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Thu, 07 Sep 2006

Chicken Pizza and Civil Disobedience

I was struck by an article in Common Dreams tonight. When I read Bob St. Peter's 'Chicken Pizza & Civil Disobedience - Reclaiming our Food Sovereignty and the Right to Choose What We Eat', I was amazed, indignant and hopeful.

Not because I'm in favor of eating chicken, but because St. Peter exposes a building discontent with the amazing idiocy of government bureaucracy, which restricts and hampers local food producers, while allowing industrial producers from out of state to do pretty much as they please, to my indignation. As the tension between industrial and local agriculture builds, St. Peter hints that civil disobedience will result, which made me hopeful that we will overcome corporate tyranny in my lifetime.

Not that we couldn't solve lots of problems right now simply by going vegetarian. But anyway, the short story is that a local restaurant in Vermont wanted to serve chicken raised by the small farmer across the road. The restaurant owner was confident that the chicken was completely safe to eat, and his customers agreed. But that didn't matter. What mattered was that the chicken producer's operation wasn't up to government standards.

In order to comply with those standards, the producer would have to become much bigger, which would negate his goal of small production for his local market, by forcing him into futile competition with industrial ag producers, and eventually out of business. Which of course is the ultimate goal of such laws, not food safety.

"According to the USDA's own estimation, 70% of food-borne illnesses in the country, affecting approximately 53 million people, are a result of contaminated meat." And where does most of that meat come from? Factory farms, of course, which are subject to USDA inspection, which is notoriously lax.

The part I liked best about Bob St. Peter's article was his conclusion, but I'm not going to spoil it for you by giving away the ending. Go read Chicken Pizza & Civil Disobedience.