June 20, 2017

Maine approves local food sovereignty

Sun Journal - With a stroke of his pen, Gov. Paul LePage last week enacted landmark legislation putting Maine in the forefront of the food sovereignty movement. LePage signed LD 725, An Act to Recognize Local Control Regarding Food Systems, Friday legitimizing the authority of towns and communities to enact ordinances regulating local food distribution free from state regulatory control. According to food sovereignty advocates, the law is the first of its kind in the country.

Sponsored by Sen. Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, LD 725 does not include food grown or processed for wholesale or retail distribution outside of the community from which it comes. Supporters of food sovereignty want local food producers to be exempt from state licensing and inspections governing the selling of food as long as the transactions are between the producers and the customers for home consumption or when the food is sold and consumed at community events such as church suppers.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Sounds like just more of those people who don't believe in the existence of TB, Salmonella, Shigella, and possibly even other things such as Vaccinations, Evolution, and our Sun centered local planetary system.

Granted, many people espouse the beneficial effects of fresh cow's milk, but the question is: Is it really worth it?

Anonymous said...

4:59

Industrial food is usually the vector for food borne illness. Small producers who sell directly to customers don't last long if their food is contaminated. Small producers have a greater incentive to make sure their products are safe, because they don't have deep pockets or legal teams to help them with recalls and PR damage control like factory farms and their processors do. Most of the food borne illness you mentioned are only a problem in large industrial farming operations. Small operations can keep a better eye on their farm and avoid many of those problems from the start. The small farmer who doesn't, will be out of business shortly.

If you are really interested in the topic, read Joel Salatin's book "Everything I want to do is Illegal". Salatin is an organic farmer who takes the reader through the absolute hell he has gone through trying to sell his meat in various places because of regulations that are designed to work for factory farming, but often put small farms out of business.

Yes, the benefits of raw milk are absolutely worth it. Raw milk is full of probiotics that aid in digestion and assist people with compromised gut flora in healing their gut and repopulating the intestines with beneficial probiotics. Many people who are lactose intolerant can drink raw milk, but not pasteurized milk.

Pasteurization was developed because in the 1850 and 60s as many urban dairies, then called Swill Dairies were placed next to breweries so the cows could eat the spent grain from the brewing. Cattle did not evolve to eat grain, they evolved to eat grass. The cows in those Swill Dairies were only eating grain, which makes them ill, and they were getting grain that had been denuded of nutrition, and some of the Swill Dairies fed their cows chalk to make the milk look white. The milk that came from the sick Swill Dairy cows had all sorts of food borne illness to transmit in their milk. After a few scandals during the era, pasteurizing milk became the answer for governments wanting to be sure the milk was disease free. They didn't do much about improving the conditions the cows lived in, they just heated the inferior milk and called it "safe". Government regulations still favor these sorts of solutions, which is why the US food system doesn't protect people like it should.

Anonymous said...

Please read FDA information:

https://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodborneIllnessContaminants/BuyStoreServeSafeFood/ucm247991.htm