Hillside Poultry Farm is not telling the truth

[ninjapoodles]

Quote:
Exactly--a perfectly appropriate analogy. Now maybe some of the people who keep asking, "Why do you care?" will get it. Then again...

 

[jvls1942]

kaya's farm :

Quote:
If you knew the lies that our food system depends on you may care...if not im sorry for you

At our coop people pay 5.50 a dozen for free range organic local eggs and they cant keep them stocked

That is what I started doing today and so far six local farms will ask him if his eggs are local and if they arnt three of those will look for others and three said they would make a sign stating they are not local..........Fair enough

I just want people to be aware i will also write to our local paper and brattleboro

I am happy to say IN VERMONT WE SUPPPPPORT LOCAL FARMS

F$%k the corperate farmer that only cares about a buck!!!!

wow! now the guy is a f$%k corporate farmer already and I think I read that you don't even know his name. a bit speculative, isn't that?

and child, I was "green" before your parents were born.. In fact it was not called green back then.. If it were not for people like me, you would not know what a fresh egg was.. can you say that you ate only the meat you grew for over 45 years?? I can.. want to talk corporate farmer?? Bring it on babycakes..​

 

[Buck Creek Chickens]

watch it, this is going to get locked.

 

[greenfamilyfarms]

This is flaming, folks. The person wanted help and now it has escaluated into an arguing match with "disguised" profanity. This is a family site!

 

[kaya's farm]

You are right sorry I will edit ..........................and some of the stuff i have been reading for school is going to send me over the deep end. Our food system is so scary

I do know this man's name that's how i looked him up in the book i have known him for years working at local business. Im not sure you may be Peter Carol for all i know. In a town of 600 or something it's no big thing to figure this out. I drive by what used to be his chicken coops every day.

I come from a long line of canadians that seldom relied on any outside food only what they grow i myself am young (27) but look up to those who know the value of the truth. Something the industrial suppliers of pur food know nothing about. Who cares about the past educate yourself about something thats important now.

 

[greenfamilyfarms]

Personally, I care about the past. Without a past, where would we be as people, and as a nation?

Thank you for offering to edit your posts. I'm a high school teacher and I hear bickering and profanity throughout the day and it gets old.

 

[kaya's farm]

im not sure if i can even post this long..........

This is a draft i wrote out yesterday and never got around to today(wonder why) I have alot more work to do but I would love it if you would take a min to read it I know its long but id love some feedback????

I do feel in some ways the past is important and i am thankful i could learn many food preservation skills and such from my grandmother

Until recently I never gave particular thought to what went in the mouths of anyone other than my own family. I have always thought of farming as way of life as much as a way of eating, a lifestyle that works for me but may not work for everyone. To some extent I feel we should have the freedom to make our own choices but should be allowed to do so with proper education and information about the food that’s available. Americans especially have become victims of product marketing that pushes profit and undervalues health, and this topic has been getting a lot of attention in recent years.
My plan for this chapter was to look in depth at a few of the most common food preservatives and additives that are most often put in food give them a longer shelf life, make them more visually appealing, and very commonly provide the cheapest product at the highest rate of profit. What I found was a sort of surprise to me many of these substances that are added to most of our food derive from corn and are formulated through an unimaginable amount of processes, chemical and otherwise, to achieve their final result. This was just one piece of the puzzle because even other foods we consume like beef, chicken and pork are fed corn before they reach the table.
It was much to even my own surprise this journey would land me with dislike of the very thing I came to defend, corn one of the very first foods. I have to keep reminding myself the plant is only doing what humans have asked of it. Through this chapter I will take you on my journey to discover how corn and a few other mass produced crops are used to create most of the food we eat.
A large influence for this semester was Michael Pollan who wrote Omnivores Dilemma and What to Eat, along with other books about food and food quality. This one book encouraged me to look further rather than to move away from the growing concern about the rate in which American consumers have been brain wash into thinking lots of cheap food is better than small amounts of quality food. Currently this trend is being picked to pieces by many who feel this is what leads up to the health care crisis in this country. I chose to pair him up with a few authors like Marion Nester who has worked inside the FDA, Michele Simon who is a public health lawyer has made it her mission to expose the real motives of most companies that are profit driven.
Like any other consumer based company one thing comes before all others and that’s profit. What we should see more clearly is the profit driven companies that feed us low quality nutra- washed foods suffer no repercussions if their food, and push to over consume low calorie “filler” foods then leads to a variety of health problems that one may not be able to connect directly with diet, although with a little attention that connection should be clear. Marion Nestle argues that we see these connections rather clearly in fact but organizations that are intended to protect individuals have little chance against the food industry and its unlimited funds.
Nestle feels this is especially a problem when dealing with children and the topic is arriving in some heated debates in schools and by doctors who are noticing a pattern in the behavior of kids and the rate of childhood obesity in those who have especially poor eating habits, a trend that is also linked strongly to poverty. The FDA set out on a mission to get soda vending machines out of schools but eventually lost in court. Have we lost our senses so much we feed kids soda on a regular basis in school, then commonly recommend to parents kids need a drug for attention issues.
“A 12 oz. can contain about 1.5 ounces of sugar and 160 calories, but so little else of nutritional value that the Center for Science in the Public Interest rightfully refers to soft drinks as “liquid candy”. (Nestle 127).
Much like many of the other snacks we throw into the lunchboxes of our children we are tricked into thinking they are O.K. How many parents are going to worry about their kids drinking soda if schools make them readily available? Not to mention that struggling schools make hundreds of thousands off contracts in large school districts, and they agree to donate drinks to special events no expense to the school, Coca-Cola even offers large cash rewards if sales go over contract expectations (Nestle 204). This seems to be a problem all in itself however the explosive rate of attention issues in school are continually growing and Nestle refers to child obesity as a growing epidemic.
How does this link to corn you might ask? Soda and many other products marketed towards children consist of more corn than any other products. Even Sunny D a product that promotes parents making healthy choices has a skimpy 10% juice; high fructose corn syrup is the first ingredient, its not just soda by any means. So many fillers and additives are made with corn sweeteners we seldom sit down to a meal that isn’t sweetened with corn never mind the many other corn derivates that are added to food and food packaging.
What I feel has happened in a nutshell is the billion dollar companies that produce our food have us so confused about what to eat we will believe anything they claim on a box. They have us thinking ketchup (high fructose corn syrup) is a serving of vegetables and hostess pies are a serving of fruit. We are given a wide assortment of low calorie, but high sugar and fat, snacks to choose from fooled into thinking they amount to anything other than very inexpensive fillers. We are told rather clearly by the million dollar marketing adds of these companies if we eat a bowl of “Special K” for breakfast we get all the vitamins and minerals we need for the day so that leads us to believe we can fill the rest of our day with low calorie junk food if we wish and believe we are still making healthy choices.
This whole system of cheap, large production food relies on intensive farming, so it has been called, for the purpose of this essay I will use the word industrial food production, I have an impossible time referring to this as farming. Meat for example is becoming harder to produce in the mass quantities the market is demanding. In the movie Fast Food Nation many good points are brought to a wide and diverse audience. The movie makes an example of the dangerous conditions of the immigrant workers who work at industrial slaughter houses, the less than ideal circumstances in which the cows are mass produced and how the bi products of these mass killings are handled, not to mention the 50lbs of waste each animal puts out every single day.
Over all the producers of this movie wanted to bring home the death and blood and nastiness of how industrial farming is becoming a bit over the top. I don’t believe the images that showed animals being very quickly killed impacted me in a way the creator of this movie was striving for. I have seen death and know what’s involved in killing something. In nature things die in a way far more stressful very commonly. I was happy to see this because I feel the average American eater is so disconnected to the death of what they eat. Food in many forms just appears in nice prepared slabs ready for the enjoyment of the eater. Still this is just a small part of the larger picture this movie was especially looking to horrify the reader by showing the mass numbers it takes to be the biggest seller of the sloppiest burger.
Many things have lead to the change in the way food is produced. I feel supply and demand is a big part of that but now that we are paying the price for fast, cheep, and plenty.
In 1973 the new Secretary of Agriculture Earl Butz decided that our government had it all wrong in the way they “pay people to grow less” and made a speech to the American people about how he would see to the change in the way America farms. Quoted from the speech “What we want from agriculture today is plenty of food, that’s our drive now. We have experienced a hundred and eighty degree turn in the philosophy of our farm programs. We have abandoned the long term philosophy of curtailment and cutback to the new philosophy of expansion, and it makes sense. This year in 1973 we are going to see the most massive increase in production of farm products in the history of this country.”
This way of farming has lead to Iowa farmers growing corn fields at least 1,000 acres per farm, planting an acre of corn in 18 minutes with government tractors; however this corn has to be one of the government approved types to receive any government payments. Just so happens this corn is not even eatable until it reaches the processing plant and you would never know you are eating corn by the time it hits your plate. This is when most of the farmers get out before they loose everything or go big to receive government money. Doom is destined for the farmer who doesn’t see growth massive continual growth as progress. If you don’t grow very large of the right kind of corn with the chemicals they want you may as well throw in your hat, many true farmers have.
A very common breed of corn called Liberty corn is used for its high concentration of starches but can only be treated with a spray that is specific to this breed of corn. If Liberty spray is put on other breeds of corn the plant would just die. A farmer needs to cut every corner possible in order to make little amounts of money however they still loose money when selling the corn at whole sale, by the bushel, prices. Often times corn growers use the money subsidized by the government in order to cover what they loose in operation costs. This way of growing would not be possible if our government didn’t pay for it to continue. This way of farming also leads to countless other problems for the land where it happens.
Even the meat industry is pushing people to eat at least three serving of meat a day, if people eat more they make more! The amount of waste that all industrial meat producers accumulate is becoming a problem in the places these farms are located. The stench of these factories smell for miles and discourage the use of land around them.. This way of producing food eliminated the need for this bi product on other parts of the land, and turns it into a huge problem. Many factories have lagoons that are able to hold thousands of gallons of waste; I had trouble finding an answer to what happens to this waste except that some becomes fertilizers. It seems rather common for these tanks to leak and in one case killed an estimated 14,000 fish. This is an article I found online when looking into how we dispose of this massive amount of waste, Smithfield is the largest Pork producer in the world.
Smithfield is not just a virtuosic polluter; it is also a theatrical one. Its lagoons are historically prone to failure. In North Carolina alone they have spilled, in a span of four years, 2 million gallons of poop into the Cape Fear River, 1.5 million gallons into its Persimmon Branch, one million gallons into the Trent River and 200,000 gallons into Turkey Creek. In Virginia, Smithfield was fined $12.6 million in 1997 for 6,900 violations of the Clean Water Act -- the third-largest civil penalty ever levied under the act by the EPA. It amounted to .035 percent of Smithfield's annual sales.
(http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...cer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters/2)

What comes out of the animal is of concern but also a problem is what goes in them. Scientists’ have been looking onto the effects of switching these natural grazers into stock fenced grain fed animals. The impact of most animals being converted to corn eaters has impacted their health a great deal and in many cases makes them sick up until the moment they are killed. The standard use of antibiotics and growth hormones makes disease rampant way of farming possible. Cows living on a steady diet of corn actually become sick and need antibiotics to stay well long enough to be slaughtered. According to the movie King Corn, animal antibiotics account for 70% of the antibiotics used in the United States.
“In 1900, 40% of the population lived on farms, but today no more than 2% do. Just since 1960, the number of farms has declined from about 3.2 million to 1.9 million but the average size has increased by 40% and their productivity by 82%. Most of the farms today raise just a single commodity such as cattle, chickens, pigs, corn, wheat, or soybeans.” ( Nestle 11)
For so long animals have been raised for meat without the need for medications and growth hormones that produce the largest cow fastest or the cow that produces the most amount of milk possible. This need to keep animals continually medicated stems directly from the way that they are raised, the antibiotics still work for the animals currently but it seems only a matter of time before the problems we try to solve are not effected by the drugs ant longer.
This brings me back around full circle to one of the most common foods we eat, just so happens it’s also one of the most common foods fed to the livestock we eat. Corn has never been in such high demand as it is right now and most people are unaware of the vast amounts of corn we use as a population to maintain the lifestyles we have become accustomed to. Here I will use Michael Pollan’s words in order to describe some of the products that contain large amounts of corn bi products
“The great edifice of variety and choice that is in an American supermarket turns out to rest on a remarkably narrow biological foundation comprised of a tiny group of plants dominated by a single species Zea Maze, the giant tropical grass most Americans know as corn. Corn is what feeds the steer that becomes the steak, corn feeds the chicken and the pig, the turkey and the lamb, the catfish and the tilapia and, increasingly, even the salmon, a carnivore by nature that the fish farmers are reengineering to tolerate corn. The eggs are made of corn. The milk and cheese and yogurt, which once came from dairy cows that grazed on grass, now come from Holsteins that spend their working lives indoors tethered to machines, eating corn.”

“To wash down your chicken nugget with virtually any soft drink in the supermarket is to have some corn with your corn. Since the 1980’s virtually all of the sodas and most of the fruit drinks are sweetened with high fructose corn syrup (HFCS)- after water, corn sweeteners is their second ingredient. Grab beer for a beverage instead and you are still drinking corn, in the form of alcohol fermentation from glucose refined from corn. Read the ingredients on the label of any processed food and, provided you know the chemical name it travels under, corn is what you will find. For modified and unmodified starch, for glucose syrup and maltodextrin, for crystalline fructose and ascorbic acid, for lecithin and dextrose, lactic acid and lysine, for maltose and HFCS, for MSG and polyols, for Carmel color and xanthan gum, read: corn. Corn is in the coffee whitener and the cheese wiz the frozen yogurt and the T.V. dinner, the canned fruit and ketchup and candies, the soup and snacks and cake mixes, the frosting and the gravy and the frozen waffle. ( Pollan 18)

Pollan continues to give examples of the food we eat that have corn bi products added to them. Then he moves on to talk about the household products that consist of more and more corn.
“This goes for the non-food items as well. Everything from the tooth paste to the cosmetics to the disposable diapers, trash bags, cleaners, charcoal briquettes, matches and batteries, right down to the shine on the magazine that catches your eye in the checkout: corn. In the cucumber wax that gives the vegetable its sheen, in the pesticides responsible for the producer’s perfection, even on the coating of the card board box it was shipped in. ( Pollan 19)

This practice has gone far and beyond finding ways to use the bi-products of the corn that we consume. In order to maintain the amount of corn needed to keep up with demands we have created corn production that only the hugest “farms” can maintain. In fact the government pretty clearly says go big or go home when farmers can’t maintain the volume of production they need. Remember Earl Butz in 1973. Even Butz said himself later in 2004 during an interview for the movie King Corn he states, “What’s important is the % of gross income that is being spent on food. He mentions no concern for the health or nutritional value of the endless cheep for everyone. No mention of the strong healthy county this system of food has created.
No industrial corn farm would be profitable for the owner without the help of the government. Many farmers left the industry when the government offered cheep land and tax breaks to only farmers who would go big. This changed many elements to what it meant to be an American farmer. This has lead to the merging of all stages of production, and in reality eliminates the farmer all together. More commonly the farmer is whomever the industry hires to look after the machinery and medications that are essential in order for the animals and plants to live in such horrible conditions.
What is flawed with this system and its strong emphasis on cheep food, lots of cheep food for everyone is good right?



http://www.rollingstone.com/politic...ucer_is_also_one_of_americas_worst_polluters/

 

[greenfamilyfarms]

Wow! You've got a lot done. I'm going to copy and paste it into Word and get back to you. When is it due?

 

[kaya's farm]

Quote:
If you knew the lies that our food system depends on you may care...if not im sorry for you

At our coop people pay 5.50 a dozen for free range organic local eggs and they cant keep them stocked

That is what I started doing today and so far six local farms will ask him if his eggs are local and if they arnt three of those will look for others and three said they would make a sign stating they are not local..........Fair enough

I just want people to be aware i will also write to our local paper and brattleboro

I am happy to say IN VERMONT WE SUPPPPPORT LOCAL FARMS
the corperate farmer that only cares about a buck!!!!

wow! now the guy is a f$%k corporate farmer already and I think I read that you don't even know his name. a bit speculative, isn't that?

and child, I was "green" before your parents were born.. In fact it was not called green back then.. If it were not for people like me, you would not know what a fresh egg was.. can you say that you ate only the meat you grew for over 45 years?? I can.. want to talk corporate farmer?? Bring it on babycakes..

I am happy to say that when I do buy meat and such from a store I pay close attention to who i give my money to. I choose a farm in putney that has grass fed cattle like many of the woman i shop with ..the food i feed my children should be represented as what it is or i get a bit irritated. I used to buy Hillside eggs before I got chickens from the same organic farm I worked at my first job at 13 ....Walker Farm told me Hillside provided them with eggs from Wilmington Vermont local eggs until I suggested they ask him.
The next time i went to pick up my CSA share a week later they had a diffrent sign on the eggs and they got chickens of their own.

I can thank you for making me question what i am doing but it still feels right

 

[kaya's farm]

This is due in about a week, one of three chapters

I had a bunch of quotes i wanted to fit into a paper and thats how it started now I am trying to work it all out a bit.

You could just look it over and read it you dont have to go thru the trouble of doing work while not on the clock if ya know what i mean.

Im not sure why i am getting so worked up over this but i think its because of the books Iv been reading for the semester and the movies, ect. In June i will have my B.A. and have no desire to use it, and other than student loans we live simply enough i dont need to. I have no desire to continue school once im done like i planned, what was i thinking???