USDA

A Recipe For Chronic Disease

/ Ren

The just-released Proposed Dietary Guidelines for Americans seems to have as much to do with subsidized corporate profits as it does human health. Indeed, the Standard American Diet (SAD for short) IS the very source of our health care crisis. –Ren


PRESS RELEASE

PROPOSED 2010 USDA DIETARY GUIDELINES –A RECIPE FOR CHRONIC DISEASE
Weston A. Price Foundation Proposes a Return to Four Basic Groups of Nutrient-Dense Foods

WASHINGTON, DC, June 21, 2010: The proposed 2010 USDA Dietary Guidelines are a recipe for infertility, learning problems in children and increased chronic disease in all age groups according to Sally Fallon Morell, president of the Weston A. Price Foundation.

“The proposed 2010 Dietary Guidelines perpetuate the mistakes of previous guidelines in demonizing saturated fats and animal foods rich in saturated fatty acids such as egg yolks, butter, whole milk, cheese, fatty meats like bacon and animal fats for cooking. The current obesity epidemic emerged as vegetable oils and refined carbohydrates replaced these healthy, nutrient-dense traditional fats. Animal fats supply many essential nutrients that are difficult to obtain from other sources,” explains Fallon Morell.

“The revised Guidelines recommend even more stringent reductions in animal fats and cholesterol than previous versions,” says Fallon Morell, “and are tantamount to rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. While the ship of state sinks under the weight of a crippling health care burden, the Committee members are giving us more of the same disastrous advice.  These are unscientific and grossly deficient dietary recommendations.”

The Weston A. Price Foundation is a non-profit nutrition education foundation with no ties to the government or food processing industries.  Named for Dr. Weston A. Price, whose  pioneering research discovered the vital importance of animal fats in human diets, the Foundation has warned against the dangers of lowfat and plant-based diets.

“Basic biochemistry shows that the human body has a very high requirement for saturated fats in all cell membranes; if we do not eat saturated fats, the body will simply make them from carbohydrates, but excess carbohydrate increases blood levels of triglyceride and small, dense LDL, and compromises blood vessel function,” says Fallon Morell.  “Moreover, high-carbohydrate diets do not satisfy the appetite as well as diets rich in traditional fats, leading to higher caloric intakes and often to bingeing and splurging on empty foods, resulting in rapid weight gain and chronic disease.”

The proposed guidelines will perpetuate existing nutrient deficiencies present in all American population groups, including deficiencies in vitamins A and D found in animal fats, vitamins B12 and B6 found in animal foods, as well as minerals like calcium and phosphorus, which require vitamins A and D for assimilation. Moreover, low intakes of vitamin K2, are associated with increased risk of heart disease and cancer. The main sources of vitamin K2 available to Americans are egg yolks and full-fat cheese. Incredibly, the Guidelines single out cheese as an unhealthy food!

Fallon Morell notes that by restricting healthy animal fats in school lunches and diets for pregnant women and growing children, the Guidelines will accelerate the tragic epidemic of learning and behavior disorders.  The nutrients found most abundantly in animal fats and organ meats-including choline, cholesterol and arachidonic acid-are critical for the development of the brain and the function of receptors that modulate thinking and behavior.  Studies show that choline helps the brain make critical connections and protects against neurotoxins; animal studies suggest that if choline is abundant during developmental years, the individual is protected for life from developmental decline. The National Academy of Sciences recommends 375 mg per day for children nine through thirteen years of age, 450 mg for pregnant women and 550 mg for lactating women and men aged fourteen and older. These amounts are provided by four or five egg yolks per day-but that would entail consuming 800-1000 mg cholesterol, a crime by USDA standards. In their deliberations, the committee referred to this as the “choline problem.” Pregnant women and growing children especially need to eat as many egg yolks as possible-yet the Guidelines demonize this nutrient-dense food.

The Guidelines lump trans fats together with saturated fats-calling them Solid Fats-thereby hiding the difference between unhealthy industrial trans fats and healthy traditional saturated fats.  Trans fats contribute to inflammation, depress the immune system, interfere with hormone production, and set up pathological conditions leading to cancer and heart disease, whereas saturated fats fight inflammation, support the immune system, support hormone production and protect against cancer and heart disease.

The vitamins and fatty acids carried uniquely in saturated animal fats are critical to reproduction.  The Weston A. Price Foundation warns that the 2010 Guidelines will increase infertility in this country, already at tragically high rates.

“The 2010 proposed Guidelines represent a national scandal, the triumph of industry clout over good science and common sense,” says Fallon Morell. “It must be emphasized that the Guidelines are not based on science but are designed to promote the products of commodity agriculture and-through the back door-encourage the consumption of processed foods. For while the USDA food police pay lip service to reducing our intake of refined sweeteners, trans fats, white flour and salt, this puritanical low-fat prescription ultimately leads to cravings for chips, sweets, sodas, breads, desserts and other empty food-and-beverage-like products just loaded with refined sweeteners, trans fats, white flour and salt.”

The Weston A. Price Foundation proposes alternative Healthy 4 Life Dietary Guidelines, which harkens back to the traditional four basic food groups, but with a renewed emphasis on quality through a return to pasture-based feeding and organic, pesticide-free production methods:

Every day, eat high quality, whole foods to provide an abundance of nutrients, chosen from each of the following four groups:

ANIMAL FOODS: meat and organ meats, poultry, and eggs from pastured animals; fish and shellfish; whole raw cheese, milk and other dairy products from pastured animals; and broth made from animal bones.

GRAINS, LEGUMES AND NUTS: whole-grain baked goods, breakfast porridges, whole grain rice; beans and lentils; peanuts, cashews and nuts, properly prepared to improve digestibility.

FRUITS AND VEGETABLES: preferably fresh or frozen, preferably locally grown, either raw, cooked or in soups and stews, and also as lacto-fermented condiments.

FATS AND OILS: unrefined saturated and monounsaturated fats including butter, lard, tallow and other animal fats; palm oil and coconut oil; olive oil; cod liver oil for vitamins A and D.

AVOID: foods containing refined sweeteners such as candies, sodas, cookies, cakes, etc.; white flour products such as pasta and white bread; processed foods; modern soy foods; polyunsaturated and partially hydrogenated vegetable oils and fried foods.

* * * * * * * * *

The Weston A. Price Foundation is a 501C3 nutrition education foundation with the mission of disseminating accurate, science-based information on diet and health. Named after nutrition pioneer Weston A. Price, DDS, author of Nutrition and Physical Degeneration, the Washington, DC-based Foundation publishes a quarterly journal for its 13,000 members, supports 450 local chapters worldwide and hosts a yearly International conference. The Foundation headquarters phone number is (202) 363-4394, www.westonaprice.org, [email protected].

CONTACT: Kimberly Hartke, Publicist
Home office 703-860-2711 cell 703-675-5557
[email protected]

PMB #106-380
4200 Wisconsin Avenue, NW
Washington, District of Columbia 20016
United States

ACTIONS TO TAKE
1. Please take time during this week to post a comment at the USDA website. Go to www.dietaryguidelines.gov and scroll down to “SUBMIT Written Comments.”  It is particularly important to describe any adverse health effects you or family members have suffered by following earlier versions of the Guidelines.

2. Please also EMAIL your comments to your Senators and Representative in Congress.  Let them know that USDA’s formulation of dietary guidelines is a complete waste of taxpayer money and has resulted in a health crisis of epidemic proportions, especially in our children. It would be good also to PHONE your elected officials as well. For congressional contact information, go to www.house.gov and www.senate.gov.

3. If you live near Washington, DC, consider attending the public hearings at USDA on July 8.  You can sign up to give an oral  presentation  or simply attend to show support.  To sign up for attending the meeting, go to www.dietaryguidelines.gov and scroll down to “Meeting Registration/Oral Testimony.”

4. Please send out the Press Release above to your local newspaper and radio shows.  You may add your own contact information to that of  publicist Kimberly Hartke.  In addition, you may add a paragraph to the press release about how the USDA dietary guidelines adversely affected your own health and that of your family.

5.Please broadcast this action alert to other groups.

Who’s protecting farmers and consumers from GE contamination? Not the USDA..

/ Ren

From The Center for Food Safety

Docket No. APHIS-2007-0044
Regulatory Analysis and Development
PPD, APHIS, Station 3A-03.8
4700 River Road Unit 118
Riverdale, MD 20737-1238

USDA’s basic mission is “protecting American agriculture.” Yet in the draft EIS (APHIS-2007-0044) USDA refused to even consider any options that might protect organic and conventional agriculture from contamination and the resulting loss of markets and ability to sow the crop of their choice. USDA analyzed only two options in the EIS: 1) Full approval, allowing GE alfalfa to be grown and sold without restriction like any other crop; and 2) No action, meaning GE alfalfa could only be grown under USDA permit, as at present. USDA’s “all or nothing” approach leaves un-analyzed any potential options to protect farmers. This is contrary to law and logic. USDA should protect all farmers, not just those growing Monsanto’s patented crops.

Additionally, USDA acknowledges that GE alfalfa may contaminate organic and conventional alfalfa, but claims that Monsanto’s seed contracts require measures sufficient to prevent such contamination, and that there is no evidence to the contrary.  But in the lawsuit requiring the EIS, the Court found that GE contamination had already occurred in the fields of several Western states with these same business-as-usual practices in place. In fact, contamination of organic and conventional seeds and crops is widespread and has been documented around the world. A recent report documented 39 cases in 2007 and more than 200 in the last decade. The harms incurred by farmers and food companies from GE contamination are many and include: lost markets, lost sales, lower prices, negative publicity, withdrawal of organic certification, expensive testing and prevention measures, and product recalls. Looking to Monsanto to protect farmers from contamination by their own product is a complete abdication of USDA’s duties, akin to leaving the fox to guard the hen house.

Finally, USDA concludes that GE alfalfa will cause production to shift to larger farms but that these economic shifts are “not significant.” Small, family farmers are the backbone and future of American agriculture and must be protected. According to Farm Aid, thousands of small, family farmers are under extreme economic pressure and are pushed off their land each year.  The very existence of the family farm is at risk and a shift in production from small farms to larger farms in the nation’s fourth-largest crop substantially increases that risk.

Please protect farmers’ and consumers’ right to choose organic and non-GE crops and foods by rejecting the deregulation of Monsanto’s GE alfalfa.

Sincerely,

Click to sign your name

Center for Food Safety v. USDA

/ Ren

Earth Justice

Court Finds USDA Violated Federal Law by Allowing Genetically Engineered Sugar Beets on the Market

Government failed to evaluate environmental and economic risks of Monsanto product

September 22, 2009

San Francisco, CA — In a case brought by Center for Food Safety and Earthjustice representing a coalition of farmers and consumers, a federal court ruled yesterday (PDF) that the Bush USDA’s approval of genetically engineered (GE) “RoundUp Ready” sugar beets was unlawful. The court ordered the USDA to conduct a rigorous assessment of the environmental and economic impacts of the crop on farmers and the environment.

The federal district court for the Northern District of California ruled that the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (“APHIS”) violated the National Environmental Policy Act (“NEPA”) when it failed to prepare an Environmental Impact Statement (“EIS”) before deregulating sugar beets that have been genetically engineered (“GE”) to be resistant to glyphosate herbicide, marketed by Monsanto as Roundup. Plaintiffs Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, Sierra Club, and High Mowing Seeds, represented by Earthjustice and the Center for Food Safety, filed suit against APHIS in January 2008, alleging APHIS failed to adequately assess the environmental, health, and associated economic impacts of allowing “Roundup Ready” sugar beets to be commercially grown without restriction.

“This court decision is a wakeup call for the Obama USDA that they will not be allowed to ignore the biological pollution and economic impacts of gene altered crops,” stated Andrew Kimbrell Executive Director of the Center for Food Safety. “The courts have made it clear that USDA’s job is to protect America’s farmers and consumers, not the interests of Monsanto.”

Read the full article..

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Let the fire of liberty be lit

/ Ren

Via Hartke is Online

USDA Bets the Farm on Animal ID Program

By David E. Gumpert & William Pentland
The Nation

“NAIS, ostensibly intended to contain disease outbreaks among livestock, has sparked the most severe political backlash rural America has seen in decades. The controversy stems primarily from the backhanded way the government has imposed a deeply unpopular policy. By introducing NAIS as regulatory changes, the USDA has short-circuited the democratic processes designed to protect the public from government overreaching. Congress has never debated NAIS, and few elected officials have been held accountable for its consequences. The USDA has backed off the original plan to make NAIS mandatory and fully operational by 2009 and now describes the program as “voluntary.” While it may be voluntary on the federal level, the USDA has pushed states to make NAIS mandatory for their local farmers.

“Farmers like us, we don’t want handouts or disaster payments or loans,” said Kim Alexander, who raises livestock in central Texas. “We just want to be left alone to raise clean and healthy food for people who will pay a premium because they know it’s clean, healthy and local and not contaminated with a bunch of poisons.”

A handful of industry stakeholders have cast their shadow over nearly every component of NAIS–past, present and future. A consortium of industry leaders–Cargill Meat Solutions, Monsanto and Schering-Plough, among others–pushed for NAIS for more than a decade and finally won the USDA’s approval shortly after George W. Bush took office in 2001. The consortium, the National Institute for Animal Agriculture (NIAA), designed NAIS for the USDA.

Critics contend NAIS will be the death knell for small farmers, some religious minorities and organic agriculture generally in America. Although the program will amplify American agriculture’s influence in global markets, it will give commercial agriculture an unprecedented monopoly on the future of food–a brave new era of synthetic agriculture and genetically engineered animals.

This era is not beyond some remote horizon. It has already begun. On December 19, the leading cloned livestock producers announced a program designed to monitor meat and milk products from cloned animals as they moved through the food chain. NAIS is the “tracking system” the industry will use to commercialize cloned livestock on a mass scale.

NoNAISpiglaugh200

This post is part of Food Renegade’s Fight Back Fridays

Alexander Family Farm

All-natural, grass-finished, and pasture-raised beef, turkeys, chickens, lamb, and eggs. Eggs are available at the farm, Fresh Plus markets, Wheatsville Co-op, and Farm to Market Grocery.

3700 Victorine Ln., Del Valle, Texas, 512/247-4455. www.localharvest.org

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421,000 pounds of E. coli Contaminated Beef Recalled. Again.

/ Ren

SAO PAULO, June 16 (Reuters) – The world’s biggest beef processor JBS (JBSS3.SA) is under investigation by Brazil’s federal prosecutor’s office in a widespread corruption case that has targeted several companies in the beef industry.

Brazil is the world’s largest producer and exporter of beef, and its cattle industry has come under increasing criticism from environmentalists at home and abroad for its role in the deforestation of the Amazon rainforest.

The beef recalls are FSIS Class I, meaning that “use of the product will cause serious, adverse health consequences or death.”

Colorado Firm Expands Recall of Beef Products Due To Possible E. coli O157:H7 Contamination
Recall Release CLASS I RECALL
FSIS-RC-034-2009  HEALTH RISK: HIGH

Congressional and Public Affairs
(202) 720-9113
Bryn Burkard

Editors Note: This recall release is being reissued to expand the June 24 recall to include approximately 380,000 pounds of assorted beef primal products.

WASHINGTON, June 28, 2009 – JBS Swift Beef Company, a Greeley, Colo., establishment is voluntarily expanding its June 24 recall to include approximately 380,000 pounds of assorted beef primal products that may be contaminated with E. coli O157:H7, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced today…