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    Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights: The Escalating Battle over Who Decides What We Eat
    Unavailable
    Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights: The Escalating Battle over Who Decides What We Eat
    Unavailable
    Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights: The Escalating Battle over Who Decides What We Eat
    Ebook399 pages5 hours

    Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights: The Escalating Battle over Who Decides What We Eat

    By David E. Gumpert

    4/5

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    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this ebook

    Do Americans have the right to privately obtain the foods of our choice from farmers, neighbors, and local producers, in the same way our grandparents and great grandparents used to do?

    Yes, say a growing number of people increasingly afraid that the mass-produced food sold at supermarkets is excessively processed, tainted with antibiotic residues and hormones, and lacking in important nutrients. These people, a million or more, are seeking foods outside the regulatory system, like raw milk, custom-slaughtered beef, and pastured eggs from chickens raised without soy, purchased directly from private membership-only food clubs that contract with Amish and other farmers.

    Public-health and agriculture regulators, however, say no: Americans have no inherent right to eat what they want. In today's ever-more-dangerous food-safety environment, they argue, all food, no matter the source, must be closely regulated, and even barred, if it fails to meet certain standards. These regulators, headed up by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, with help from state agriculture departments, police, and district-attorney detectives, are mounting intense and sophisticated investigative campaigns against farms and food clubs supplying privately exchanged food-even handcuffing and hauling off to jail, under threat of lengthy prison terms, those deemed in violation of food laws.

    Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights takes readers on a disturbing cross-country journey from Maine to California through a netherworld of Amish farmers paying big fees to questionable advisers to avoid the quagmire of America's legal system, secret food police lurking in vans at farmers markets, cultish activists preaching the benefits of pathogens, U.S. Justice Department lawyers clashing with local sheriffs, small Maine towns passing ordinances to ban regulation, and suburban moms worried enough about the dangers of supermarket food that they'll risk fines and jail to feed their children unprocessed, and unregulated, foods of their choosing.

    Out of the intensity of this unprecedented crackdown, and the creative and spirited opposition that is rising to meet it, a new rallying cry for food rights is emerging.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherChelsea Green Publishing
    Release dateJun 5, 2013
    ISBN9781603584050
    Unavailable
    Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Food Rights: The Escalating Battle over Who Decides What We Eat

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    • 4/5
      I'd venture to say that many Americans don't realize that if your neighbor owns a cow and you give him $5 for some of his farm fresh milk you very well could get a visit from an armed team, face a hefty fine and a criminal record, and even be put in jail. Gumpert's investigative report may be a little one-sided as far as journalistic standards go, but it is packed with a well-researched abundance of disturbing facts and deserves the read. A recommendation for anyone who cares about preserving the right to choose what they feed themselves and their families.