We’ve apparently been noticed by Washington–the Ag Undersecretary is here seeing the amount of crop damage due to the drought. Link here:  http://www.wane.com/dpp/news/indiana/usda-undersecretary-to-visit-allen-county-farm

I was listening to the rightwing radio station this morning (It took me so long to find a nooz station that actually has a live reporter because it was with the same station that broadcasts Limbaugh, Hannity, and whatshisname.  Unfortunately, it also means that the nooz is slanted towards the rightwing mindset…so, yeah…) and they had the Undersecretary on.  The guy was talking in farm terms that the public is not familiar with–anyone with any public speaking training knows that you have to keep the terms to common everyday terms so everyone will understand it.  Even the rightwing morning host said he didn’t understand what was just said—and the undersecretary didn’t try to clarify–I can’t figure out if he doesn’t have a clue (not likely) or if it was deliberate.

He did say that they have planted more corn this year than previous years, so the crop was not going to be that devastated.  The morning host said something like “You mean that even though we’re looking at a lot of crop loss here, that there isn’t going to be that much of an impact?”  To which the ag secretary said “no.”  Then the host asked about the prices.  The ag secretary said that prices were going up.  Um-hmmm…I smell a rat.  If the corn crop hasn’t been impacted in a severe way, then why the hell are the prices going up?

Can you say “speculation”?  I knew that you could.

As a side note, I found this with Michael Pollan on the cows being fed corn/grain instead of letting them feed on grass.  (Warning: parts are very graphic).

It’s very simply explained that they have systems that allow them to digest grass, not corn.  And the really disturbing aspect is how they used to allow them to mature to 4 to 5 years, but now have it down to 14 months, going to 11 months.  Mo money Mo money Mo money.

Another disturbing aspect is when the calf is separated from its mother–the mother bellows for days and days he says.

From the page:

There are] 35,000, 50,000, 100,000 animals in the space of a couple of hundred acres. And in the middle of the city is rising the single landmark, which is the feedmill. It’s several stories high. It’s silvery. It’s sort of this cathedral in the midst of this, and everything rotates around it. …

But they really are medieval cities in many respects, I realized, because they are cities in the days before modern sanitation. They’re from the time when cities really were stinky. When they were teeming and filthy and pestilential and liable to be ridden with plague, because you had people coming from many, many different places, bringing many, many different microbes into a concentrated area where they could spread them around.

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The problem with this is that the antibiotics are affecting the people eating them:  resistance, and encouragement of candida and other nasty bugs in the gut, cause such grief. And of course, doctors are not taking this into account any more than they’re taking diet into account when a patient presents with a problem.

So…even though we don’t have 14th century disease right now, with the destruction of a person’s immune system through their gut, it’s setting up a bad set of circumstances that have that potential.  We already have super bugs that are not treatable by even the most strongest antibiotics.

And I can’t even begin to understand the mindset that says that cows don’t care if they’re sick from not having their proper food, or being crammed in together standing in their manure, or  the mother cow losing her calf before its time (the fact that she bellows is your first clue) …

It is curious how Michael Pollan says it’s dangerous to say that an animal is impacted by the way humans treat it–I’ve heard old farmers call cows “bossy” because of their personality…so how is it dangerous to state observations that confirm the animals are more than machines?

Pollan states he bought a cow and raised it to market, but was not allowed to go into the kill floor.  A red flag.

Animals give us life and deserve to be treated with respect.  Stuffing them with corn that ferments in their insides, packing them in lots too small to move around freely with piles of manure, injecting them with drugs to counteract all of that doesn’t ring of respect.

At the end of the article, Pollan is asked about irradiation. Says it’s probably fine.  Yeah, radiating food would be just what is needed after all of the above…Good Grief.