It can be hard to resist the cute puppies and kittens for sale in pet store windows. But a closer look into how these stores obtain animals reveals a system in which the high price that consumers pay for “that doggie in the window” pales in comparison to the cost paid by animals who are sold in pet stores or forced to produce them.
 
That adorable little scamp in the store probably came from a “puppy mill,” a breeding kennel that raises dogs in cramped, crude, filthy conditions. The majority of these facilities are in the Midwest, but kennels can be found throughout the country, and some dealers even import puppies from other countries.(1) Constant confinement and a lack of adequate veterinary care and socialization often result in animals who are unhealthy and difficult to socialize. As a result, many are abandoned within weeks or months of their adoption by frustrated buyers-further exacerbating the tragic companion animal overpopulation crisis.

Cages, Filth, and Neglect

Puppy mill kennels can consist of anything from small cages made of wood and wire mesh to tractor-trailer cabs or simple tethers attached to trees. One Arkansas facility had “cages hanging from the ceiling of an unheated cinder-block building ….”(2) Female dogs are bred twice a year and are usually destroyed when they are no longer able to produce puppies.(3) Mothers and their litters often suffer from malnutrition, exposure, and a lack of adequate veterinary care.
 
Puppies are taken from their mothers and sold to brokers who pack them into crates for transport and resale to pet stores. Puppies who are shipped from mill to broker to pet store can travel hundreds of miles in pickup trucks, tractor trailers, and/or airplanes, often without adequate food, water, ventilation, or shelter. Two men faced charges after 38 puppies were found to be confined to a feces-filled van without food, water, or space to exercise. The men were transporting the animals from Oklahoma to Florida when a passerby noticed the dogs’ distressed barking and the foul stench emanating from the van, which was parked at a Daytona Beach motel.(4) In Tennessee, 150 overheated puppies, who were traveling from a Missouri puppy mill to pet stores on the East Coast, were found in a cargo truck without air conditioning; four died.(5) Even if a store claims that it doesn’t buy from puppy mills, there is a good chance that it buys from a broker who does.(6) 

Young puppies who survive the unsanitary conditions at puppy mills and endure the grueling transport to pet stores have rarely received the kind of loving human contact that is necessary for them to become suitable companions. Breeders, brokers, and pet stores ensure maximum profits by not spending money for proper food, housing, or veterinary care.

Conditions don’t improve much when the puppies reach pet stores. Dogs who are kept in small cages without exercise, love, or human contact tend to develop undesirable behaviors and may bark excessively or become destructive and unsociable. Unlike many humane societies and shelters, pet stores do not screen buyers or inspect the future homes of the dogs they sell. Poor enforcement of humane laws allows shops to continue selling sick animals, although humane societies and police departments sometimes succeed in closing down stores where severe abuse is uncovered.

Farms and Brokers Do Big Business

When PETA conducted an undercover investigation at Nielsen Farms, a puppy mill in Kansas, PETA’s investigator found that the dogs had no bedding or protection from the cold or heat. Some dogs were suffering from untreated wounds, ear infections, and abscessed feet. Confinement and loneliness had caused some mother dogs to go mad. PETA’s investigator witnessed one USDA inspection, during which the officer glanced at the cages but did not examine the dogs. Our investigation led to the Kansas facility’s closing and a $20,000 fine from the USDA. The Nielsens are also “permanently disqualified from being licensed” by the USDA.(7)

There are thousands of breeders and dealers across the country. In Missouri alone, there are more than 1,400 licensed dog-breeding operations, although so many illegal breeders are in business that a state audit advised that the program designed to regulate commercial breeding was ineffective.(8) The nation’s largest puppy broker is the Hunte Corporation in Missouri, which also exports dogs overseas.(9) The company has been linked to numerous negligent pet stores and breeders and has sponsored American Kennel Club (AKC) meetings.(10) The USDA has loaned the company more than $4 million for expansion and upgrades in recent years-taxpayer money being used to bring more misery to dogs and puppies.(11)

The Plight of Purebreds

Some people impulsively obtain purebred dogs, even though they may not be educated about the breed or ready for the commitment that animal companions require. Movies such as 101 Dalmatians and Beethoven, TV shows like Frasier, and commercials such as those for Taco Bell have caused a jump in the popularity of certain breeds, yet very few potential dog caretakers take the time to investigate the traits and needs of the breed that they are considering. “Every time Hollywood makes a dog movie, the breed goes to hell,” says one caretaker of Bouvier des Flandres dogs. A Dalmatian fancier concludes that “… the unscrupulous breeders will see there’s a profit margin there.”(12) When there is a surge in demand for a particular breed, puppy mills try to meet that demand, but when Jack Russell terriers don’t turn out to be just like Frasier‘s “Eddie” or St. Bernards don’t act just like “Beethoven,” rescue groups and animal shelters become flooded with these breeds. 

The AKC, which opposes mandatory spay/neuter programs for purebred dogs, receives millions of dollars from breeders who pay AKC registration fees.(13) The AKC registered more than 421,000 dogs in 2005, some of whom will join the millions of animals who end up in animal shelters every year.(14) Buyers may be swayed by talk of “papers” and “AKC registration,” but these papers cannot ensure good temperament or good health. Says one veterinarian, “The best use of pedigree papers is for housebreaking your dog. They don’t mean a damn thing.”(15) The AKC has minimum care standards for “high-volume breeding” facilities, but with 14 inspectors and an operating budget that is directed toward registration and dog shows, the AKC can only manage to inspect its registered kennels once every two years.(16) By its own admission, some of the more problematic kennels have simply sought registration services (such as Dog Registry of America, Sporting Dog Registry, American Hunting Dog Registry, and All American Dog Registry, to name a few) that don’t perform inspections.(17)

At puppy mills, dogs are bred for quantity, not quality, so unmonitored genetic defects and personality disorders that are passed on from generation to generation are common. This situation results in high veterinary bills for people who buy these dogs and the possibility that unsociable or maladjusted dogs will be disposed of by their unprepared “owners.” “There is virtually no consideration of temperament,” says one dog trainer. “I wish legislators could sit in my office and watch … people sobbing in extreme emotional pain over having to decide whether to euthanize their dog because of some serious behavioral problem.”(18)

Inadequate Inspections

The USDA is supposed to monitor and inspect kennels to ensure that they are not violating the housing standards of the Animal Welfare Act, but kennel inspections are a low priority. In the U.S., there are more than 1,000 research facilities, more than 2,800 exhibitors, and 4,500 dealers that are supposed to be inspected each year.(19)

There are three APHIS sector offices with a total of approximately 70 veterinary inspectors who are supposed to inspect, unannounced, the various types of facilities covered by the AWA.(20)

This means that 70 inspectors have to cover more than 8,300 facilities nationwide.

Puppy mills are rarely monitored by state governments, and existing regulations vary from state to state. In Missouri, for instance, each of the 2,100 facilities is supposed to be inspected once a year, but there are only 12 inspectors employed to handle the task.(21) Even with an estimated 1,300 puppy mills in Wisconsin, inspections of breeder facilities that sell at least 50 dogs and cats are voluntary, and there is no funding for enforcement of these regulations.(22,23)

The Puppy Pipelines

Dealers who want to avoid relevant U.S. laws-the few that exist-look elsewhere to continue doing business. Says one Canadian lawyer, “[P]uppy mill operators in the States buy from us. And crossing the border isn’t a problem either. They cross them all the time.”(24) For example, there is a network of breeders and smugglers who bring puppies into the U.S. from Mexico. A Los Angeles woman was arrested during a sting operation on suspicion of selling underaged puppies and for failure to provide proper veterinary care for the animals; one of the officers involved in the capture of the woman said that the smuggler fit the description of a puppy smuggler: The person uses an alias and a throwaway cell phone and sells puppies from the backs of cars or on street corners.(25) A New Hampshire breeder, who was arrested for cruelty to animals when dozens of dogs and cats were found living in filth, was selling puppies from Russia for as much as $1,900 each on the Internet.(26)

While no federal agency tracks the number of puppies that enter the U.S., an investigation by a New York TV station concluded that thousands of puppies arrive every year and that many are sick or dead when they get here. A staff member at a private veterinary clinic at John F. Kennedy Airport told the CBS affiliate that she had seen “a couple of cases where they (puppies) were shrink-wrapped.” The station also found that although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other federal agencies have been alerted to the problem of underaged, sick puppies who are crammed and shipped into filthy, crowded kennels for hours at a time, none has jurisdiction over the animals’ care. The CDC only checks animals for rabies, and the USDA regulations for dogs’ age and transport conditions do not apply to foreign shipments.(27)                                                                                                                               

Some states have enacted “puppy lemon” laws that give caretakers the right to return sick or dead puppies for replacement or that offer the option of having veterinary expenses paid by the seller. Unfortunately, depending on the state, the law may not clearly say to whom it applies, or it may affect only pet stores or breeders that sell a certain number of animals each year. Check with your state’s attorney’s office to find out about your state’s laws.

What You Can Do

With millions of unwanted dogs and cats (including purebreds) dying every year in animal shelters, there is simply no reason for animals to be bred and sold for the pet-shop trade. Without these stores, the financial incentive for puppy mills would disappear, and the suffering of these dogs would end. The best way to find an animal companion is through an animal shelter or rescue group.

For more information on pet stores and puppy mills, please visit HelpingAnimals.com.

References

1) Josh Shaffer, “Law Meant to Reduce Puppy Farms Raises Alarm From Kennels,” Fort Worth Star-Telegram 17 Apr. 2002.
2) “Humane Society Takes 77 Dogs From Owner. Animals Missing Toes, Chewed Ears,” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette 20 Dec. 2002.
3) Natalie Lariccia, “A Warning on Puppy Mills,” The Vindicator 25 Apr. 2000.
4) Charlene Hager-Van Dyke et al., “4 Testify in Animal Neglect,” Orlando Sentinel 16 Apr. 2003.
5) “Puppies Rescued From Cargo Truck,” Associated Press, 11 May 2000.
6) Lariccia.
7) U.S. Department of Agriculture, “Recent USDA Animal Welfare Act Case Actions,” press releases, 14 Sep. 2001.
Miglena Sternadori, “Officials Seek to Collar Illegal Dog Breeders,” Columbia Daily Tribune 20 Jun. 2004.
9) “USDA Approves Loan to McDonald County K-9 Distributor, Blunt Announces,” Blunt news release, 5 Sep. 2001.
10) American Kennel Club, “AKC Statement on Relationships With High Volume Kennels,” 2003.
11) Shaffer.
12) Chuck Haga, “Every Dog Has Its Day,” Minneapolis Star Tribune 7 Sep. 1999.
13) “Boise, ID Faces Breeding Restrictions,” AKC, 8 Nov. 2002.
14) American Kennel Club, Registration Statistics, 2006.
15) Michael D. Lemonick, “A Terrible Beauty,” Time 12 Dec. 1994.
16) High Volume Breeders Committee, “Report to the AKC Board of Directors,” AKC, 12 Nov. 2002: 5.
17) High Volume Breeders Committee, 12.
18) Richard P. Jones, “Panel Weakens Pet Industry Rules,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 19 May 2003.
19) U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, “Animal Care Report” (Riverdale: U.S. Department of Agriculture, 2004).
20) U.S. Department of Agriculture, Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service, “Compliance Inspections” (Riverdale: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Jun. 2005).
21) “Missouri’s Animal Care Facilities Act Ensures Proper Animal Care,” MVMA Messenger Jul./Aug. 2002.
22) “Curb State’s Puppy Mills,” Wisconsin State Journal 14 Mar. 2003.
23) Franzen, “This One’s All Bark,” Milwaukee Journal Sentinel 26 May 2003.
24) Peter Mansbridge, “Puppy Mills,” The National Show, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, 30 Jul. 2001.
25) Sandy Mazza, “Puppy Pipeline Plugged,” Pasadena Star-News 16 Mar. 2006.
26) Doug Hanchett, “N.H. Dog Dealer Busted; Cop: ‘The Odor Was Indescribable,’” Boston Herald 14 Jun. 2003.
27) “Puppy Pipeline. Many Shipped to America Are Abused,” WCBS TV, 17 Feb. 2006.

Reprinted from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PeTA).

But this message may be too simplistic. Over the past decade, scientists have begun conducting sophisticated comparisons of foods grown in organic and conventional farming systems. They’re finding that not all apples (or tomatoes, kiwis, or milk) are equal, especially when in comes to nutrient and pesticide levels. How farmers grow their crops affects, sometimes dramatically, not only how nutritious food is, but also how safe it is to eat. It may well be that a federal food policy that fails to acknowledge the connection between what happens on the farm and the healthfulness of foods is enough to make a nation sick.

The Results Are In

In the late 1990s, researcher Anne-Marie Mayer looked at data gathered by the British government from the 1930s to the 1980s on the mineral contents of 20 raw fruits and vegetables. She found that levels of calcium, magnesium, copper, and sodium in vegetables, and of magnesium, iron, copper, and potassium in fruit had dropped significantly.

The 50-year period of Mayer’s study coincides with the post World War II escalation of synthetic nitrogen and pesticide use on farms. These agri-chemicals allowed farmers to bypass the methods of maintaining soil fertility by replenishing soil organic matter with cover crops, manure, and compost, and of controlling pests with crop rotation and inter-cropping. Reliance on chemical fertilizers and pesticides became a defining characteristic of conventional farming, while farmers who eschewed the use of agri-chemicals came to be considered organic.

In 2004, Donald R. Davis, a research associate with the Biochemical Institute at the University of Texas at Austin, published a similar analysis of data collected by the USDA in 1950 and again in 1999 on the levels of 13 nutrients in more than 40 food crops. Davis found that while seven nutrients showed no significant changes, protein declined by six percent; phosphorous, iron, and calcium declined between nine percent and 16 percent; ascorbic acid (a precursor of Vitamin C) declined 15 percent; and riboflavin declined 38 percent. Breeding for characteristics like yield, rapid growth, and storage life at the expense of taste and quality were likely contributing to the decline, Davis hypothesized. The “dilution effect,” whereby fertilization practices cause harvest weight and dry matter to increase more rapidly than nutrient accumulation can occur, probably also played a role, Davis suggested.

Meanwhile, researchers at the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania were seeing a trade-off between use of synthetic fertilizers and food nutrient values in the Institute’s Farming System Trial.

“We looked at the major and minor nutrients of oat leaves and seeds, grown after 22 years of differentiation under conventional and organic systems,” says Paul Hepperly, research and training manager at the Institute. “We found a direct correlation between the increase of organic matter and the amount of individual minerals in the oat leaves and seeds. The increase in minerals ranged from about seven percent for potassium, up to 74 percent for boron. On average, it was between 20 and 25 percent for all the elements we looked at, and we looked at nitrogen, phosphorous, potassium, calcium, magnesium, sulfur, iron, manganese, copper, boron, and zinc. The production practices used on these oats was completely the same the year they were planted – the plots varied only by the legacy of what had happened to the soil as a result of the previous farming practices. This showed how dramatic the soil change had been and its effect on the nutrient content of the plant. We’ve done these tests not only on oats but also on wheat, corn, soybeans, tomatoes, peppers, and carrots, and we consistently find that the organic heritage improves soil and improves the mineral content of the food products.”

Probably due in part to a fertilizer effect, and partly because the use of chemical pesticides dampens the mobilization of a plant’s own defenses, conventionally grown whole foods also often have lower levels of antioxidants and other beneficial phytochemicals than the same foods grown organically.

Charles Benbrook, chief scientist at the Organic Center and former executive director of the Board on Agriculture of the National Academy of Sciences, maintains a database of all the studies published since 1980 that compare the nutrient levels of organic and conventional foods. His analysis of food comparison studies shows that, on average, conventionally grown fruits and vegetables have 30 percent fewer antioxidants than their organically grown counterparts. This makes enough of a difference, says Benbrook, that “consumption of organic produce will increase average daily antioxidant intake by about as much as an additional serving of most fruits and vegetables.”

The public health implications of farming methods that restore food nutrient density are tantalizing. Several studies released in 2007 suggest that moving US agriculture toward organic practices could help to reduce the incidence of some of our nation’s most debilitating and costly chronic diseases.

At the University of California at Davis, researchers compared organic and conventional tomatoes. They found that 10-year mean levels of quercetin were 79 percent higher in organic tomatoes than in conventional tomatoes, and levels of kaempferol were 97 percent higher. Quercetin and kaempferol are flavonoids, which epidemiological studies suggest offer protection from cardiovascular disease, cancer, and other age-related diseases.

A study led by Lukas Rist, head of research at the Paracelsus Hospital in Switzerland, demonstrated how farm practices affect health even several levels up the food chain. Rist analyzed milk samples from 312 breastfeeding mothers. He found that mothers consuming at least 90 percent of their dairy and meat from organic sources have 36 percent higher levels of rumenic acid in their breast milk than mothers eating conventional dairy and meat. Rumenic acid is one of a group of compounds that nutritional research suggests have anti-carcinogenic, anti-diabetic, and immune-modulating effects, and that favorably influence body fat composition.

Hay Belly Nation

Eager as we are to connect the dots between specific nutrients and specific health benefits, we’re still a long way from being able to understand or predict the effect of raising or lowering nutrient levels in one food or another. As Michael Pollan writes in his new book In Defense of Food, “Even the simplest food is a hopelessly complicated thing to analyze, a virtual wilderness of chemical compounds, many of which exist in intricate and dynamic relation to one another, and all of which together are in the process of changing from one state to another.”

Long-term human feeding trials are notoriously difficult to control, and, though epidemiological studies show a correlation between eating fruits and vegetables and decreased incidence of disease, these studies don’t identify which compounds in the food correspond with which health effects.

But even granting the many gaps in our knowledge of nutrient and health interactions, reducing the nutrient density of our whole foods seems a poor public health gamble. Americans already have trouble consuming the recommended daily amounts of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. Diminishing the nutrient levels in the servings we do eat would seem to only compound our dietary problems.

Doctors don’t see many patients walk into their clinics with obvious deficiency-related illnesses like scurvy, says Dr. Alan Greene, attending physician at Stanford University’s Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital. But doctors are, he says, seeing a lot of suboptimal intake of nutrients. “For instance, a huge percentage of the population doesn’t get its recommended levels of calcium. Pregnant adult women should be getting 1,000 milligrams of calcium. By the time a healthy baby is born, the baby will have about 30,000 milligrams of calcium in its body, and all of that has to come from mom’s diet or mom’s body. The average mom is only getting about 700 milligrams a day during pregnancy, so that gap is mostly coming out of her bones, and is related to the osteoporosis we’re seeing later.”

Greene encourages patients to include fresh produce in their diets and to eat organic as much as possible. “I’ll talk about how fruits and vegetables are really important, and that when you choose organic you’re getting more of the great stuff, less of the bad stuff.”

Unfortunately (or fortunately for those of us who like to eat), we haven’t yet been able to design nutrient supplements that provide the same benefits as eating whole foods. “In all well-designed dietary intervention trials, where a carefully monitored amount of nutrients – vitamin C, vitamin E, antioxidants, etc. – were delivered to the animals or people in the form of fresh whole foods versus the same levels in the form of supplements, the animals or people who ate the whole foods universally responded better and were healthier,” says Benbrook of the Organic Center.

Ironically, less nutrient dense foods may be partly why we’re eating more and more. Phytochemicals contribute to the satisfaction we derive from foods. Some contribute to foods’ flavor profiles, while others, like resveratrol, help trigger satiety. It could even be that the second helping is an instinctive attempt to secure sufficient micronutrients.

“In cattle and animals, this is known as hay belly,” says Hepperly at the Rodale Institute. “If your hay gets rained on, you wind up with very low-quality hay because the water leaches out all the nutrients. You’ll see animals eating more of this hay than they normally would. They get these big bellies, and they’re unhealthy, but they’re just trying to get their nutrients. Ranchers know that if they have animals with hay belly, they have poor quality food. What we’ve done with the erosion of nutrient content in our foods – what we’ve done with additives, processing, and artificial production methods – is that we have basically produced a hay belly nation.”

Pesticides for Breakfast

The toxicity of many of the chemical pesticides used by conventional farmers is of little dispute. Indeed, the EPA’s pesticide registration process is based upon identifying a level of exposure that is acutely toxic to lab animals, then working backwards to identify an exposure level that the EPA feels poses an acceptable threat to human and environmental health.

As our understanding of the body’s biochemistry advances, however, EPA-sanctioned levels of pesticide exposure are becoming harder to swallow.

Caroline Cox is the research director for the Center for Environmental Health based in Oakland, California. One of her favorite examples of the complex interactions of pesticides comes from a study undertaken by Texas Tech University researchers.

“The researchers were looking at possible hormonal effects of the herbicide Roundup, and they looked at the production of male sex hormones,” Cox says. “Before a sex hormone can be made, cholesterol has to be carried by a special ‘dump-truck’ molecule from the blood vessel to the place in the cell where the hormone is synthesized. What the researchers found was that one of the ingredients in Roundup interferes with the production of that dump-truck carrier molecule. You’d have trouble dreaming up something so complicated. It’s no wonder that it has taken us decades to identify effects like that.”

Cox and other toxicology experts disagree that “the dose makes the poison,” the rationale underlying the EPA approach to regulating pesticides. It may be that there is no safe dose for many of the pesticides we are regularly exposed to.

“If you think of pesticide use starting right around World War II, since that time science has progressed and researchers have gotten more and more sophisticated in the kinds of science that they can do,” she says. “And what they are doing is identifying effects of pesticides at lower and lower exposure levels. For example, there are studies on amphibians that find effects from atrazine [used to control weeds in almost two-thirds of all US corn and sorghum acreage] at the tenth of a part per billion level, which is such a tiny amount that it is almost impossible to grasp just how small an amount that is. … What they found was this condition called intersex in the frogs, meaning that the frogs had both male and female sex organs.”

A glance at the data gathered for the USDA Pesticide Data Program reveals that even at breakfast we consume several servings of pesticides. In 2005, 88 percent of apples, 92 percent of milk samples, 52 percent of orange juice samples, 67 percent of wheat samples, and 75 percent of water samples were contaminated with pesticides ranging from herbicides to post-harvest fungicides. None of these pesticides we eat for breakfast gets a clean bill of health. The EPA lists some as probable carcinogens, and others as affecting reproductive and nervous systems.

Exactly how each of us tolerates daily low doses of pesticides will vary according to our genetic heritage, the other industrial toxins we’re exposed to, our health, and our age. The very youngest and oldest of us will probably suffer the most damage from pesticide exposure. “At particular moments of development, the immune and neurological systems of infants are profoundly vulnerable to exposure to chemicals,” says Benbrook at the Organic Center. “And in the case of the elderly, their livers don’t work as well at detoxifying chemicals as they did in the middle part of their lives.”

Logically, the more often we can eat food grown without pesticides, the fewer pesticides we’ll consume. The connection between food choices and pesticide consumption was demonstrated in a 2006 study led by Chensheng Lu of the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University. Lu measured the metabolites of organophosphorus pesticides in children’s urine as the children alternated between eating conventional and organic diets for five days at a stretch. Results of the study showed that metabolites of two organophosphorus pesticides commonly used in agriculture decreased to nondetectable levels when the children’s diets were switched to organic and quickly escalated to detectable levels when the children returned to their normal conventional diets.

Daily doses of pesticides are particularly unappetizing given the existence of a highly productive model of farming that doesn’t need these toxic chemicals. “If you could give me a magic wand and I could make any changes that I want, I would have the EPA researching, developing, and helping farmers implement sustainable agricultural processes so they don’t need pesticides,” Cox says. “There are better ways to manage pests. Organic is a great example that it can be done.”

200,000 Farmers NeededCox’s wish hints at what official acknowledgement of the interaction between farming practices and the healthfulness of our food could mean. As a country, we’re stuck in the mode of regulating and mitigating the negative effects of conventional farming.We could instead be spending our time and resources expanding and improving upon the organic model of food production and removing the structural barriers that limit regular access to organic food to a geographic and economic elite.

“Organic will be five to eight percent of the US food economy in the next couple of years,” says Bob Scowcroft, executive director of the Organic Farming Research Foundation (OFRF). “But to go from five percent to 40 is another story. That will involve policy work and institutional change.”

For starters, the nation’s agricultural colleges will need to develop the capacity to train more organic farmers. “Organic systems are more complex and biologically intricate compared to a conventional agri-chemical based production system,” says Hepperly of the Rodale Institute. “Right now, the official number of organic farmers is approaching 20,000 in the United States. If we were going to have 30 percent of US agriculture in organic, we’d have to have 200,000 organic farmers. We’re talking an enormous ramp-up in our education system.”

For that to happen, Congressional action is sorely needed to redirect the Farm Bill away from status quo conventional farming and toward farm and food healthfulness.

“Overall, the USDA has been spending about $2 billion per year on research, extension, education, economics and statistics. Less than one percent is specifically directed at the needs of organic production, processing, and marketing,” Mark Lipson of OFRF testified before the newly formed House Agriculture Subcommittee on Horticulture and Organic Agriculture in April 2007.

The list of structural barriers goes on. Because there isn’t good pricing data for organic crops, organic growers pay a five percent penalty surcharge on crop insurance. When organic growers incur an insured loss, they are repaid at conventional crop prices even though conventional prices are usually far lower than organic prices.

Many regions lack the distribution infrastructure even to supply organic farmers with compost. “Organic is highly geocentric,” says Steve Diver, who worked for 18 years for the National Sustainable Agriculture Information Service (ATTRA). “The organic infrastructure sucks to hell for most of the heartland of the country.” In California, Diver says, farmers can pick up the phone and order whatever soil amendments they need, in whatever quantities, from a local dealer who will deliver the goods right to the farm. But in many parts of the South, five to six farmers have to band together, order a 22-ton semi-truck load from out of state, then off-load the product into their own vehicles and truck it home.

Organic meat producers lack access to slaughterhouses. “You can’t sell meat unless it’s been slaughtered by USDA packing houses, and these slaughterhouses are mostly at CAFOs [concentrated animal feeding operations],” says Scowcroft. CAFO slaughterhouses generally won’t deal with the smaller numbers of animals that most organic meat producers are slaughtering at any one time. Even when they do, the CAFO slaughterhouse has to first be steam-cleaned and sterilized before animals can be slaughtered there for the meat to still qualify as certified organic. “And even then,” says Scowcroft, “there are a lot of chemicals used in the sterilization and the cleaning process, so what you really need are dedicated certified organic slaughter rooms.”

You Can Ask, But They Won’t TellTry to get guidance from the federal government on the potential health benefits of eating organic, and you’ll find your questions quickly and politely deflected. The US Department of Health and Human Services will defer to its Food and Drug Administration (FDA). FDA spokespeople will say that “organic” is a term used by the USDA, not the FDA, and that the FDA has no policy on organics. The USDA will say that its mandate does not extend to passing judgment on the relative safety and nutritional benefits of organic versus conventional foods, and that the USDA’s task is simply to regulate use of the “certified organic” label.With that passing of the apple, the federal government excuses itself from exploring whether conventional farming practices compromise the nutritional benefits of whole foods, and whether modern organic farming offers a model of food production that conveys significant health benefits. It’s anyone’s guess how many more studies will be needed before the relative merits of foods produced in different farming systems can become a topic of discussion among federal food and health officials. Agri-chemical companies led by Monsanto will certainly use their considerable influence to delay that day as long as possible.

In the meantime, we will keep eating – but we need to ask just how well?

Deborah Rich raises olives and two children in Monterey County, California, and frequently writes about the interaction of human nature and nature for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Reprinted from the Spring 2008 issue of Earth Island Journal available by membership.

(NaturalNews) There’s a new plot underway to sterilize your food and destroy the nutritional value of fresh produce. The players in this plot are the usual suspects: The USDA (which backed the “raw” almond sterilization rules now in effect in California) and the American Chemical Society — a pro-chemical group that represents the interests of industrial chemical manufacturers. The latest push comes from USDA researchers who conducted a study to see which method more effectively killed bacteria on leafy green vegetables like spinach.

To conduct the study, they bathed the spinach in a solution contaminated with bacteria. Then, they tried to remove the bacteria using three methods: Washing, chemical spraying and irradiation. Not surprisingly, only the irradiation killed nearly 100 percent of the bacterial colonies. That’s because radiation sterilizes both the bacteria and the vegetable leaves, effectively killing the plant and destroying much of its nutritional value while it kills the bacteria.

The USDA claims this is a huge success. By using radiation on all fresh produce, they claim, the number of food-borne illness outbreaks that happen each year could be substantially reduced. It all makes sense until you realize that by destroying the nutritional value of all fresh produce sold in the United States, an irradiation policy would greatly increase the number of people killed by infections and chronic diseases that are prevented by the natural medicines found in fresh produce!

Why fresh, living produce helps prevent sickness

The USDA, you see, has zero recognition of the difference between living produce and dead produce. To uneducated government bureaucrats, pasteurized or irradiated vegetable juice is identical to fresh, raw, living vegetable juice. They believe this because they’ve never been taught about the phytonutrients, digestive enzymes and life force properties that are found in fresh foods, but that are destroyed through heat or irradiation. This, the USDA is operating out of extreme ignorance when it comes to food and nutrition.

Even a simple leaf of spinach contains hundreds of natural medicines — phytonutrients that help prevent cancer, eye diseases, nervous system disorders, heart disease and much more. Every living vegetable is a powerhouse of disease-fighting medicine: Broccoli prevents cancer, beet greens cleanse the liver, cilantro removes heavy metals, celery prevents cancer, berries prevent heart disease and dark leafy greens help prevent over a dozen serious health conditions while boosting immune function and helping prevent other infections. But when you subject these fruits and vegetables to enough radiation to kill 99.9% of the pathogens that may be hitching a ride, you also destroy many of the phytonutrients responsible for these tremendous health benefits!

This means that while irradiating food may decrease outbreaks of food-borne illnesses, it will have the unintended consequence of increasing the number of people who get sick from other infections (and chronic diseases) due to the fact that their source of natural medicine has been destroyed. For many Americans, you see, salad greens are their one remaining source for phytonutrients. Given their diets of processed foods, junk foods and cooked foods, there are very few opportunities for these consumers to get fresh, phytonutrient-rich foods into their diet. And now the USDA wants to take that away, too, by mandating the irradiation of all fresh produce.

Let me make a rather obvious prediction, on the record: If the irradiation of fresh produce goes into effect in the United States, rates of infection among consumers will sharply increase, not decrease, due to the removal of immune-boosting natural medicine from the food supply. Consumers will also experience higher rates of cancer, heart disease, dementia, eye disorders, diabetes and even obesity. By destroying these thousands of healing phytonutrients, irradiation will leave many consumers defenseless against modern society’s many health challenges.

It is no exaggeration to say that a policy of mass irradiation of fresh produce is as blatantly stupid as the Romans building their aqueducts with lead-lined waterways. As historians have explained, after the aqueducts were built, the water delivered to the Roman population was contaminated with lead — a heavy metal that causes numerous health problems, including insanity. Many historians blame the lead-lined aqueducts as one of the primary reasons why the Roman Empire fell: Its leaders went mad, and the rest is history.

I would argue that America’s leaders are already mad, but that’s beside the point. If we start irradiating our food, thereby destroying its nutritional value, we are going to unleash a cascade of unintended consequences even greater than the Roman’s aqueducts. Absent the protections of phytonutrients found in plants, the health of most consumers will rapidly decline, and we’ll see the U.S. thrust into a quagmire of chronic disease and medical bankruptcy. (It’s already heading there, of course, but killing the food supply will only accelerate the downward spiral of health.)

Let’s sterilize all the food!

The USDA has never met a food sterilization plan it didn’t like. It backed the recent almond sterilization law that went into effect in California last year, forcing all almond growers to sterilize their almonds by subjecting them to toxic chemicals or cooking them at high enough temperatures to kill anything that might have been alive (such as the almond itself). Now, all the raw almonds consumed in America are purchased from overseas growers, where raw still means raw.

Raw milk has also been under attack in California and elsewhere. The USDA supported laws that essentially banned the sales of raw milk, requiring milk to be sterilized, too. If you now irradiate all the fresh produce, you have a food supply that is predominantly sterilized — otherwise known as “dead.” And dead foods lead to dead people.

That a society’s health regulators would want all foods to be dead should be downright shocking to anyone who knows anything about health and nutrition. Live foods keep people alive, but dead foods make people dead. It’s really not a complicated concept. The USDA’s definition of “food safety,” however, is based on the idea that the health of one immune-system-compromised individual who can’t handle a little E. Coli is more important than the ongoing health of the entire population. Thus, all foods must be killed for everyone.

I strongly disagree with this approach. Foods should not be expected to be sterilized. In terms of food safety, emphasis should be placed on boosting the health and immune systems of individuals so they can survive occasional contact with E. Coli rather than trying to create a sterile environment in which nothing is alive. As it turns out, the people susceptible to food-borne illnesses are precisely those individuals who have compromised immune systems due to their intake of vaccines and antibiotics. Thus, it is modern medicine that has made these people vulnerable to food-borne illnesses. Blame the drug companies, not the bacteria.

But the USDA would rather blame the food. Blaming conventional medicine for the harm it has caused to the human immune system is not politically correct. It’s better to blame the food, then use scare tactics to announce yet more outbreaks and hope for a public outcry for widespread food irradiation. And that brings me to the “final solution” on food irradiation.

How the USDA plans to join the FDA in keeping everyone sick

There is a corporate-sponsored plot underway in the U.S. today to keep people sick and deny them access to information about natural cures (such as medicinal foods) that would prevent disease and keep people out of the hospitals. In more than 1,500 articles on this website, I’ve documented the FDA’s criminality, the USDA’s indefensible actions, and the criminal behavior of drug manufacturers who only earn profits if they can find a way to keep the entire population sick and diseased for another generation or two.

Destroying the natural medicine in the food supply sure would be a highly effective way to create more customers for Big Pharma, wouldn’t it? I think it’s all part of the “keep the population sick and diseased” plot being carried out by an evil partnership between drug companies and the U.S. government. We already know that the FDA and USDA work for the corporations, not the People. We already know that they will do practically anything to boost their profits (including conducting medical experiments on infants, drugging schoolchildren, lying to the public, fabricating clinical trials and more). Is it any surprise that they would now attempt a “final solution” on the food supply that kills the food and thereby results in a huge reduction in the population’s intake of the disease-fighting nutrients found in fresh produce?

The social engineering recipe

Pulling this off, of course, requires a bit of social engineering by the USDA in order to force the public into demanding something be done. If you’re the USDA, you can’t just suddenly announce a national food sterilization plan; you have to prime the pump with a bit of dirty work. Here’s the simple plan for accomplishing that, if you’re the USDA:

1) Conduct poor inspections of fresh produce on purpose, in order to cause a large increase in food-borne illness outbreaks. (We’ve seen this increase happen over the last 12 – 24 months.) This can be easily accomplished by reducing the budget of food inspection offices, or removing inspectors from the payroll altogether (which has already happened).

2) Wait for the outbreaks to happen. When consumers get sick, run national press releases announcing how dangerous the food supply is.

3) Watch the consumer reaction as people and lawmakers demand “something be done!”

4) Fudge a study with the American Chemical Society to show that washing doesn’t work and that irradiation is the only solution. Time the release of this news to coincide with the public outcry that “something be done!”

5) Once the public is demanding a solution to food-borne illnesses, roll out a national produce irradiation requirement that sterilizes all the food.

Mission accomplished! This, of course, leads to point #6:

6) Watch the population become increasingly sick and diseased (thanks to the lack of phytonutrients that used to be found in the fresh produce), and cash in on your Big Pharma shares as the population is herded into hospitals for lucrative treatments with monopoly-priced pharmaceuticals.

It’s the same old social engineering trick that’s been used to hoodwink the American people hundreds of times. How do you get the public to support a war in the Middle East? Stage an attack on U.S. soil first, and wait for the public outcry. How do you get the People to support the mass sterilization of their own food supply? Lower your inspection standards, let the sickness spread, and then wait for the public outcry. It’s the way governments get things done these days: They manipulate the public into demanding the things they wanted to accomplish in the first place. These are sometimes called “false flag operations” in a military context, and they’ve been conducted by the U.S. government on numerous occasions, just like they were conducted by Hitler in Nazi Germany to justify his invasions of neighboring countries. You can read about False Flag operations on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_flag

What “they” really want: A dead food supply

Let’s be blunt about this: The corporations running this country (which also run the U.S. government) want the U.S. food supply to be dead. They don’t want foods to be used as medicines, and they sure don’t want the natural medicines found in foods competing with their own patented pharmaceutical medicines (that just happen to earn them a whole lot more money than any food ever did).

Don’t you find it curious that this attack on the food supply is coming out now, right after all this incredible news about the healing power of foods has been hitting the science journals? Every week, it seems, we find out about another amazing health property in a food. Black raspberries reverse oral cancer. Pomegranates halt prostate cancer. Green tea halts breast cancer. The list goes on. Just on this website alone, we’ve probably published 1,000 stories over the last two years on the disease-fighting properties of foods.

The thing to realize here is that many of the healing properties of these foods are destroyed through pasteurization or irradiation. If you’re a government that wants to “take away the People’s medicine,” the fastest way to accomplish that is to mandate the sterilization of the food supply. Kill the foods and you take away the People’s medicine, and that forces the population to use pharmaceuticals instead.

The FDA, for its part, has for many decades conducted its natural medicine censorship campaign, whose only purpose is to deny the People access to accurate information about the healing properties of natural medicines found in foods and herbs. But apparently that wasn’t enough: The Internet came along and people found a way to educate themselves. So since the FDA couldn’t keep the truth about natural medicine bottled up and censored, the government has now apparently decided to just sterilize all the foods, thereby destroying the natural medicine and transforming Mother Nature’s gifts into dead calories.

The USDA’s decisions here are not based on public safety, folks. They’re based on corporate greed. Just look at how they handled the raw almond controversy in these related articles: http://www.naturalnews.com/almonds.html

The USDA as operated today is a front group for wealthy corporations. It is not interested in helping the People. It’s interested in protecting the profits of corporations… even if that means destroying the food supply and turning the population into “dead eaters” who die from other diseases caused by the lack of phytonutrient protection.

How you can help stop this latest atrocity against our food supply

What can you do to stop this? Be prepared to fight irradiation plans with a massive outcry that demands our food supply be protected from radiation. There are two things that need to be accomplished, and of course the USDA and FDA oppose them both:

1) Require the labeling of all irradiated foods with a large “Irradiated” label or sticker.

2) Block any attempts to mandate the irradiation of fresh produce.

Stay tuned to NaturalNews.com for more on this story. We’ll be joining with other pro-consumer groups (like the Organic Consumers Association) to rally our readers in opposition to this food irradiation effort.

I believe we must keep our food supply fresh and alive. (Sounds kinda obvious, huh?) And if there’s a little extra bacteria on the spinach, it’s nothing that a healthy body can’t handle anyway. Take some probiotics and avoid antibiotics, and you’ll be just fine. E. Coli is really only a threat to the health of individuals who have had their immune systems (or intestinal flora) destroyed by pharmaceuticals in the first place. There’s nothing wrong with some living organisms in your milk, on your almonds or on your spinach. Wash your food, get plenty of sunlight and avoid using antibiotics.

The human body is NOT a sterile environment. To try to make our food supply sterile is insane, and anyone who supports the irradiation of the food supply is, in my opinion, supporting a policy of genocide against the American people. To destroy the vitality of the food supply is a criminal act of such immense evil that it stands alongside the worst crimes ever committed against humanity.

You see, it’s not enough for them to poison our water (fluoride), poison our children (vaccines) and lie to us about the sun (skin cancer scare stories). Now they want to destroy our foods… and thereby take away any natural medicine options that might actually keep people healthy and free. Remember: A diseased population is an enslaved population.

Now go eat your Big Mac, drink your Pepsi and don’t ask too many questions.

Reprinted from Natural News.

(NaturalNews) The recall of 143 million pounds of beef processed over the past two years is the largest meat recall in the history of the world. The USDA had no choice following an animal group’s release of videotape of “downer” cows being dragged across filthy floors and pushed around by a fork lift, before joining their healthier brethren on the hamburger highway. Since we all agree that the primary responsibility of the USDA is food safety, the question is, where were the USDA inspectors? The answer may be that for several years, the top priority at the USDA has not been food safety, but the creation of the National Animal Identification System (NAIS).

What is NAIS?

Formulated under the Patriot Act and therefore with no legislative review or input of the people, NAIS is a government program originally designed to give US beef producers help in getting their products into the export markets, as well as protection from liability involving those products.

Often labeled “no chicken left behind”, the program has grown to include all livestock species, including cattle, bison, deer, elk, llamas, alpacas, horses, donkeys, mules, goats, sheep, swine, all poultry species, and fish. Owners are required at their expense to electronically, and with geo-satellite coordinates, tag each group or groups of animals and report within 24 hours to a data base: animal births, deaths, ownership transfers, and animal ingress and egress from the owner’s land.

Under this system, animal owners who want to sell or take their animals off their property are also required to register their land with the USDA, thus putting their property under federal jurisdiction.

Of course, the benefit is to the big factory farms who clearly do need some type of regulation. They will do single ID’s for large groups of animals. Small farmers, pet owners and homesteaders will have to tag and track every single animal individually.

Under NAIS, there are no exceptions. Even small farms that sell directly to local consumers will be required to pay the fees and file paperwork on each of their animals. Homesteaders who raise their own meat and grandma with her one egg hen will also have to register their homes as ‘farm premises’ and obtain a Premise ID, as well as tagging each animal.

The animal tracking, logging and reporting components of NAIS are scheduled to become mandatory nationwide in January, 2009. Strict enforcement involving fines, inspections of properties and confiscation or redistribution of livestock can be done by the USDA or state government without trial or legal hearings and with no compensation to the owner of the animals. Failure to register your home or farm with a Premise ID already faces a $1,000 fine in some states. This is in violation of the Fourth Amendment Constitutional rights as outlined in the Bill of Rights.

Nearly $150 million of taxpayer money as been spent on promoting NAIS, money that could have been spent on more inspectors to oversee meat processing plants. Instead, NAIS money has been used to influence non-government organizations into a public/private partnership to promote the NAIS. The Future Farmers of America and the 4H Club received large sums to encourage their parents to quickly register their property into the program.

NAIS and Food Safety

NAIS does nothing to prevent or arrest disease or contamination in the food supply. The initiative is not intended for this purpose. The goal of NAIS is to provide a 48 hour trace back to the farm of origin in the case of problems, a requirement for export to foreign markets. NAIS expands corporate profits, not consumer safety. The 48 hour trace back time that follows any problem detection could mean weeks or months have elapsed since any problem would actually have occurred.

Contamination of the food generally happens after the food leaves the farm. Many examples of factory contaminated food fill the news. And if the problem is not discovered at the factory but later, at the consumer level, there is a recall. The systems are already in place to handle this type of problem.

As to disease, meat sold in stores and restaurants is supposedly USDA inspected during slaughter and processing. The reality is that large numbers of recalls show us that meat from big commercial producers may not have been properly inspected because there are not enough inspectors, and because priorities lie elsewhere.

NAIS does nothing to halt the spread of Mad Cow Disease, a disease believed to be caused by the practice of grinding up old cows and adding them to cow feed. This practice is banned, and it is the job of the USDA to enforce this ban.

NAIS cannot help prevent the feared Avian Flu which is spread by wild birds.

Had the NAIS system been fully in place, it would not have prevented the “downer” cows in California from getting into the food supply. Nor would it have prevented any of the other meat recalls in recent years. Only a more efficient USDA inspection program can improve food safety.

Who Benefits and Who Loses From NAIS?

Today’s NAIS is an outgrowth of international agreements brought to the USDA by the National Institute of Animal Agriculture, a not-for-profit organization consisting of large meat packers, manufacturers of animal tags and tag-reading equipment, and the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture. These are the organizations benefiting financially from the NAIS. Farmers, ranchers, and producers who must pay for this program were not invited to participate in its development.

The tag and reader manufacturers anticipate windfall profits from NAIS. State Departments of Agriculture are also slated to benefit. And certainly this is a full employment act for the USDA.

Animal owners who have to pay the bill for all this are being urged to sign up before NAIS becomes law in their states. Early sign up is billed as a patriotic act. To encourage early signing, animals cannot be shown at state fairs unless their premises are registered in the NAIS. Breed associations are being encouraged to withhold registration of animals for people not first registered with NAIS. There are reports that animals have been slaughtered by USDA inspectors on small farms where the owners resist registration.

Agri-business is the clear winner under NAIS. The prize is expanded export markets, and legal liability protection at minimal cost. Small farmers will be forced out of business due to the additional fees and paperwork, resulting in market share gain, bigger monopolies, and higher profits for the corporations. Anyone wishing to raise his own, better quality food will face the obstacles of paperwork and regulation.

NAIS is going to be expensive and guess who will pay for it in higher food prices? You!

About the author

Barbara is a school psychologist, a published author in the area of personal finance, a breast cancer survivor using “alternative” treatments, a born existentialist, and a student of nature and all things natural.

Reprinted from Natural News.