Food fight

Everyone loves a good food fight, don't they?  Apparently not.  Last week the children and I travelled to Melbourne for the EatBuyGrow Rally held by the Regrarians.  We expected to see hundreds of people and hoped to see thousands gathering to stand up for this important issue.

I was very disappointed to find around a hundred (correct me if you were there and I've made a wrong estimate) people standing up for a better food system.  Admittedly it was a week day so harder for people to attend but still.....  I found it strange.  Climate change rallies are so well attended but this one was not.  Is it possible people haven't made the connection between the way food is delivered and the damage to our climate?

Our food system has become so commercialised.  Since the introduction of supermarkets food has moved further and further from our homes.  It became easy for people to buy fruit and veggies so they stopped growing vegetable gardens.  Women left their homes to go to work and appreciated the ease of buying food from supermarkets.  Now busy families can buy pre-prepared meals and can avoid cooking at all if they so choose.  As time has gone by, large commercial food suppliers have found more and more ways to sell their products.  They market their products with a great deal of thought and their advertising works well.  Most people no longer know how to provide food for themselves without going to the supermarkets.

Families trying to manage their weekly budgets are often looking for the cheapest options to provide food.  The commercial companies wanting their dollar have responded by finding cheaper ways of manufacturing food.  Small farms are dying out as companies push them to supply food cheaply.  They simply can't make ends meet.  They've had to sell their land.  This has resulted in HUGE farms owned by corporations growing crops as cheaply as possible.  I can tell you now, the main concern of these companies is NOT your health or the health of the environment.  They encourage intensive farming and they are not focussed on environmental issues such as salinity, erosion, water conservation etc.  Their focus is how to make a profit.  The super-farms aren't worrying much about improving soils because they don't need to.   They can use chemicals to fertilise crops and kill weeds and there's now the option of genetically modified seeds.

Can you see the strong connection between buying from the supermarkets and the damage we are causing to the climate?

But wait!  There's more.  There's the issue of transport. Years back I briefly lived in Shepparton.  I was buying my apples from the supermarket and paying through the nose for them although I was in the very area that these apples were grown.  The large supermarkets were buying from the local orchards, transporting the fruit to Melbourne to their warehouses and then trucking them back to Shepparton.  I paid more for my apples than people from Melbourne were paying!  I've learnt a lot since those days.  The unnecessary use of fossil fuels was causing damage to the environment when I could have just searched for a local orchard that sold direct to the public.  Convenience has a lot to answer for!

Now think about the production of manufactured food.  The plastic and cardboard used in the packaging.  The unhealthy process of adding preservatives so food can sit on shelves for weeks/months.  Additives so that their products will look more attractive.  Do you think this is done to make your life easier, your family healthier, or to trick you out of a dollar?

Food is tampered with in so many different ways.  Milk is an issue that is close to my heart because it is such an obvious problem.  As a person who milks goats and yes *gasp* drinks raw milk, I'm very interested in what is happening in our milk industry.  Milk is taken from many dairies (again the smaller dairies are pushed to provide cheaper prices but are outcompeted by large corporations taking over and forming super-farms), put into one lot, forced through a tiny strainer to homogenise, heated to a temperature that damages vitamins and good bacteria, and then transported again to the supermarkets.  Now not only do the corporations, advertisers and supermarkets but also our government tell us this is done for our safety.

This is a half truth.  Yes, pastuerising milk ensures any dangerous bacteria are killed.  It also kills many health benefits.  It's a half truth because while they have told us about the risk, they have not explained that this risk is absolutely minute and applies to soooo many foods including foods like fruit and vegetables.  Since the tragic death of a young child (linked to raw milk) the FDA have painted such a vivid picture of the risk from fresh, untampered milk that in many people's mind the term RAW MILK equates to drinking poison.  What rubbish!!  You could die from eating a lettuce!  It's not possible to eliminate all risk from life.  We are human and susceptible to bacteria from many sources every day.  I can only think that we are being fed this half truth to encourage us to spend our money on the milk the large companies are profiting from.  Did you know that the milk in question, in the recent case, tested negative for e-coli?  No?!  Well the media haven't really been running with that very relevant information!  So before any proof of a connection with raw milk, our government have banned sales unless it contains a bittering agent (making it undrinkable) and non-compliance attracts ridiculously HUGE fines!  Just for the record, you can legally drink raw milk in many countries across the world.  I feel failed by a government that seems to value money before people.

I know that my children are being nourished by the raw milk from our goats.  I have been giving it to them for over a year now.  One of my children has suffered terribly from colds for eight of his nine years due to a low immune system.  He caught them easily, was affected for weeks, developed infections and developed hearing loss from his colds. Now he rarely catches them and recovers quickly.  Ironically, I have my first cold in two years as I write.

I had never attended a rally or protest in my life until a couple of years ago yet now I've been to a handful.  I don't go willy nilly.  It takes time, energy and effort to traipse to Melbourne with three children in tow.  I attend rallies if I think they are addressing issues too important to ignore.

The EatBuyGrow Rally was of vital importance.  Costa Gorgiadis came to speak, amongst others.  He was great!  Joel Salatin also spoke at the rally.  He even waived his fee because he is so passionate about changing our food system.  The current one isn't working.  Farmers are going broke, our food is being produced overseas, some people can't afford good food and cheap food isn't good for them.  (think obesity, diabetes etc...)  Our food is poorly labelled so we can't truly make choices about what we are eating.   And now we are banned from using food which we know is good for us.

Okay.  I've painted a pretty bleak picture (because it is) but there's heaps you can do on a personal level.  You can grow fruit and veggies, buy locally, buy in bulk, buy organic, buy direct from growers, cook from scratch rather than buying pre-prepared food.  You could also link in with organisations working to create change.

Why not join Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA).  They are aware of all the above issues and their website will explain them much more clearly than I did.  They are lobbying government to try to bring about a better food system.

The Regarians are also very proactive with changing our system.  I must admit I didn't know much about them before the rally which they were instrumental in organising.

There is also an organisation fighting for our right to drink raw milk.  They are the Australian Raw Milk Movement. I'm sorry but I couldn't find a website for them, just a Face Book page.

Now, you know I'm not a food scientist, chemist, doctor etc.  I'm just a mum.  But being a mum doesn't make me inconsequential.  It gives me the strength, the right and also the responsibility to fight for a healthy and fair food system that doesn't damage our climate.  I owe it to my kids. 

March against Monsanto

On Saturday I took the kids to the State Library to a protest called 'March Against Monsanto'.  Millions of people rallied at the same time in 436 cities and 52 countries globally to publicise a variety of concerns about the genetic manipulation of seeds, the safety and labelling of GM foods and the concentrated ownership of the seed supply.

I had it in my head that everybody knew about the concerns relating to Monsanto but a bloggy friend pointed out to me that it is not discussed in mainstream media and therefore not everybody is aware of the issues.  Thanks Cheryl!  We talk about it a lot in this house so I figured everyone knew this is becoming a big area of discontent.

The concerns about the power and control that the GM companies - Monsanto, Bayer, Dupont, Dow, BASF - have over seed and food supplies are many and varied:-

• Monsanto and a small cartel of other companies own over 50% of the commercial seed supply (GM and non-GM) globally.
• Some GM foods harm experimental animals so I do not believe they are safe for the environment or animals - yes, that includes us humans.
• Herbicide tolerant GM seed is patented and is sold with the Roundup chemical - so Monsanto makes a bucket load of money that they have used to buy up other seed companies.  Monsanto now owns well over 25% of commercial seed.
• It is VERY concerning that a small group of companies are in control of the majority of the world's seed supply.  There is too much power in controlling the world's food!
• I am sceptical about the company's claim to fix the world hunger problem.  Gm crops yield no more than the best conventional varieties. The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food - Prof. Olivier de Schutter - points out that there is already sufficient food to feed everyone adequately, but 30% is wasted AND because food goes where it is most profitable, starving and malnourished people cannot afford it.
• Some governments around the world do not support labelling of ingredients derived from GM techniques.  However, pressure is building, especially in the USA, for the right to know if a food ingredient is GM.  GM labelling in Australia exempts GM vegetable oils, starches and sugars, and meat, milk and eggs from animals fed GM, on the basis that they are refined and contain minimal GM DNA or protein.
• GM companies expect that if their products were properly labelled, we wouldn't buy them, as this happens in Europe where every GM ingredient except animal products require a label.
• Farmers everywhere are becoming more dependent on hybridized and GM seed (seed that you cannot save and replant) and therefore have to buy new seed each season and pay royalties to Monsanto or other companies that OWN the seeds!  These seeds were developed over several thousand years by traditional breeders but GM companies now add a gene and claim to have invented the seed, which allows them to patent.

These concerns are all very worrying.
 

Please google this issue and see what you can learn.  There is a fantastic organisation  Gene Ethics which has been advocating, campaigning and educating for GM-free for 25 years.  They are a good contact for more information.
 

So......... the big day out!

Well of course we packed home cooked food.  We boarded a train and headed to the big smoke!

A quick refresher of their education on why we are attending this march........

and the Country Bumpkins arrive at Southern Cross Station.

There were over 2,000 people gathered in front of the State Library to hear speakers and to march through the Melbourne streets..................



including this beautiful girl in her very relevant bib!

It was great to take my children, including 19 year old Rosie and her boyfriend, and show them that it is important to stand up for what you believe in.  I want my kids to grow up to be proactive about what they would like their world to be like.  After hearing the speakers talk about their concerns relating to Monsanto and GMO, we all marched around a large city block.

Buddy Boy was exhausted........

and Pumpkin was overwhelmed by the noise.........

but it was a great afternoon out.  I'm so glad I took them!!!!  We have had so many conversations about the march and how important real food is!

 

I am looking forward to more events later in the year:

 

• July 4 - American Independence Day.  Moms Across America and Australia are taking a stand for clean green and healthy GM-free foods for families.
• August 19 to 25 - Fair Food Week.  Australians will celebrate the diversity and abundance of local fresh food supplies that should be available to all.
• September 14 - Food policy will be on the election agenda, with the Food Sovereignty Alliance launching the People's Food Plan for affordable, safe, secure and locally owned food supplies for all Australians.
• October 16 - UN World Food Day.  This is expected to be another day of global action for freely available and labelled GM-free food and seed for all.

 Have you heard of Monsanto before?  Are you concerned about the future of our food?