Food sovereignty

One of my sisters-in-law sent me a link to an article titled Maine Town Declares Food Sovereignty. Hunh? "Food sovereignty"? What's that?

Well, here's what it means to Sedgwick, Maine citizens:

the right “to produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing.” This includes raw milk, locally slaughtered meats, and just about anything else you can imagine. It’s also a decided bucking of state and federal laws. . . .

The proposed warrant added, “It shall be unlawful for any law or regulation adopted by the state or federal government to interfere with the rights recognized by this Ordinance.” In other words, no state licensing requirements prohibiting certain farms from selling dairy products or producing their own chickens for sale to other citizens in the town.

What about potential legal liability and state or federal inspections? It’s all up to the seller and buyer to negotiate. “Patrons purchasing food for home consumption may enter into private agreements with those producers or processors of local foods to waive any liability for the consumption of that food. Producers or processors of local foods shall be exempt from licensure and inspection requirements for that food as long as those agreements are in effect.”

Imagine that--buyer and seller can agree to cut out the lawyers. That’s almost un-American, isn’t it?

There's a lot more about this ground-breaking legal attempt to break free from Big Brother. Check it out!

Land of the free? Not when it comes to food!

I touched on this about a year ago. Hate to keep beating the drum. But as I keep discovering how my own health depends on bucking the "Fast Food Nation" approach to eating, I keep bumping into the obstacles--some major, some minor--that our federal government and, now, more and more, our state and local governments, are putting in our way to basic rights--like the right to buy an egg that has not been irradiated, or milk that has not been pasteurized (i.e., heated to a point where its enzymes and helpful bacteria have been destroyed).

Want to buy fresh (raw) milk? Illegal! --Doesn't matter what kind of agreement you are willing to sign: "I take full responsibility for my own health. If I become sick from this milk, I will pay all of my own medical costs. . . ." Doesn't matter. The government is going to "save" you by ensuring that, if you have any milk at all, it has been properly denatured through pasteurization, at least.

Good luck finding un-homogenized milk (suspected of contributing to some of the blood fat issues many of us suffer). That's difficult. But buying raw milk: Wholly illegal.

And now the U.S. federal government is becoming ever more tyrannical. Check out this story about how the feds, state, local and even Canadian "law enforcement" officers are engaging in illegal intimidation tactics against private citizens seeking only to eat foods that they believe are healthy for them.

The land of the unfree . . . especially when it comes to medical care and health

I have been reminded, this last week, several times, of why I'm finding it harder and harder to sing the last lines of "The Star-Spangled Banner":

O, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O'er the land of the free . . . and the home of the brave?

Obviously, the banner still waves. The question is, does it still wave over a land of a free and brave people? Or of an enslaved and cowardly people?

I am beginning to think, more and more, we ought, rightly, to view ourselves as enslaved and cowardly.

I'll begin with the most recent issues, then go back to a few that have caught my attention in the semi-recent past.

Most recent: In my ongoing research into options for dealing with my rheumatoid arthritis--and very much thanks to Linda who brought this to my attention, I discovered a promising therapy called Low-Dose Naltrexone. (Besides this particular website, see also here, here, and here.

I wrote to my rheumatologist:

Dr. H:

I don't want to bore you with details of my somewhat successful, but mostly UNsuccessful pursuit of a dietary solution to my RA. If you would like the most recent details, you can find them on my personal blog at http://johnscorner.blogspot.com/2009/08/health-update.html.

Main point: I'm still looking for full relief and am just as motivated as ever to avoid the standard pharmaceutical "solutions." The side effects--and/or POTENTIAL side effects--creep me out.

Anyway. One of the readers of my blog suggested I look into LDN/low-dose naltrexone. I found this page (http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org/ and http://www.lowdosenaltrexone.org/ldn_and_ai.htm) and thought: "This sounds promising."

Your thoughts?

I imagine KP won't cover the drug. But, hey, I'm already looking outside the "system."

What do you think? Foolish? Worth a try?

THANKS.

He replied:

Interesting concept.

Apparently LDN is used in doses approximately 1/10 those used for drug/alcohol rehab purposes.

Looks like some folks are using it on an experimental basis for a whole bunch of "off-label" purposes, including autoimmune diseases.

It would really need more extensive testing before one could advocate its widespread use.

Yeah. But I'm not looking for you to advocate its widespread use. I'm wondering about getting a prescription for me!

I wrote him back:

So . . . would you be willing to prescribe it for me so I could acquire it at the dosage referenced on the referenced website?

Answer:

No. I believe we should stick with conventional RA treatments.

Great!

So I am aware of this promising therapy, but I'm not allowed to get it unless I get a doctor's prescription. I can't just do my own research and come to the conclusion that I'd like to try it. No. I have to have my doctor's permission.

Why? The government protecting me? Hardly! The only drugs my doctor has to offer include lethal and permanent-bodily-injury kinds of side-effects. And I come up with one that has no known significant or long-term side-effects and that appears to hold great promise, and I'm not allowed to try it?

Why can't I "simply" sign some kind of waiver of liability?

Nope.

I have to find a medical doctor who is willing, possibly, to put his or her medical license on the line (in case some overbearing bureaucrat decides he or she has failed to "toe the line" quite tightly enough to satisfy the FDA).

I'm looking.
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So: Land of the free?

I don't think so!

And then there is the following.

Only hours before I came to the conclusions I have summarized above, I ran into this story by Mike Adams of the Natural News e-letter:

A new law passed by the state Senate in Massachusetts [now awaiting approval in the House] calls for mandatory vaccinations of all citizens and a $1,000 / day fine for those who refuse to cooperate. It also legalizes health care "interrogations" of Massachusetts citizens, forced entry into homes without a warrant, the on-site destruction of buildings or objects suspected of harboring a disease or condition dangerous to the public health, the government kidnapping of family pets, "involuntary transportation" of people into quarantine camps and . . . language that allows Massachusetts police . . . to arrest, detain and interrogate anyone who gets in their way.

Meanwhile, all state law enforcement and medical personnel are granted complete immunity from prosecution for their part in violating your Constitutional rights. So if they violate your right to due process, or they accidentally destroy your home, or they kill your family dog because they suspect it might be infected, you have absolutely zero recourse.

Under this bill, Massachusetts becomes a medical police state. There is no debating it. It's all written, clear as day.

You can read the bill itself here.

I got thinking: Why does this bill come up now? Because of the mildly problematic H1N1 virus that has received so much news coverage? Because of concern over the deadly HIV? (No! Not HIV! That is explicitly excluded from coverage (lines 456-458): "In this section, 'disease or condition dangerous to the public health' does not include acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) or the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV).")

Adams comments,

Massachusetts . . . is the same state that rounded up the parents of schoolchildren who hadn't been vaccinated, then corralled them into a courtroom (with attack dogs standing guard outside) and forced vaccine injections onto all the schoolchildren under the threat of jail time for parents who resisted.

Remember, readers, that this is all taking place in the "land of the free," a nation that former President George Bush claimed was so envied around the world that terrorists attacked America because they "hate freedom" and wanted to destroy our way of life. But terrorists need no help attacking freedom as long as Massachusetts is in the vaccine game, because this latest form of "gunpoint medicine" destroys freedom for everyday Americans in a way that terrorists could have never hoped to accomplish with all the bombs in the world.

Massachusetts . . . [is about to turn] "free" Americans into medical slave subjects who no longer have any freedom to decide the details of their own medical care. All options [will be] stripped from them but one: The Big Pharma option. That's the one that involves using untested, unproven and potentially dangerous vaccines that could paralyze you or even kill you. All to defend you against a virus that's so weak, almost anyone with decent levels of vitamin D and basic nutrition can resist the virus without incident.

Thank God we don't live in Massachusetts! Right?

Maybe not!

Adams notes that Massachusetts isn't the first state in the U.S. to include these kinds of mandated vaccinations. The U.S. federal government got there first. Remember? (I did not. I have no recollection about this at all.)

Republican President George Bush signed the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act (PREP) in 2006.

It gives power to the Secretary of the U.S. government's Health and Human Services department (HHS) to declare any infectious disease a "national emergency" and therefore require mandatory vaccination of the entire population. Because of the existence of this PREP Act, the entire population of the USA is now but one pen stroke away from being subjected to mandatory swine flu vaccinations at gunpoint.

Those who resist such vaccines will be arrested and taken away for "isolation" in domestic prison camps. . . . [T]hose who refuse the vaccine [will be labeled] "a threat to national security" (enemies of the state) and [will be] imprison[ed] without trial, without charges and without any legal representation whatsoever.

Meanwhile, all those who take part in enforcing these crimes against the American people will be granted complete immunity. From the HHS website: "[The Secretary may] issue a declaration . . . that provides immunity from tort liability (except for willful misconduct) for claims of loss caused, arising out of, relating to, or resulting from administration or use of (vaccine or other pharmaceutical) countermeasures to diseases, threats and conditions determined by the Secretary to constitute a present, or credible risk of a future public health emergency . . ."

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About four or five months ago, I ran into The Raw Truth About Milk by Dr. William C. Douglass.

Douglass tells the story of how raw, unpasteurized milk, a whole and wholesome food, slowly got squeezed out of the marketplace by its very much inferior replacement, homogenized and pasteurized milk--a product with fewer nutrients and more contaminants than its unadulterated cousin that comes from certified dairies.

I was so incensed at what I read, I decided I would see how our family might get raw milk.

Well. Legally, we can't. Not allowed. No one can sell us raw milk. It's against the law.

And yet a growing number of families are acquiring raw milk and drinking it.

We discovered that though no one can sell us raw milk, and--I wouldn't expect them to--no one will give us raw milk, it is still legal to own a cow (or a portion of a cow) and enjoy--without government interference--the milk it produces.

So we entered into a contract with a farmer. We bought a portion of one of her cows and are paying her an upkeep fee. We also pay her a delivery fee. And she makes sure we get a gallon of milk each week as our share of the cow. Total cost of the milk we receive under this arrangement is not too much more than it would cost us to purchase good quality organic milk from the grocery store.

Our family is happy. The farmer is happy. I just hope the State of Colorado will stay out of our hair as we engage in open trade of goods and services for money.
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Any stories you'd like to tell about freedoms--or lack thereof--that you've found in the health sphere?