.)
Enjoy your mac nuts! I hope to bring you more articles about health products from Hawaii, including noni, spirulina, kava kava and even a story about how the war on marijuana has caused an escalation in the use of meth on across the islands. |  Ronnie: It was called to our attention by a watchdog organization called The Cornucopia Institute, which actually visited some of these factory-style dairy farms that Horizon and Aurora call organic. They witnessed first-hand things like a farm where there are 4,000 animals, but only a few hundred acres of pasture. You cannot possibly pasture animals on that little pasture, especially when they are in semi-arid parts of Idaho, Colorado and West Texas.
Then beyond that, workers on these farms started coming forth as whistleblowers. | | It is coming from the factory-style dairy farms where the animals are kept in intensive confinement and have been imported from conventional farms as calves. They simply label it organic, and the USDA lets them get away with it.
Mike: Let us get into more detail on that, because I want people to understand how they do an end-run around this organic label. First, do you agree that there is some degree of success in the fact that consumer demand for organic products is now so strong? Is that not a success by itself?
Ronnie: It is a tremendous success. | | Rather than buy organic calves that have been raised from birth on organic farms, these companies seemed to have discovered it's cheaper to buy conventional calves that have been raised on conventional farms, install them in factory feedlots, then milk them and call it organic.
The situation has become so alarming that the Organic Consumers Association ultimately called for a boycott, and many knowledgeable consumers are now avoiding the Horizon brand entirely.
The organic milk controversy extends to organic soy milk as well. |  In addition, these chemically-laden farms are devastating surrounding sea life, causing deadly water pollution and ruining the land on which the seafood farms are set up, with the consequent ruination of fishermen and farmers who depended on these areas for their livelihood.14
When we eat these animal and seafood products, antibiotics, and growth hormones and chemicals, end up in our body systems. Over time, bacteria are becoming increasingly resistant to antibiotics. |  Department of Agriculture tested raw milk from 861 farms in 21 states. According to their report, nearly a quarter of the samples contained illness-causing bacteria, including five percent with listeria, three percent with salmonella, and four percent with less dangerous types of E. coli. Regardless of the real figures of contamination, either type of milk comes with its own risks. Again, if you are not sure about milk's health benefits for you, apply the muscle test and your body may give you some good clues about it. | | Given the fact that soybeans are grown on farms that use toxic pesticides and herbicides—and many are from genetically engineered plants—increasing evidence suggests soy is a major health hazard. With a few exceptions, such as miso, tempeh and other carefully fermented soy products, soy is not suitable for human consumption. Eating soy, soy milk, and regular tofu increases risks of serious health conditions. In addition, soy is a common food allergen. | | Even if the cows grow up on organic farms, their milk bladders are constantly filled and extended, day after day, month after month, year after year. A continuous process of milk production (lactation) is unnatural for any animal. The resulting repeated injuries of the bladder wall leads to infections and inflammation, and a lot of dead cells (pus). Millions of units of pus are found in every quart of milk, especially in older cows. It is irrelevant whether the milk is raw or pasteurized; the dead cells remain in the milk. | | Some of the farms opened up bed-and-breakfasts to try to rent out their rooms just to make ends meet. Times are tough, and the centralization of power in the mac nut industry is only making things tougher.
Recently, the big food companies were only paying about 70 cents a pound to the Hawaiian farmers for their raw, unshelled macadamia nuts. That's 70 cents a pound for a nut that you might pay $15.00 a pound for at the grocery store (after it's shelled, of course). | | The lower the temperature, the better. Most farms dry their nuts by roasting them, which of course "cooks" the nut and destroys some of its nutritional value.)
Enjoy your mac nuts! I hope to bring you more articles about health products from Hawaii, including noni, spirulina, kava kava and even a story about how the war on marijuana has caused an escalation in the use of meth on across the islands. Stay tuned to NewsTarget for more honest, independent reporting on topics like these. | | They've bought out many farms and now virtually monopolize the processing and packaging of mac nuts on the Big Island. Since big business is now dominating the macadamia nut industry, we can only expect the deceptions to get even worse. Big business often seems to be all about exploiting consumers and squeezing every last dime it can out of a resource in order to maximize profits, even if it means destroying an industry and the farmers that go along with it, and that's what we are seeing in the Hawaiian macadamia nut industry today. | | Then beyond that, workers on these farms started coming forth as whistleblowers. There was a story in the Chicago Tribune about one of these whistleblowers who pointed out that these cows are not put out to pasture. The only time they are put out to pasture is when there is a media organization or an important person coming out.
Yes, it is first-hand information. It is a look at the terrain that these factory-style dairy feedlots are set on. | | High rise chicken farms breed animals that have never been exposed to fresh air or allowed to take as much as one step. This not only greatly upsets their body chemistry but also causes malformations and the growth of malignant tumors. These sick animals are slaughtered and sold to unsuspecting customers. In the United States, chicken with airsacculitis (a pneumonia-like disease), which causes pus-laden mucus to collect in the lungs, are permitted to be sold. Other examples of common diseases include eye cancer and abscessed livers among cows. | | Look at the size of their pasture, and then the fact that there was a national survey of organic dairy farms that came out March 22 - which the unethical dairies did not respond to or they got really low ranks - whereas, the ethical producers were happy to be transparent about their practices.
The good news is, almost all the organic farmers in the country are actually practicing real organic standards. | | They found out all these factory poultry farms around the country were producing billions of pounds of manure that pollute the environment. What can we do with all this manure? Presto, they feed it back to cows. They sweep up the manure, the feathers and the dropped bits of cattle that are fed to chickens in their feed. They sweep that all up, turn around and feed it back to cows. | | It is coming from the factory-style dairy farms where the animals are kept in intensive confinement and have been imported from conventional farms as calves. They simply label it organic, and the USDA lets them get away with it.
Mike: Let us get into more detail on that, because I want people to understand how they do an end run around this organic label. First, do you agree that there is some degree of success in the fact that consumer demand for organic products is now so strong? Is that not a success by itself?
Ronnie: It is a tremendous success. |  According to growers practicing sustainable farming methods, the USDA plan ignores the root causes of food contamination -- the dangerous and unsustainable farming practices on industrial farms.
Consumers who oppose the new regulation also worry about its impact on the quality and nutrition of pasteurized almonds, since the Almond Board of California (a marketing arm of the USDA) has conducted the only study on the practice. Their research concluded that "there was no significant degradation in the quality" of the almonds. |  America began around 1980, exactly when a flood of cheap calories started coming off American farms, prompted by the Nixon-era changes in agricultural policy. American farmers produced 600 more calories per person per day in 2000 than they did in 1980. But some calories got cheaper than others: Since 1980, the price of sweeteners and added fats (most of them derived, respectively, from subsidized corn and subsidized soybeans) dropped 20 percent, while the price of fresh fruits and vegetables increased by 40 percent. | | Every day, hundreds of rendering plants in Mexico and across the United States truck millions of tons of this [contaminated] food enhancer to poultry ranches, cattle feed-lots, dairy and hog farms, fish-feed plants and pet-food manufacturers where it is mixed with other waste ingredients to feed the billions of animals that meat-eating humans, in turn, will eat...
Euthanasia:
A method or technique for killing an animal intended to be humane or relatively pain-free. Lethal injection is a common method for putting an animal "to sleep" or "putting them down. |  Madison County, of which Wnterset is the county seat, has almost one thousand farms. There are 61,000 acres of corn and 63,000 acres of soybeans. In a typical year, 110,000 hogs and 23,000 head of cattle are sold in the county.3 The area is famous for its covered bridges. The novel and film The Bridges of Madison County was set in and filmed in and around Winterset.
Between May 25 and 27, 2007, Winterset celebrated the one hundredth birthday of John Wayne. | |
Email this page to a friend
