Thank you Leslie for this important article.

I have met local organic farmers with small or "micro" farms who have not been able to legally say that their food is "organic" because they can not afford all of the government paperwork required to register their farm as "organic".

As you point out in your article, microfarming has been around since before recorded history. Now BIG AG and the federal government are trying to wipe it out in this country.

I can't help wondering, if this trend for over-regulation continues, if people who grow food in their own backyards will soon be labeled "criminal" for not filling out the necessary paperwork or meeting farm regulations that are meant for large agri-business farms.

Most farms in this country use pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, and chemical fertilizers to grow food on nutrition-depleted soil. Many of our basic food crops, especially those that are used in packaged and processed foods such as corn, soy, and canola, are from GMO'd seed.

For example, 90% of the soy grown in the U.S. and Canada is grown from GMO'd seeds, allowing massive amounts of Round-Up (a Monsanto herbicide designed to kill weeds) to be sprayed on the soy crops without killing them, too. If you look at your basic processed food package and see the words "soy lecithin", a common emulsifier (thickening agent), on the ingredients list, unless it has the word "organic" in front of it, there is 90% chance it is from GMO'd soy and 100% chance it is from soy that has been heavily sprayed with chemicals.(Even packaged foods that say on the box front "made with organic ingredients" can fool you! Even most of these have "soy lecithin" that does NOT say "organic" in front of it; if the word is not there, it's NOT AN ORGANIC INGREDIENT!)

The government does not have the will to mandate that foods that are GMO'd be labeled as such to let the consumer have a choice. The only way you can be sure that the food is non-GMO is to buy organic produce and packaged food where ALL the ingredients have the word "organic" in front of them on the label.

Now the government wants to make it even harder for micro-farmers, many of whom grow organic or biodynamic food, to survive. They want to pass what they call "food safety" laws, preying on the fear of the populace after several outbreaks of contaminated food, NONE of which originated from ORGANIC farms.

--A true "food safety" bill would mandate that all foods--fresh or processed, produce or meat, that contains GMOs be labeled as such.
--A true "food safety" bill would mandate that all foods be labeled with information regarding how much chemical "residue", on the average, remains on the produce. If they can label cigarettes to warn the consumer that smoking cigarettes is linked to cancer, and label alcohol to warn pregnant women that alcohol can cause birth defects, then why can't we have labels warning the consumer that biocides used in the production of that food may cause illness?
--A true "food safety" bill would mandate that all animal products be given a label that informs the consumer whether or not that meat contains hormones/antibiotics/artifical colorants, bovine growth hormone, or any other chemical, again, along with a warning label as to consumer safety.
--A true "food safety" bill would mandate that all animal products be given a label that informs the consumer if that animal was fed GMO'd produce or chemical-laden produce, was force-fed, was fed animal products (example: chickens being fed dead chicks) or was roped, chained, kept locked in a small cage, or otherwise severely restricted in its movements while it was raised.
--A true "food safety" bill would include all of the above in the regulation of pet food as well as people food. You'd gag if you knew what went into pet food, but that's another story!
--This list can be expanded!

Again, thank you Enchanted Gardener for your great article! It's wonderful it was put on the Huffington Post so it will get a wide readership.

Good luck on your radio talk program!

KEEP THE BEET!
Blessings, Mayah