Packers, slaughterhouses, and the feedlots have the money; and that's who controls the beef industry and USDA. A whole revolving door, from the pharmaceutical and the beef industry to the USDA and get legislation passed on their pet projects. USDA spends a million dollars plus monitoring small farmers.
Linda Detwiler is the USDA's spy who goes out onto small farms and harasses Americans. Way to go, Linda! Here is a book covering the mad sheep fiasco.
Several farmers in this documentary make the excellent point that food grown on a small farm allows a consumer to know where the food they consume comes from. So if anything does go wrong, the consumer can contact that particular farmer. Contrast that scenario with food grown at a large agri-farmer in several different states. It's much more difficult to find the source of bad food through large farms. I remember that in 2006 when there was the spinach scare in California that it took over a week to locate the source of the tainted crop.
Rawesome Foods in Venice, CA has been "raided" a few times in the past 3 to 5 years. Because it is a membership co-op, it is open only 2 days a week, Wednesdays, 12-8, and Saturdays, 9-4. Watch this:
It is interesting to learn who greenlights the warrants and on whose behalf. You have the LA County District Attorney's Office, LA County Police, and the LA County Sheriff's Department. That's quite an expenditure of law enforcement to take down a tiny, contracted farm in Ventura County. Didn't know that LA County has jurisdiction over Ventura County. LA Building & Safety is threatening to shut down Rawesome Foods because of "illegal" structures.
Water,
water, water. Healing. Oh, yes. Or at least it should
be. What with all of the contaminants in water everywhere, how does one
remove the contaminants that affect you in particular? Can we boil the
contaminants out of water? Perhaps. But which ones? Fluoride,
chlorine, BPA. I was shocked to read that BPA can
cause obesity; that it can produce a hypothyroid; that it can interfere with
neurological function; and that it can feminize men as well as destroy a man's
fertility. I wish that life weren't so complex. Maybe life 200
years ago wasn't. But we are here and we have to deal with what we are
dealt. I've been drinking bottled water for far too long. I'd also
heard all the arguments about which is better--bottled water or tap. I
think that they are both bad. I'm just not sure that filtered water from
some of the counter top filters produce adequate results, and by adequate
results I am referring to water that both tastes good and fresh and water that
is free, yes free, from biologically disruptive chemicals.
THE
PROBLEM: CHEMICALS FOUND IN BOTTLED WATER DISRUPT BIOLOGICAL PROCESSES. I like lists. Here is a list of
contaminants identified by the US EPA.
I
purchase Arrowhead's Filtered water and Mountain Spring water. I
purchased the filtered water because I thought that I was getting the purest
kind of water. Well, maybe. The problem is that filtered water has
little to no taste. I taste nothing . . . except the plastic that has
leached into the water. The texture of the water is not crystal clear
crisp and sharp. The texture and the taste is oily. I'm not sure
but I believe that the BPA is an oil by-product. Plastics are oil by-products.
This article that calls for a ban on BPA states the
following:
"Of
course what the scientists are doing will be amplified many times by public
opposition to such chemicals. BPA leeches from its container into whatever it
happens to contain. If you microwave a TV dinner
for example, the chemical content of the plastic container would find its way
into the food you are going to eat. Likewise, when bottled water or
a soft drink is manufactured and shelved, BPA leaches into the liquid over the
time it takes to be purchased and consumed. The chemical is in food can
linings, often in dental fillings, and can be found in 95 percent of paper money. It seems clear that
public opposition is more than called for to reduce exposure, and it will be
key in future regulation."
The subject of bottled water gets more distressing by the
hour. I read on Wikipedia tonight that bottled water companies are not
required by law to report that their product has fluoride or if it does it is
not required to report how much fluoride it has. Unbelievable. Here
is the statement on Wikipedia:
"In some areas, tap water may contain added fluoride, which helps prevent tooth decay and
cavities.[21] Most bottled water manufacturers in
the United States either add fluoride to their product or provide a
fluoridated bottled water product (my emphasis). The Food and Drug
Administration of the United States does not require bottled water
manufacturers to list the fluoride content on the label.[22] Water fluoridation remains
controversial in countries where forced fluoridation is practiced
(the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Canada, Australia, and a handful of other
countries)."
SOLUTIONS?
Few
and far between? Not what you'd think. Expunging the PBA out of
your cells and tissue can be had with a few adjustments made to your diet, or
accomplished with things that you're already consuming in your diet. Here
is a short list:
1.
Black tea
2.
Probiotics
3.
Melatonin
A
longer list is here. I am skeptical about melatonin.
Dr. Barry Sears, who I followed for many years, made the point that melatonin
in doses larger than 1mg can have adverse side effects on testosterone: so men
beware. In fact, this is one of the side effects of BPA. So if you
find yourself consuming a lot of bottled water, avoid the melatonin, unless you
want to be transgendered without expensive surgery. That was a really bad
joke. A Japanese study found that ". . . out of the Japanese Department
of Environmental Technology, found
that the probiotic bacteria – Bacillus pumilus, is capable
of degrading BPA." That's quite a claim.
FINALLY.
WHERE DOES WATER COME FROM?
WATER
STORAGE
The
best way to store water would be in a glass container, a ceramic container, or
a metal container, preferably steel. It has been my experience that if
you use any plastic container, the plastic by-products will leech into the
water itself and the water, though pure of any bacteria, my taste oily and
plastic, particularly if you leave the plastic container out in the sun.
Does that oily, plastic taste mean that PBA has leached into the water? I
can't say for sure, but I can say that water does taste like an oil
by-product. So my answer is ceramic, glass, or metal--copper, steel,
aluminum
I
had a discussion once with my niece over bottled water, specifically
Arrowhead's bottled spring water and distilled water. We shared a similar
experience where we both purchased a 1 gallon bottle and talked about how the
water tasted like the plastic. All of these companies ship their bottled
water on trucks. Sometimes these delivery trucks sit for hours, days, and
weeks with merchandise locked in the covered bed. Depending on the season
and depending on the location, like Southern California, the heat can have a
destructive influence on the plastic of which the bottles are made.
Imagine hundreds are thousands of bottles sitting in a diesel trailer under a 100-degree
August sun. Those bottles will melt as will their chemical composition:
the chemicals will leak into the water, change its composition and structure,
and definitely changing its taste.
