Here we go again

Another beef recall, this time it's out west.

Do you really need another reason to buy only organic or grass fed beef?

A Monkey Movie Review

I'm not exaggerating when I say the Food, Inc. is the most important film about food that has ever been made. This film tells a few of the stories behind the corporate control of our food supply. And none of those stories have a happy ending.

It will sicken you to find out where most of your meat comes from. It will make your stomach turn to see corporate farmed meat being washed with ammonia to kill the e coli and other bacteria in it. Think about that for a second, washing meat in ammonia. That's right ammonia, the cleaning product. The same one you can't mix with bleach because it will cause you to black out and possibly die. The sad thing is they wouldn't even need to wash meat with ammonia if they just feed the cattle in the corporate feed lots grass instead of corn for the last two weeks of their life prior to their slaughter. And don't think the washing of meat with ammonia is done by one small company, it's done by the biggest beef processor in the country, a company called BPI. And who is BPI's main customer? Who buys all the ammonia washed meat? McDonald's. That's right. So if your kids have developed a taste for ammonia, now you know why.

Think your veggies fare any better under the corporate farm system? Well sport, you're wrong. The corporate giants have decided to grow only what's profitable and good for them and to hell with the rest of us. So they grow a shitload of corn and soybeans. Why corn? Because it can be turned into all kinds of different products, the biggest of which is High Fructose Corn Syrup which is a sweetner that is in everything from soda pop to candy bars, to Yoplait yougurt, to graham crackers, to toothpaste to anything else they can stuff it in. And corporate bully Monsanto has decreed that everyone in the USA will be eating their Round Up Ready soybean, which is a soy bean that has been genetically modified to resist the pesticide Round Up.

The story with dairy fares a little better because consumers have forced most milk producers to stop using growth hormones in their cattle. It seems that people didn't want to drink milk, eat cheese, or slurp ice cream that had been laced with the growth hormone RGBH.

Food, Inc. also tells a bit of the story of our sorry ass food regulatory system. The federal regulators in the USDA and the FDA are supposed to be on our side right? They're supposed to be looking out for us against polluters and big business who cut corners with food safety right? Well, sorry Charlie, they aren't. Most of them are recruited from the companies they are going to regulate and so they turn a blind eye to a lot of shit and people have died as a result. I'd like to say only the Republicans do this kind of stuff but Clinton and Obama are just as guilty of it as Bush, Bush, and Reagan were.

This film is a sobering honest look at what goes into our diet, the diet that is making us fatter and sicker than we ever were before. If you're one of those people who wonder why people like me spend more money to buy organic or locally produced food, this movie will show you why me and millions like me spend more for organic food.

I highly recommend you watch this film and that you then become part of the movement to change our nation's food supply and eating habits. I also hope that it will inspire you to join to the fight to end the strangle hold that corporations like Wal Mart, Coke, BPI, Microsoft, and others have on our lives.

Or you can just scoff at all the facts, run to your local fast food joint, and scarf down an ammonia washed burger on your way to buy more crap made in China from the local discount store that treats it's employees like cattle. It's up to you.

Garden bounty update

I got all of this except the cucumbers out of our garden today. We've still got butternut squash, zucchini, watermelons, tomatoes, peppers, fingerling potatoes, broccoli, and various herbs growing robustly in all the rain we've had over the past week.

And the best part is it's all pesticide, non organic fertilizer, and herbicide free.

Oh and for those of you who are crowing about the study that said there was no difference between organic food and food grown with pesticides and petroleum based fertilizers, I'd encourage you to find out who funded that study. It was probably Monsanto. And if it turns out to be a legit study, then by all means I encourage you to sprinkle some pesticide all over all your meals. I'll stick to eating food that's free from all the additives the corporate farms use thank you very much.