I know we are mostly venting here, but please remember
In small towns, people KNOW their neighbors and their neighbors operations. They can decide to buy from Farmer Snug-and-Clean or Farmer Slack-and-Cheaper. Today a very tiny portion of the population KNOW the producers of their food beyond a company or a brand name. They cannot inspect premises themselves. In many cases those premises are in another country.
Remember back to the time of the muckrakers, when people were dying because of horrid but cost reducing food processing practices. Journalists exposed these practices, the public cried out and Food and Drug Regulations were born. Some journalists are purists by nature and are really trying to get important news out (however little the public wants to know). But almost all have to pay at least some attention to ratings. Nothing gets the public attention faster than horror stories about foods and drugs. And when the public is interested, they may act by contacting their representatives. And we get more Food and Drug Regulations. They exist because a population that cannot know about how its food was produced cannot make informed decisions about what to buy. The average city person wants to know that any food product they buy is safe to eat.
Our representatives are generally not practiced farmers or food processors. They need to ask someone for help in understanding how the regulations should be written that the public is asking for. If you were a politician looking for help, would you go to the guy on the corner who has 40 chickens, or Tyson who has 400 million? There is no reason to go ask the little guy, it might even be hard to find a little guy on some questions. Even if they go to folks in academia to ask how things should be set up, many of them have an interest in setting things up to benefit mass production, who support and use a lot of their research about making plants and animals grow faster on the cheap.
I am in Wisconsin and have NAIS registration. No one has ever come on my land to inspect my operation (chickens on pasture in the front yard where everyone can see them). Some of the statements regarding NAIS might be worded strongly to encourage discussion of the issue. I agree we need to continue to work to rework or remove these laws. Wisconsin is still a nice place to live.
I am within sight of two huge commercial turkey barns, and families involved in our 4-H club have commercial chicken barns of 50,000 broilers each. There are 6 commercial flocks within 5 miles of us. If I bring in a really lovely specimen of a rare breed that has a devastating poultry disease, I endanger the livelihoods of my friends and neighbors. You can bet my neighbors would expect me to destroy my flock in such a case. The Government is just enforcing what my neighbors would require to protect their own interests. When we talk about diseases, chemical dumping in run-off areas and streams or invasive species like the Emerald Ash Borer, these problems are not going to stay on my own land and be my own problem. They are going to affect my neighbors. My neighbors will want to prevent this adverse effect by cutting my affected trees, destroying my affected flocks and forcing me to clean up chemical dumps.
The Muscovy issue I can believe was simply one group (wildlife types) not knowing anything about the other (small agricultural types). I have a neighbor who loves to hunt skinny asparagus spears on the lead filled side of the road. Mine grow nice and thick and where it is easy to pick in my yard. He wants to be self-sufficient by living off the wild as a hunter/gatherer, I tend to prefer to cultivate/domesticate my own food. We just are not going to be aware of each others views. It isnt a conspiracy to keep us from raising Muscovys, they simply did not know we actually raise them.
In small towns, people KNOW their neighbors and their neighbors operations. They can decide to buy from Farmer Snug-and-Clean or Farmer Slack-and-Cheaper. Today a very tiny portion of the population KNOW the producers of their food beyond a company or a brand name. They cannot inspect premises themselves. In many cases those premises are in another country.
Remember back to the time of the muckrakers, when people were dying because of horrid but cost reducing food processing practices. Journalists exposed these practices, the public cried out and Food and Drug Regulations were born. Some journalists are purists by nature and are really trying to get important news out (however little the public wants to know). But almost all have to pay at least some attention to ratings. Nothing gets the public attention faster than horror stories about foods and drugs. And when the public is interested, they may act by contacting their representatives. And we get more Food and Drug Regulations. They exist because a population that cannot know about how its food was produced cannot make informed decisions about what to buy. The average city person wants to know that any food product they buy is safe to eat.
Our representatives are generally not practiced farmers or food processors. They need to ask someone for help in understanding how the regulations should be written that the public is asking for. If you were a politician looking for help, would you go to the guy on the corner who has 40 chickens, or Tyson who has 400 million? There is no reason to go ask the little guy, it might even be hard to find a little guy on some questions. Even if they go to folks in academia to ask how things should be set up, many of them have an interest in setting things up to benefit mass production, who support and use a lot of their research about making plants and animals grow faster on the cheap.
I am in Wisconsin and have NAIS registration. No one has ever come on my land to inspect my operation (chickens on pasture in the front yard where everyone can see them). Some of the statements regarding NAIS might be worded strongly to encourage discussion of the issue. I agree we need to continue to work to rework or remove these laws. Wisconsin is still a nice place to live.
I am within sight of two huge commercial turkey barns, and families involved in our 4-H club have commercial chicken barns of 50,000 broilers each. There are 6 commercial flocks within 5 miles of us. If I bring in a really lovely specimen of a rare breed that has a devastating poultry disease, I endanger the livelihoods of my friends and neighbors. You can bet my neighbors would expect me to destroy my flock in such a case. The Government is just enforcing what my neighbors would require to protect their own interests. When we talk about diseases, chemical dumping in run-off areas and streams or invasive species like the Emerald Ash Borer, these problems are not going to stay on my own land and be my own problem. They are going to affect my neighbors. My neighbors will want to prevent this adverse effect by cutting my affected trees, destroying my affected flocks and forcing me to clean up chemical dumps.
The Muscovy issue I can believe was simply one group (wildlife types) not knowing anything about the other (small agricultural types). I have a neighbor who loves to hunt skinny asparagus spears on the lead filled side of the road. Mine grow nice and thick and where it is easy to pick in my yard. He wants to be self-sufficient by living off the wild as a hunter/gatherer, I tend to prefer to cultivate/domesticate my own food. We just are not going to be aware of each others views. It isnt a conspiracy to keep us from raising Muscovys, they simply did not know we actually raise them.
