Bugs, Bugs, and Phobias

Welcome to a new episode of Raw Milk Mama where I take recent news and offer somewhat sarcastic commentary on it. Read on but be aware this is intentionally a little snarky and sarcastic. Take it with a grain of sea salt.

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Well, the Washington Post has a recent headline “At the world’s biggest bug farm, 10 billion maggots recycle food waste”

They claim, “An industry based on insects’ natural recycling abilities could help limit the environmental damage from our food system.”

And it’s about how black soldier fly maggots can be a more sustainable option of protein rather than the mono-cropped, heavily sprayed corn and soy that currently goes into animal feed-including America’s chicken and pigs destined for our tables.

Whaddya know!?!? Birds eating bugs? Who ever could have imagined that we would discover something that made so much sense as that?

Oh, wait…only bugs produced in their massive, and heavily funded, mechanized, roboticized, industrial factories are acceptable. PETA would go hog wild over that, CAFO insects, the horror! But what about the ones crawling around our backyards getting pecked up by decentralized chickens? Can’t have that, those bugs are free-ranging, no good, nefarious dissenters.

There’s about a gazillion flaws in their ideas, but that’s a story for another time…which I’ll get to. (Not to mention, those of us who compost can easily cultivate black soldier flies in our own composts).

Here’s another great headline cluster.

Of course, the Cracker Barrel logo dispute caught everyone’s attention for a few days. Has it occurred to any of the identity-politic keyboard warriors to ask for an ingredient list to any of their dishes?

Sure, make it all about the logo and identity politics while ignoring the real elephant on the plate: food additives, and a centralized food system that is slowly giving us all chronic illness while destroying the ecosystems that literally keep us alive.

I wonder if they use elephants as filler?

As much fun as it is to jump on the logo-identity-bandwagon and point fingers at all the wacky ways our culture is shifting, take a deep breath and a step back and ask the real questions that matter: What’s in the food? Where does it come from? Will this food nourish me and replenish the ecosystem in which it was produced?

Putting all that energy into a logo isn’t going to change our food system. But you deciding to make intentional choices about what you eat will ultimately change things for the better. At the very least, being intentional about these choices will change your health. And that matters a lot.

Meanwhile…. The fear mongering continues.

Be afraid, VERY AFRAID! Now, there’s even MORE to be afraid of!

Various health departments want to make sure you know about the few confirmed cases of West Nile virus in New York and the one singular case of screwworms in the US that was brought back by a vacationer from another country.

Be very afraid. In fact, you probably shouldn’t even go outside anymore. It’s way too dangerous.

If I didn’t know any better, I might be tempted to think that I was in greater danger from screwworms than, say, the 300 million pounds of glyphosate sprayed on our farms and soil every year. But carry on and definitely don’t look too closely at our farming policies.

Among those farming policies you’re not supposed to look at is dairy farming in America.

3 weeks ago, several alarming people wanted to convince you that raw milk is extremely dangerous because a small dairy in FL had an outbreak.

Strangely, the reports didn’t all focus on the actual causes of the illnesses, (allegedly e.coli and campy) but they wanted to convince you that raw milk is even more dangerous because of bird flu.

Sounds like a bad propaganda bird that escaped someone’s coo-coo nest!

It’s refreshing to see that the Florida surgeon general responded with a surprising level of common sense: he said people should still be able to choose it. Just like we can still choose our food whenever there’s an illness connected to ground beef, leafy greens, deli meat or any other food.

But the propaganda machine will never lose an opportunity to scare you about raw milk and bird flu no matter if it’s not relevant.

When it comes to that particular dairy, I’ve had milk from there when I was visiting FL, and I’d do so again.

The best part of this whole “outbreak” is that FL officials didn’t storm the farm with armed federal agents and state enforcement agencies. They worked with the farm to isolate the problem and get things squared away.

Food for thought… Because it was a small farm, and not a huge corporation that sources from thousands of farms, the “outbreak” was small and quickly dealt with.

Now if only all the states could adopt such a grounded, reasonable approach.

On we go towards food security.

And remember, be prepared, not panicked. When it comes to our food security, eat for health, know your neighbor, and grow some food.

And for goodness sake, support your local farmers!

That’s our food security update for today. Nourish, Gather, and Grow.