Joel Salatin: How food can restore America’s integrity
While I was in Australia in February, imported Chinese raspberries carrying Hepatitis A (from human sewage) hospitalized a dozen people and heightened interest in my seminars to a fever pitch. The news media and individuals fell over themselves trying to learn about local food systems and integrity food.
Here at Polyface Farms, our business always thrives when recalls and food illness outbreaks hit the news. Why? Breaches in food safety continue to be our best advertisement. While these acute issues make headlines and instill panic, the most egregious food safety issues remain imbedded as a part of our cultural orthodoxy.
If it kills you or sickens you fast, the issue dominates discussions. But if it kills you or sickens you slow, it’s buried as a non-news item. Such is the current state of the industrial food system. Isn’t it amazing what gets people excited and creates societal movement?
To be sure, nobody wants people killed with tainted food. But isn’t it amazing that a couple of deaths and hospitalizations from an E. coli or salmonella outbreak creates hysteria while rocketing autism and childhood leukemia receive scant attention. The U.S. leads the world in the five chronic causes of death.
While our hospitals fill with leaky gut syndrome and bowel problems and our wealth goes from farms to pharmaceutical companies, collectively we just assume these societal changes follow capitalism’s success. If we really loved our children and really loved our neighbors, we’d be staying up at night trying to solve this terrifying trajectory.
– See more at: http://transitionvoice.com/2015/05/joel-salatin-how-food-can-restore-americas-integrity/#sthash.gqv4Sd1D.dpuf
