“Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.” – Henry Kissinger,  1970

This is the future Henry Kissinger had in mind in 1970.

Without the knowledge of how our bodies work we can not fully understand how to feed our body.  Not putting biology at the forefront of education is a disservice to humanity, the planet and all its inhabitants! Biology should be the foundation on which all else is built and integrated into. Education should begin with counting the bones in our feet and developing an understanding of our place in the web of life.

What is Biology? Merriam-Webster defines Biology as:

“The American public does not want to be uplifted, ennobled–it wants to be amused.”

-Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875-1935). novelist. social worker. and teacher

Alice was a poet, journalist and political activist. And, some sort of visionary, from where I stand. She was among the first generation born free in the south after the Civil War, she was one of the prominent African Americans involved in the artistic flourishing of the Harlem Renaissance. Alice and I have much in common. She knew what many of us are aware of…I wonder what she would think if she were here today?

Who doesn’t want to escape? You work hard all day, at a job you’re not crazy about; for a boss who doesn’t appreciate how brilliant you are; then you come home too exhausted to cook; so you through an empty of anything nutritious excuse for food into a microwave; which kills any remaining nutrition; or you open up a carton of ice cream hoping to stop that ineffable hunger you just can’t seem to reach! Even when you are aware of the diabolical account of how four Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting life forms to gain worldwide control of our food supply and our lives; remnants of how we controlled the Indians’. Destroy their food and you control their destiny! Dealing with all this reality is just too darn daunting! Isn’t it?

A recent New York Times article reports; “The average American spends more on entertainment than on gasoline, household furnishings and clothing and nearly the same amount as spent on dining out, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.” It’s been estimated by the Twentieth Century Fund that Americans spend 40 billion dollars per year for total recreation expenditures in the United States.  Personally, I believe that’s a conservative figure and agree with Alice; we’re on an ‘amusement ride and we don’t want to get off‘. I also believe that keeping the population entertained is high on the list for those few men who control all our lives. Contemplating this, I tear myself away from a recorded segment of  ‘American Idol’!  Me, I’m just another willing victim.

William Engdahl’s book ‘Seeds of Destruction’  is a diabolical account of how four Anglo-American agribusiness giants plan world domination by patenting life forms to gain worldwide control of our food supply and our lives. This review is in three in-depth parts. Part I was published and is available on this web site.

Today, government subsidies for agriculture in the industrialized nations of North America, Western Europe and East Asia (Japan and South Korea) is over a Billion Dollars a Day! Did I mention this is just the subsidies. Oh, and I’m pretty sure that the organic farmer is not the recipient of any of these dollars. You might ask why; inquiring minds want to know…including mine.

Save me! Every time I  take a bite of anything these days, I wonder about the resources that went into it.

I normally don’t eat beef. I did recently. A burger and fries at Ted’s Grill. Did you know Ted Turner owns Ted’s Grill? Did you know Ted Turner owns 80% of all the Bison? As we walk into Ted’s Grill, I notice a huge Bison head mounted on the wall. It looked like a giant. There must have been 10 feet from one tip of it’s horns to the other. Impressive! It was huge! Needless to say, I set with my back to that wall and didn’t order bison from the menu…remembering the glass glare from the bison held on the wall.

When Ted Turner was asked what is it that you like about bison?

“I just, I really love them. I’m a naturalist and an environmentalist, and I was touched by the tragedy that occurred with the bison. There were 30 million of ’em on the Great Plains when the white man landed in North America. In the 1880s, there were only about 200 of ’em. I wanted to do everything I could during my life to bring them back. In order to do that you have to be able to monetize the surplus.”

What I didn’t know

about Ted Turner was that he is a huge experimentalist! In 1997 Ted Turner and his family established the Turner Endangered Species Fund as a response to the mass extinction of the world’s plants and animals. Thanks Ted.

Anyway, when the server brought my plate, I commented that the food on the plate could feed three people; and asked for a take-home-box at the beginning of my meal. I cut my burger in half and put half the burger and 3/4 of my fries in the box.

As I take my first bite

into the grilled steer; I try not to think about it bounding through a field…however, most steers don’t get that luxury. Does it really matter? Yum. Juicy and hot, dripping down our chin. Though I didn’t let juice drip down my chin, the flavor was delicious. And I think to myself, how can I eat this, knowing what I know?

Why am I thinking such thoughts? What resources are spent to produce food?  How  much food do I need? What nutrients do I require? What’ the most efficient and effective way to capture these nutrients? How do I organize my diet? Who do we rely on to safe guard our food? Why do we need to safeguard our food?

Educators should design a food curriculum

for every grade; from one through 12. Tours of local agricultural industry infrastructure should be made mandatory; including ‘field trips’ for all students. Students should follow the livestock and poultry industry from beginning to end; from where they live, what they eat and how they are slaughtered. This relevant education would prepare us to integrate this knowledge into our daily lives. We need to develop respect for what lives are affected by what we eat.

Too Many Miles

We’ve put too many miles between where our food comes from and our mouths! It’s five minutes from the freezer to our mouths. The study of ‘agriculture’ and its impact to our well being should be mandatory from the moment we take our first bite.

Bon Apatete!

There is an ineffable hunger in each of us that food just doesn’t reach. Yet we keep stuffing ourselves: we live in a nation of obesity; 32% of United States children are overweight; 60% of the Australia population is overweight; making the Aussies the number one obese country and the U.S. a close second.

Starving for Purpose

Why do we eat and eat and never seem to fill our hunger? My answer may be a bit hard to swallow. I believe the human species, with our ability to think, has an inexplicable purpose. How can the unexplainable be explained? How can the indescribable be described? What does purpose have to do with starving?

Wolves On The Run

I believe we are ‘Starving for Purpose’; looking for any and all morsels of food to fill this emptiness. The answer to this ‘ineffable hunger’, came to me in the early morning hours. I lay unable to sleep; images of wolves running through the tundra of Alaska to escape aerial hunters kept filling my mind. How can I stop the images? The cruelty?How can a woman, the Governor of Alaska, condemn these angel beasts to die?

Then my mind is filled with images of wild horses being killed and slaughtered to make room for more beef cattle; the United States Bureau of Land Management (BLM) believes this is necessary; as if we need more burgers!

What Kind of Stewardship

are these people practicing? Then it came to me; what this ‘inexplicable purpose’ might be. Have you guessed yet? Or, are you satisfied to keep chomping on that whopper? If not, try and swallow this:

Until each human being accepts our number one purpose in life as a ‘steward to the planet and all its inhabitants’ we will never be able to satisfy our hunger!

Ok, so you think Sara Palin is performing a great job as a steward to the planet. She’s done her research about the wolves and caribou and believes that having hunters kill wolves from a plane and chop off their front legs to receive a bounty for performing the job is good stewardship.

Lazy and Inhumane

This practice is NOT GOOD STEWARDSHIP! It’s a lazy and inhumane way of dealing with what the governor and hunters believe to be the answer to wolves killing too many caribou. I believe there is a more humane and sensible answer to what Mrs.Palin perceives as a problem. If it truly is a problem. As a steward to the planet, I need to present an alternative perspective. I must to do something or I’ll never find a way to satisfy my hunger and sleep soundly.

Stepping Up To The Plate

Firstly, I’ll send my contribution, small as it may be, to the Defenders of Wildlife. Then I’ll get in touch with them and find out what they are doing and what else I can do.

You get the point, don’t you? If you are religious or spiritual, you might say this is your ‘divine purpose‘. If you are neither; then it can be an ultimate driving force, a challenge!

Undeniable Interconnectedness

Everyone deserve to live life fully. Where to begin? There are people who can help you meet the challenge of being the best possible steward to the planet you can be: to live with passion and fulfillment. No one life is more deserving than another…our interconnectedness is undeniable!

Coming From The Heart

When we know when to shift our focus; we are living consciously. Expression is an intricate process; thoughtful and intentional. Coming from the heart on a daily basis is a challenging and sometimes a fearful encounter. Living your purpose means coming from the heart every minute of every day.

Bon appetete!

Dear Obama-Biden Economic Team Members:

Much of our foundation for health as a nation lies with the food we consume?

It does not take a rocket scientist to see the connection between the cancer that is so prevalent in our society and the food we eat.

The health care industry is the largest industry in the United States. It has 14 million jobs, with about 13.6 million jobs for wage and salary workers. Is this a good thing? Well, it does tell a story. There’s job security. We have a nation of sick people. Certainly the industry provides a needed service; however, there is a huge difference in treatment and prevention of a disease.

An important question for the citizens of the United States to ask; Why is the health care industry our largest industry? What is it we do that we all have in common? The food we eat? The water we drink? The air we breath? Should we consider what’s in the air we breath, the food we eat and the water we drink? We’re not stupid. Lazy maybe, but not stupid. When I hear people say “well, somethings going to kill me, what difference does it make which poison I choose?” People have already accepted the fact that they are going to die and it doesn’t matter what they do. So, it’s okay if they choose to keep poisoning the air, water and food we consume. What they fail to do is understand the ‘pain, suffering and expense’ they may go through before they die!

• Chronic pain is major epidemic. Approximately 48 million people (there’s a little over 308 million population in the US) in the United States suffer from some form of chronic pain, pain lasting longer than six months, and Americans spend literally billions on medication to combat it.

• WASHINGTON, July 7, 2005 — The pharmaceutical and health products industry has spent more than $800 million in federal lobbying and campaign donations at the federal and state levels in the past seven years, a Center for Public Integrity investigation has found. Its lobbying operation, on which it reports spending more than $675 million, is the biggest in the nation. No other industry has spent more money to sway public policy in that period. Its combined political outlays on lobbying and campaign contributions is topped only by the insurance industry.

Take a look at what the pharmaceutical and health products industry GOT for the more than $800 million in federal lobbying and campaign donations. With money like that being thrown to our federal representatives, is it no wonder they do not want to pass legislation that would take away these dollars!

With this said, I urge the new Economic team to look at creating jobs within the rendering plant industry. Then create jobs that monitor jobs within rendering plants. Rendering plants manufacture protein and nutrients (food enhancers) fed to livestock and poultry industries and the ‘pet’ food industry.

What are ‘food enhancers’ made from? They start with ‘raw products’: thousands of dead dogs and cats (many still wearing flea collars); heads and hooves from cattle, sheep, pigs and horses; whole skunks; rats and raccoons –all waiting to be processed.

“Every day, hundreds of rendering plants across the United States truck millions of tons of this “food enhancer” to poultry ranches, cattle feed-lots, dairy and hog farms, fish-feed plants and pet-food manufacturers where it is mixed with other ingredients to feed the billions of animals that meat-eating humans, in turn, will eat.”

There is research that has proven that these ‘food enhancers’ are tainted. The American Journal of Veterinary Research explains, this recycled meat and bone meal from rendering plants is used as “a source of protein and other nutrients in the diets of poultry and swine and in pet foods, with lesser amounts used in the feed of cattle and sheep. Animal fat is also used in animal feeds as an energy source.”

• It is crucial that the products from this industry be regulated more closely.
• Those who hold jobs in this industry must be scrutinized more closely.
• The pay scale for these jobs must match the integrity needed for these positions.
• Disgruntled employees must not be working with food that is destined for our dinner tables.

My sincere belief is that if we as a nation clean up our food:

• we can cure much of the illnesses in our world.

We desperately need audacious leaders to carry out this crucial and sustainable CHANGE!

Thank you.

Last week I attempted to do an update with regard to the Pet Food Recall and got side tracked: Pet Food Recall: Trail of Tears, which gives a heart wrenching account of the loss of my Golden Retriever, Annie Oakley. Today, I wanted to get an update on China’s baby milk poisoning and landed on ‘Police arrest underground gang ‘poisoning baby milk for profit’. The contamination has led to China’s worst food safety crisis.

This week, I’m taking a long look into centuries of food industry practices. Practices which began innocently enough, but, in many instances have developed into a dark and dangerous business; bringing disease and death to the planets inhabitants!

The Truth Will Sit You Free!

There are hundreds of reports and stories about the ongoing Pet Food Recall and its continued impact to our pets. What seems most important after reading these reports is to pass on what I’ve learned and to keep linking together with others who have similar concerns; doing so gives more credibility and a more effective means of convincing people to change what they and their furry friends eat!

The sense to be made of the Pet Food Recall and the ongoing tragedy is not something most people want to know. Knowing means you find a truth. What you do with the truth is what counts. My advise is to take a journey. Take time to take a deep look into the Pet Food Recall before you make any decision. For me, the journey has taken some horrific and outrageous trails.

Rocky and Dirty Trails

The food industry trail is rocky and sometimes dark and dirty.

From Rendering Plants to our dinner table! Ever thought about what a job looks like at a rendering plant or slaughterhouse facility? Probably not.

Rendering plants are like huge kitchens. What do they ‘cook up’? The stainless steel pot contains; dead animals, slaughterhouse wastes, supermarket rejects, pesticides via poisoned livestock, euthanasia drugs that were given to pets; some dead animals have flea collars containing organophosphate insecticide, fish oil laced with bootleg DDT, insecticide Dursban in the form of cattle insecticide patch, other chemicals leaked from antibiotics in livestock, heavy metals from pet ID tag and surgical pins and needles: all go into the ’stainless steel pot’. The mixture then goes into various products’ known as recycled meat, bone meal, and animal fat.

I knew there was a process, but didn’t know what it was called. Rendering plants have different specialties. Some product-label names are: meat meal, meat by-products, poultry meal, poultry by-products, fishmeal, fish oil, yellow grease, tallow, beef fat and chicken fat.

A 1991 USDA report states that approximately 7.9 billion pounds of meat, bone meal, blood meal, and feather meal was produced by rendering plants in 1983. Of that amount:

12 percent was used in beef cattle feed

34 percent was used in pet food

34 percent was used in poultry feed

20 percent was used in pig food

Scientific American cites a dramatic rise in the use of animal protein in commercial dairy feed since 1987.

If these truths don’t set you free, I can’t imagine what could. My previous post on ‘The Power and Politics Behind What We Eat’ offers an intricate account of the cause of much of the disease to the inhabitants of our planet. Unfortunately, there are no labels to identify the above ingredients that have gone into our livestock and poultry feed…and passed onto humans. With cancer as rampant as it is: one in four deaths is from cancer.

Given the rendering plant practice: approximately 7.9 billion pounds of meat, bone meal, blood meal, and feather meal produced by rendering plants goes into livestock and poultry feed and then we eat the livestock and poultry: might there be a possible connection to ‘what causes cancer’?

Change: How Difficult?

Extremely difficult! Don’t believe everything I say. Take time to read each of the links I’ve placed in this post. Each link tells a different story, but have a similar ending.

Even when answers are made clear…industry can justify anything. Reading and defining the fine print on labels takes time. Who has the time? Who wants to take the time? Isn’t that what we pay our tax dollars to do? We put our trust in the United States Government to safeguard its people! To take the time to monitor and inspect what is meant no nourish its people.

Warning from the Past and Present!

The Jungle (1906) is a novel by American author and socialist Upton Sinclair. It describes the life of a family of Lithuanian immigrants working in Chicago’s Union Stock Yards at the beginning of the 20th century.

Silent Spring is a book written by Rachel Carson and published by Houghton Mifflin in September 1962. The book is widely credited with launching the environmentalism movement in the West.

Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (2001)is a book by investigative journalist Eric Schlosser that examines the local and global influence of the United States fast food industry.

Chew on This is a book for younger readers by Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation) and Charles Wilson on the subject of fast food.

Amazing Discoveries reports, “Food borne illness is on the increase worldwide and in most cases animal products are implicated as the main source of infection.”

There are simple and direct answers

to what seem like a mountain of complicated and controversial catastrophic ingredients. Every company strives to cut costs and expenses in order to increase profit. GREED seeps in a sea of muck! This will become very clear if you are brave enough to follow the slippery trail.

Vote with your Dollars!

This is something you can do this very instant! Vote with your pocket book. Truly, this is the only language industry understands…that’s how we got ourselves into this tragic predicament; we bought into industries glossy color ads and their promise of miracle foods’. Read the labels. Ask questions.

Currently I’m feeding Pieper ‘Wellness’ dog food. I’m still reading and trying to understand their label and hoping there is nothing harmful. I want to believe what they say: “Live Well, Eat Well and Be Well!” Wellness is manufactured by Old Mother Hubbard. They say they would ‘love to hear from me’. I do have questions. What is their source of Chicken Meal? Old Mother Hubbard says they use ‘ethoxyquin-free protein sources’. What does that mean?

I’m buying more organic food for myself…and believe I will move in that direction for Pieper. The organic industry is a realistic approach to many of my concerns about the health of Pieper, myself and the environment.

MSNBC reports, “This year, retail sales of organic foods are expected to exceed $15 billion — with more than $32 billion projected by 2009. While the conventional food industry still dwarfs the organic sector with $550 billion in yearly sales, it is producing an unappetizing 2 to 3 percent annual growth rate, while the organic industry has savored several years of 17 to 20 percent growth.”

What does this growth say about ‘why’ people are buying more organic food? I have good idea, but will speak more about that next time.

Happy Trails!

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The more I read about pet food; the more I learn about human food and how the two are connected; which in turn brings me to the power and politics behind what we eat! Does this sound a little far fetched?

I so wish I could make this story more apealing…everyone needs to know what goes on with our sustainance. Think of it as ‘life and death’!

Ever wonder where dead animals go? Probably not. If you are brave enough, doubtful that you are; we tend to bury our heads when it comes to the “unpleasant facts of life” .

Help Wanted: person to operate bobcat mini-dozers, loading ‘raw material’ (dead animals) into a 10-foot-deep stainless-steel pit; operate giant auger-grinder.

Are you looking for work? Does this sound like your kind of job? Imagine at the bottom of this pit, a giant auger-grinder begins to turn and you hear popping bones and squeezing flesh; a grusome nightmare! Who does this kind of job? I’ve been trying to find out the job title for the person who does this job, with no success as yet. In one rencent article I read that these jobs are held by: Bandanna-masked men; undocumented workers from Mexico; doing a dirty job that no one else wants to do. Wonder what kind of pay they receive?

What’s Cooking?

Rendering plants are like huge kitchens. What do they ‘cook up’? The stainless steel pot contains; dead animals, slaughterhouse wastes, supermarket rejects, pesticides via poisoned livestock, euthanasia drugs that were given to pets; some dead animals have flea collars containing organophosphate insecticide, fish oil laced with bootleg DDT, insecticide Dursban in the form of cattle insecticide patch, other chemicals leaked from antibiotics in livestock, heavy metals from pet ID tag and surgical pins and needles: all go into the ‘stainless steel pot’. The mixture then goes into various products’ known as recycled meat, bone meal, and animal fat.

Check your pet food label; your sure to find listed; bone meal, animal fat or animal-by-products! At least the pet food gives us a hint of what’s in the package; human food on the other hand has no such labeling.

Let me repeat myself! What ‘rendering plants’ cook up is sold as a source of protein and other nutrients in the diets of dairy animals, poultry, swine, pet foods, cattle feed, and sheep feed. Did you get that? These are animals we and our pets consume in some manner on a daily basis.

Is there any wonder why cancer is so rampant in our nation?! Why are we poisoning ourselves? Is this an accident? People keep asking where does cancer come from? The answer is simple…the poison is in every morsel of food we consume! How can our government let poison of this magnitude become an everyday occurrence in our society? What FDA regulations are in place at the slaughterhouse level? And if there are regulations, it’s obvious there is no one inforcing them! These slaughterhouse jobs should be intricate, detailed and made clean…after all the products they render go into our food!!!

Power and Politics: No Getting Around Them!

In a letter to the Animal Feed Rule Hearing of the Food and Drug Administration from The United Stated Poultry and Egg Assocition; Vice President of Research and Technical Programs, Charles W. Beard says,

“Because there is no scientific basis for the exclusion of rendering poultry products from any animal feed because of BSE, we urge that such restrictions not be considered, regardless of the policies adopted in Europe. Such a prohibition would have a significant negative economic impact on the poultry industry.”

Straight from the horses mouth, I mean chickens mouth; “Such a prohibition would have a significant negative economic impact on the poultry industry.” What’s their predominate concern? As always the bottom line! MONEY!

Europe has created regulations to make sure poison does not enter their food. It would appear that the European Community cares more about their people than the ‘economic impact’ on the livestock and poultry industries.

We need audacious leaders to carry out our demands! Our evolution is at stake. We are playing with Big Boys and they do not wish us to see the details of their frolic. We need not look far to see how our planet and people have been and are severely oppressed. These are very big Boys and they are not playing; they keep a keen eye on the bottom line. They would have you believe ‘cancer’ in people and animals are a natural occurrence or an accident!

“The real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the government since the days of Andrew Jackson.” “In politics nothing happens by accident; if it happens, you can be sure we planned it that way.”

-President Franklin Roosevelt

It may sound presumptuous, however when I began connecting the dots; discovering what’s up with the pet food industry; which brought me to look at what’s going into human food…well, I can’t believe the poison! It’s going into every aspect of our food system. Is this an accident? When you look deeply into societies sustenance and find it is being poisoned, well, I can’t stop there. I want to know the whole truth…and how to change what’s happening!

Happy Trails!

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