The Plain Truth

Drug-Resistant Superbugs Found in ‘Antibiotic-Free’ Meat Products

Andre Evans

Meat is a staple food in the diet of many across the world. Whether or not you chooses to eat meat, its widespread consumption is undeniable.

Many meat-eaters opt to purchase organic meat in order to avoid the cocktail of hormones, additives, and other unwanted ingredients that go along with conventional meat products.

Despite this, the many forms of meat products are largely contaminated and have their own host of issues — including ‘antibiotic-free’ meats, according to a new report.

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Now California wants to Regulate SUGAR!

FOOD FRAUD

Salt is bad. Sugar is bad. Carbs are bad. Cholesterol is bad. Calories are bad. Fat is bad.

Bad also are the whole, natural foods that sustained our ancestors during an era relatively free of the modern plagues of cancer and heart disease – foods like eggs, raw milk, butter, cheese and red meat.

So what’s “good” for us? Soy-burgers and tofu, margarine and non-dairy creamer, canola and corn oil, synthetic egg substitutes and “low-fat” dessert toppings – in fact, everything labeled “low-fat.”

Something is rotten in America’s food bureaucracy. Indeed, as documented in February’s stunningly eye-opening Whistleblower magazine, “FOOD FRAUD,” Americans have been seriously deceived about food and what constitutes a “healthy diet” for a very long time.

“This issue of Whistleblower tells the amazing and sometimes shocking story of how the food establishment – including the food industry and its marketers, major ‘health’ organizations, government and even the medical bureaucracy – has pushed profoundly misguided advice and questionable theories on the American public regarding which foods are healthful and which are not,” said WND Managing Editor David Kupelian.

Fortunately, he added, “once you’ve understood how these powerful modern food myths came into being, and how new research is disproving them, you may well notice your common sense rising up and shouting, ‘Yes, I’ve always thought that!’”

Highlights of “FOOD FRAUD” include:

Government Data Proves Raw Milk Safe

Raw Milk Risk Extremely Small Compared to Risk of Other Foods

 

WASHINGTON, DC June 22, 2011:  Data gleaned from U.S. government websites and government-sanctioned reports on foodborne illnesses show that the risk of contracting foodborne illness by consuming raw milk is much smaller than the risk of becoming ill from other foods, according to research by Dr. Ted Beals, MD, appearing in the Summer, 2011 issue of Wise Traditions, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation.

“At last we have access to the numbers we need to determine the risk of consuming raw milk on a per-person basis,” says Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a non-profit nutrition education foundation that provides information on the health benefits of raw, whole milk from pastured cows.

More>>>>>>>>>

McDonald’s is forced to stop using ‘pink slime’ in its burger recipe

After years of trying to break America, Jamie Oliver has finally made his mark by persuading one of the biggest U.S fast food chains in the world to change their burger recipe. 

McDonald's have altered the ingredients after the Naked Chef forced them to remove a processed food type that he labelled 'pink slime'.

The food activist was shocked when he learned that ammonium hydroxide was being used by McDonald's to convert fatty beef offcuts into a beef filler for its burgers in the USA.

The filler product made headlines after he denounced it on his show, Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.

'Basically, we’re taking a product that would be sold at the cheapest form for dogs and after this process we can give it to humans' said the TV chef.

Jamie showed American audiences the raw 'pink slime' produced in the ammonium hydroxide process used by producers named Beef Products Inc (BPI).

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2092127/Jamie-Oliver-Victory-McDonalds-stops-using-pink-slime-burger-recipe.html#ixzz1kcxPWzRc

Man Contracts ‘Rat Lungworm’ by eating raw 'Organic' Veggies!

It’s extremely rare and it’s as nasty as it sounds. The lungworm parasite lives in rats and comes out in their droppings. A slug in Hawaii eats the parasite and that same slug lays its eggs on fruits and vegetables. Eating some produce that wasn’t washed is likely how he got the parasite.  Read the story>>>>>>>

Own an Urban Beehive!

Don't get stung at the supermarket... buy an urban beehive

The extraordinary concept hangs inside the house and features see-through materials so you can watch the insects at work. Owning one means doing your bit for the environment - since honey bees are key polli

Shocking: The FDA Says You Have No Right To Freedom Of Food

You thought you had the right to choose what you eat? The FDA says you don't. They claim that there is no fundamental right to choose your food or freedom to contract for it. Responding to a Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund lawsuit, the FDA clearly states that you do not have the right to freedom of choice in your diet.

Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) Lawsuit Against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)

The FTCLDF is a 501(c)(4) organization, which means that it exists to promote the social welfare of its members and community. They define their reason for being in one sentence:

Sustainable farming and direct farm-to-consumer transactions further the common good and general welfare of all Americans.

Their Mission Statement says, in whole:

The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund is a 501 (c) (4) non-profit organization made up of farmers and consumers joining together and pooling resources to:

• Protect the constitutional right of the nation’s family farms to provide processed and unprocessed farm foods directly to consumers through any legal means.
• Protect the constitutional right of consumers to obtain unprocessed and processed farm foods directly from family farms.
• Protect the nation’s family farms from harassment by federal, state, and local government interference with food production and on-farm food processing.

On behalf of its members and for all family farms in the US, the FTCLDF filed a lawsuit against the FDA, claiming "that the federal regulations (21 CFR 1240.61 and 21 CFR 131.110) banning raw milk for human consumption in interstate commerce are unconstitutional and outside of FDA's statutory authority as applied to FTCLDF's members and the named individual plaintiffs in the suit."

The FDA responded by claiming a number of things, including the absurd idea that the FTCLDF has no standing to file the case! That is, they're claiming that the organization that represents the people who have been harmed by the FDA's actions does not actually represent them. They claim that no harm has been shown, in spite of the fact that the FDA's actions have prevented farmers from producing and selling raw milk and their customers have lost the ability to obtain it.

The FDA's Response and Claims      MORE>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

China hit by ANOTHER toxic milk scandal as its largest dairy firm destroys batch with toxins that cause liver cancer

China's dairy industry has been hit by yet another safety scare - as the country's biggest milk producer was forced to destroy a batch containing high levels of a cancer-causing toxin.

Mengniu Dairy Group (MDC) said it found milk containing high levels of aflatoxin - which can lead to liver cancer - before it had made its way to market and was sold to the public.

But China's food chain, and especially the diary industry, has come under increased scrutiny in recent years because of a series of safety problems

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2079074/China-hit-ANOTHER-toxic-milk-scandal-largest-dairy-firm-destroys-batch-containing-cancer-causing-toxins.html#ixzz1hwR77s2X

Traditional Turkey Dinner Costs 13 Percent More

Putting a traditional turkey dinner on the table is going to be pricier this Thanksgiving.

The American Farm Bureau Federation reported Thursday that a meal with turkey and all the trimmings will cost about 13 percent more this year.

The trade group estimates a classic meal for 10 will cost $49.20 on average. That is $5.73 more than last year's $43.47 average.

The meal will cost less than $5 a person, but it's still much more expensive than in years past. The jump results from food makers and grocers raising their prices to cover higher commodity costs.

Nearly everything from cranberries to pumpkin pie is pricier this year, but the biggest hike is for the main course: A 16-pound turkey costs almost $4 more this year, at $21.57, according to the trade group.

The group surveyed prices in stores nationwide. But grocers often discount key items as the holiday approaches and that could reduce the cost of Thanksgiving dinner.

Read more on Newsmax.com: Traditional Turkey Dinner Costs 13 Percent More 
Important: Do You Support Pres. Obama's Re-Election? Vote Here Now!

 

10 Biggest Food Recalls in U.S. History

Food safety is one of the biggest issues affecting the U.S. agricultural and food industries today. The public has also grown increasingly aware of this problem every time the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) or the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) issues a recall of contaminated or possibly contaminated foods. Even as the government tries to strengthen the nation's food safety through legislation, food recalls will only continue to happen until farms, factories and slaughterhouses improve their own sanitation and production methods. Here are the 10 biggest food recalls in U.S. history:

CLICK HERE for the list

How Two Former Fox Reporters Found Out To Their Cost Just How Corrupt And Far Reaching Monsanto’s Reach Is.

By David Noble Writer for End The Lie

 

I decided to write this article as this story is a perfect example of how Monsanto and the Main Stream Media operates with no regard for our safety or the truth.

Fox News reporters Steve Wilson & Jane Akre uncovered a disturbing piece of information after Fox television told them to cover any story or subject that they wanted and to ask hard questions for a new show called the Investigators.

One of the first story’s that they came up with was that most of the milk in California and in fact most of the country was contaminated with the artificial growth hormone Posilac. This is injected into cows so that they produce more milk and has been proven to be a cancer-causing growth hormone.

Jane stated that

”With Monsanto I didn’t realize how effectively a corporation could work to get something on the market place. The levels of coordination that they had to have, they had to get university professors into the fold, they had to get experts into the fold, they had to get reporters into the fold, they had to get the public into the fold and of course the FDA, lets not leave them out. They had to get the federal regulators convinced that this was a fine and safe product to get it onto the market place and they did that very very well”

Steve Wilson & Jane Akre wrote the story with Fox even buying adds to promote the show. But on Friday night 3 nights before the show was due to be aired they got a letter from a high priced lawyer in New York hired by Monsanto. It was decided to pull the story and check it one more time. One week later Monsanto sent a second letter which threatened dire consequences for Fox News if the story aired in Florida. Fox under the threat of being sued and losing advertising dollars showed  more concerned for making profit from advertisements for Monsanto’s products like, Round-up, NutraSweet, aspartame and other products than informing the public of this serious health concern.  Read the complete story here>>>>>>>>

Raid hits Rawesome Foods, Healthy Family Farms for raw milk

 

Dees Illustration

Mike Adams
Natural News

A multi-agency SWAT-style armed raid was conducted this morning by helmet-wearing, gun-carrying enforcement agents from the LA County Sheriff's Office, the FDA, the Dept. of Agriculture and the CDC (Centers for Disease Control).

Rawesome Foods, a private buying club offering wholesome, natural raw milk and raw cheese products (among other wholesome foods) is founded by James Stewart, a pioneer in bringing wholesome raw foods directly to consumers through a buying club. James was followed from his private residence by law enforcement, and when he entered his store, the raid was launched.

Law enforcement demanded that all customers (members) of the store vacate the premises, then they demanded to know how much cash James had at the store. When James explained the amount of cash he had at the store -- which is used to purchase product for selling there -- agents demanded to know why he had such an amount of cash and where it came from.

Read more »

Organic v. Monsanto: 270,000 Organic Farmers Sue Monsanto

Image by NatalieMaynor, licensed under Creative Commons

Danielle Magnuson
UTNE

More than 270,000 organic farmers are taking on corporate agriculture giant Monsanto in a lawsuit filed March 30. Led by the Organic Seed Growers and Trade Association, the family farmers are fighting for the right to keep a portion of the world food supply organic—and preemptively protecting themselves from accusations of stealing genetically modified seeds that drift on to their pristine crop fields.

Consumers are powerful. For more than a decade, a cultural shift has seen shoppers renounce the faster-fatter-bigger-cheaper mindset of factory farms, exposéd in the 2008 documentary Food, Inc. From heirloom tomatoes to heritage chickens, we want our food slow, sustainable, and local—healthy for the earth, healthy for animals, and healthy for our bodies.

But with patented seeds infiltrating the environment so fully, organic itself is at risk. Monsanto’s widely used Genuity® Roundup Ready® canola seed has already turned heirloom canola oil into an extinct species. The suing farmers are seeking to prevent similar contamination of organic corn, soybeans, and a host of other crops. What’s more, they’re seeking to prevent Monsanto from accusing them of unlawfully using the very seeds they’re trying to avoid.

Read Full Article

Meat Glue Secret and your eating it!

The USDA “Invasive Species” Sham

Debbie Coffey
The PPJ Gazette

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the center of one of government’s biggest shams.

As a member of the National Invasive Species Council, the USDA has a mandate to   “not authorize, fund, or carry out actions that it believes are likely to cause or promote the introduction or spread of invasive species in the United States or elsewhere.”

Your taxpayer dollars are paying for the eradication of invasive species like stink bugs and salt cedar.
Meanwhile, more of your tax dollars are funding the vast promotion of the ultimate invasive species: genetically engineered plants and cloned animals.  This includes USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) which was formerly CSREES, Agricultural Research Service (ARS), Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS), Economic Research Service (ERS), Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and Foreign Agricultural Service (FAS).
Invasive species are any species not native to an ecosystem, and with an intentional or unintentional release, are likely to cause, or does cause, economic or environmental harm, or harm to human health.

Consider this when you see what the USDA has allowed to be field tested in the U.S.:

• Human genes in barley, corn, tobacco, rice, and sugarcane
• Mouse genes in corn, along with human genes
• Simian immunodeficiency virus (SIV) and Hepatitis B genes in corn
• Rat genes in soybeans
• Fruit fly genes in potatoes
• Pig genes in corn
• Cow genes in tobacco
• Jellyfish genes in corn and rice

What else?

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How to Start a 1-Acre, Self-Sufficient Homestead

Expert advice on how to establish self-sufficient food production, including guidance on crop rotations, raising livestock and grazing management.

John Seymour
Mother Earth News

Everyone will have a different approach to keeping a self-sufficient homestead, and it’s unlikely that any two 1-acre farms will follow the same plan or methods or agree completely on how to homestead. Some people like cows; other people are afraid of them. Some people like goats; other people cannot keep them out of the garden. Some people will not slaughter animals and have to sell their surplus stock off to people who will kill them; others will not sell surplus stock off at all because they know that the animals will be killed; and still others will slaughter their own animals to provide their family with healthy meat.

For myself, on a 1-acre farm of good, well-drained land, I would keep a cow and a goat, a few pigs and maybe a dozen hens. The goat would provide me with milk when the cow was dry. I might keep two or more goats, in fact. I would have the dairy cow (a Jersey) to provide the pigs and me with milk. More importantly, I would keep her to provide heaps and heaps of lovely cow manure to increase my soil fertility, for in order to derive any sort of living from that 1 acre without the application of a lot of artificial fertilizer, it would have to be heavily manured.

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Food prices up 39% in 2011, head back towards record highs

Fears of poor sugar harvest drive UN food price index to within 1.6% of February record

Wikimedia Commons image

Tom Bawden
Guardian

Hard-pressed consumers face higher grocery bills after new figures showed that food prices jumped by 1.3% in June to within a whisker of their record high.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) food price index increased by 3 points to 234 points last month – a 39% increase on the year – as concerns about weak Brazilian sugar production sent sugar prices soaring by 14%, outweighing a decline in cereal costs.

As analysts at Goldman Sachs predicted that commodity prices would continue rising into next year, the average food price is now only 1.6% below February's record, when the FAO's basket of 55 food commodities reached 238 points.

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Ron Paul vs. FDA's Raw Milk Police

FDA Says: Drinking This Natural Food is a Crime

Dr. Mercola

On May 16th, Representative Ron Paul asked,

"If we are not even free anymore to decide something as basic as what we wish to eat or drink, how much freedom do we really have left?"

Paul was talking about the FDA ban on the interstate sale of raw milk for human consumption — milk that has not been pasteurized. The ban began in 1987, but the FDA didn't really begin enforcing it seriously until 2006 -- when the government began sting operations and armed raids of dairy farmers and their willing customers.

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Top 10 Things You Should Know About The Farm Bill

Maryland Farmers Market - Wiki image

Sara Sciammacco
EWG

The Environmental Working Group knows that you care about the affordability and availability of healthy food and clean drinking water. So we wanted to make sure you know as much as you can about the massive piece of legislation that guides federal agriculture policy.

Congress rewrites the farm bill every five years or so. It drives federal spending for farm, nutrition and conservation programs and is the only important piece of environmental legislation that Congress is almost certain to enact over the next 18 months. In just a single year – 2010 – farm bill programs spent $96.3billion. With so much on the table, here’s our list of the 10 most important things you should know about the farm bill:

1) The farm bill doles out billions of taxpayer dollars in subsidies to the largest five commodity crops: corn, cotton, rice, wheat and soybeans. Those payments go out, regardless of need, and they mostly fail to help the nation’s real working farm and ranch families. In fact, since 1995, just 10 percent of subsidized farms – the largest and wealthiest operations – have raked in 74 percent of all subsidy payments. 62 percent of farmers in the United States did not collect subsidy payments, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

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GM Milk and the Rise of Antibiotic-Resistant Bacteria

Antibiotic resistance through natural selection

Updated excerpt from Codex Alimentarius -- The End of Health Freedom 

Brandon Turbeville

Activist Post

In May 2011, I wrote an article entitled, rBGH Milk Production: Animal Cruelty, Genetically Modified Hormones and E. Coli. In this article I detailed the process of manufacturing the genetically modified growth hormone used in dairy cows under the guise of increased milk production. I also discussed the horrid conditions the animals are forced to live under as a result of this money making scheme. 

But there is yet one more concern regarding the addition of rBGH to dairy cows that harkens back to the issue of mastitis. Besides the immense discomfort caused to the animals, mastitis requires treatment with antibiotics which has been linked to the development of antibiotic-resistant bacteria capable of infecting humans. 

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The Indignity of Industrial Tomatoes

 

Heirloom Tomatoes - Wiki Image

Barry Estabrook
Gilt Taste

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit by Barry Estabrook/Andrews McMeel Publishing

My obituary's headline would have read "Food Writer Killed by Flying Tomato."

On a visit to my parents in Naples, Florida, I was driving I-75 when I came up behind one of those gravel trucks that seem to be everywhere in southwest Florida's rush to convert pine woods and cypress stands into gated communities and shopping malls. As I drew closer, I saw that the tractor trailer was heavy with what seemed to be green apples. When I pulled out to pass, three of them sailed off the truck, narrowly missing my windshield. Every time it hit the slightest bump, more of those orbs would tumble off. At the first stoplight, I got a closer look. The shoulder of the road was littered with green tomatoes so plasticine and so identical they could have been stamped out by a machine. Most looked smooth and unblemished. A few had cracks in their skins. Not one was smashed. A 10-foot drop followed by a 60-mile-per- hour impact with pavement is no big deal to a modern, agribusiness tomato.

If you have ever eaten a fresh tomato from a grocery store or restaurant, chances are good that you have eaten a tomato much like the ones aboard that truck. Florida alone accounts for one-third of the fresh tomatoes raised in the United States, and from October to June, virtually all the fresh-market, field-grown tomatoes in the country come from the Sunshine State, which ships more than one billion pounds every year. It takes a tough tomato to stand up to the indignity of such industrial scale farming, so most Florida tomatoes are bred for hardness, picked when still firm and green (the merest trace of pink is taboo), and artificially gassed with ethylene in warehouses until they acquire the rosy red skin tones of a ripe tomato.

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Lawsuit Alleges Whole Foods Sold Frozen Vegetables from China Grown in a Polluted Region by Prisoners and Certified as Organic

We buy some organic foods in bulk from wholesale distributors here in New Zealand. Increasingly, if we want to buy these ‘certified organic’ bulk foods, the country of origin is China.

We refuse to buy any food from China, regardless of which organic certification it has. We’ve indicated this to the distributors (Ceres and Chantal) and they said that they hear it all the time, but, according to them, they are just buying what’s available, and apparently, that means the only option is China for an increasing number of foods. (Becky orders thousands of dollars worth of products from these places for a co-op we’re in with other families.)

Now, that’s the organic stuff... more>>>>>>

Obama's Food safety chief defends raw milk raids

Carolyn Lochhead
San Francisco Chronicle

Obama food safety chief and former Monsanto lawyer Michael R. Taylor today defended the FDA's sting operations and armed raids against raw milk producers, including Pennsylvania Amish farmer Dan Allgyer, who is facing an injunction for selling milk across state lines. None of Allgyer's milk was contaminated. The agency's actions are likely to put him out of business.

"We believe we're doing our job," Taylor said at a presentation at the Ogilvy Washington public affairs group. He promised to "keep doing our public health job," and described his agency's campaign against raw milk producers as based on a "public health duty" and "statutory directive."

Taylor said he had a "quibble" with the notion that the agency is spending too much of its resources targeting boutique raw milk producers even as huge contamination outbreaks have occurred among large Iowa egg farms and elsewhere.

The FDA is in the midst of writing the critical regulations that will implement the Food Safety Modernization Act Congress passed last year with applause all around from the Obama administration, Democrats and Republicans despite ferocious opposition from small-farm advocates. The sweeping new law gives the agency extraordinary powers to detain foods on farms. It also denies farmers recourse to federal courts.

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What Are Chicken Nuggets Made Of?