Food Roots – July 30: The "Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009"

Welcome to another edition of Food Roots!

This week I want to tell y’all about something in case you are unaware. I sent out the following in an email last night:

Today the “Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009” came just 6 votes shy of passing in the house of representatives. The only thing that would be made safe with this bill is the pocket books of big agribusiness. If you are like me then you find it infuriating that the government thinks they know more about what we should be eating than we do. They are selling us this line of bologna by using the scares in the food system – e. coli in our spinach and peanut butter. Guess what caused these food scares – a disgusting, unsustainable food system. Kristen (Food Renegade) did a great job of summing up what is wrong with this bill and what we should be doing about it. I *urge* you to heed Kristen’s advice.

Another thing that we need to be doing is making every attempt not to support large corporations. The best thing we can do is to buy exclusively from small farmers or grow and raise this food ourselves. Without our dollars in their wallet they will have a harder time lobbying our representatives. So lets figure out how to eat exclusively from local, small farmers. Just buying organic is not good enough – most of these “organic” companies are owned by the same people who pollute our food with their confinement food lot animals.

We have to take a stand. Clearly our government is in the back pocket of greedy corporations like Monsanto. The government will not protect us, in fact they seem to be causing even more harm. We, as mothers and wives who feed our families, as individual citizens who just want real food… we are the ones who make the choice every day. Will we support our neighbors who work hard every day to bring real food to the people, or big agribusinesses who only see us as dollars signs?

If you are like me then you don’t really believe that those in Washington listen to us or even represent us anymore. In that case – opt out of the system. Grow your own or buy it locally. Voting with our daily choices goes much farther than anything we can do at the ballot box.

So now the question is what will you do?

Where Does My Food Come From?

This week I made a gallon of pickles, have been freezing and dehydrating the 15 pounds of blueberries we picked on Sunday and freezing csa veggies such as green beans and broccoli. There is talk of purchasing a freezer so that we can buy a side of beef and many chickens this fall. We have also been enjoying the most delicious eggs from a farmer not 10 miles from our home – for only $2.50/dozen.

Next week I hope to post a garden update.

So I ask you again…

Where does your food come from?

To participate in Food Roots…

1. create a blog post pertaining to local, seasonal foods or what you are doing to find your food’s roots.
2. in your post add a link back here so that others can benefit from everyone’s information and encouragement.
3. add your name and url to mr. linky below.

Feel free to use the Food Roots banner above, if you wish. If you do not have a blog, please share your thoughts in the comments.

I can’t wait to see what you all come up with. Thank you for participating!