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"... Since stopping the feeding of animals to animals and ordering universal testing of cows for mad cow were deemed serious threats to industry profits, the USDA's public relations specialists came up with diversionary tactics: round up imported livestock across the country and harass family farmers like the Faillaces, all in the name of preventing mad cow disease in America.
"Meanwhile the disinformation flacks at the USDA, aided by public relations firms and the news media, worked to sweep under the rug the alarming fact that U.S. corporate agribusiness was doing exactly the same thing that Europeans had been doing to spread mad cow disease‹feeding cattle, pigs, chickens, households pets, and deer and elk on game farms billions of pounds of blood, slaughterhouse waste, animal fat, and tainted manure every year.
"The Faillace's sheep were absolutely healthy and presented no risk whatsoever to the American public ... [and] the USDA has done little or nothing to help U.S. sheep farmers eradicate the disease [or to eradicate other diseases but has in fact lowered standards and cut back on inspections and is ready to import animals from countries where there is hoof and mouth, tuberculosis, and Mad Cow].
"... As for those farmers and consumers who won't behave like proper sheep, who refuse to shut up and swallow the official story: harass and threaten them, seize their animals, ruin their reputations, and destroy them financially and psychologically.
"Linda and Larry Faillace, and their children, Jackie, Heather, and Francis, along with the Vermont consumer and farm activists who stood by them, are not only good shepherds, they are national heroes. USDA bureaucrats, ... indentured politicians, and their puppet masters behind the scenes‹the leaders of the corporate-industrial agriculture and pharmaceutical complex‹are the real offenders.
"USDA blame[d] the Canadians for our first mad cow cases, and shortly thereafter threaten[ed] a Kansas meat packer, Creekstone Farms, for the "crime" of wanting to test all of their cows at slaughter for Mad Cow disease.
"[Because] millions of Americans no longer trust the government or the media ... [and] are turning away from industrial meat and food and voting with their pocketbooks for healthy, sustainable, locally produced organic foods, [the USDA and the corporate-industrial agriculture and pharmaceutical complex are out to eliminate all competition because in a fair competition, they would go under. So, they design NAIS and its evil twin Premises ID to destroy farmers and possibly take their land].
"But voting with our consumer dollars is not enough. The mad sheep battle [described in the Faillance book] is not an isolated case. Armed with $90 billion in taxpayer money each year, the USDA is waging war against all of us‹consumers, family farmers, farm animals, and the environment. The direct and collateral damage of this war includes rampant water, air, and food pollution; an epidemic of cancer, birth defects, obesity, and hormone disruption; pollution by genetically engineered crops; an unsustainable, massive venting of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases; pesticide and antibiotic contamination; proliferation of junk food; systematic exploitation of small farmers, farm workers, and slaughterhouse workers; and the dumping of millions of tons of subsidized crops and meat at below the cost of production on developing nations, thereby destroying the livelihoods of millions of small farmers and rural communities.
"It's time to follow the example of the Faillace family. It's time to stand up and fight, not only for ourselves, but also for future generations."
Ronnie Cummins
www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_2158.cfm
But I believe what the USDa is doing now is even more nightmarish than Ronnie Cummins said then - because the USDA and Monsanto may be setting up to do what is agribusiness and biotech are doing in Asia - profiting by the disease they created (bird flu) through their filthy, contaminating practices, then using it as an excuse to wipe out small farmers' animals stocks (and the essential biodiversity they represent) and replace them with patented (that is, corporately privatized) animals and thus take over this portion of the food supply totally. And making a fortune on drugs in the meantime, making sure to scare people into buying them.
Waste from transnational poultry industry is now implicated as the source of bird flu. www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=ENG20051127&articleId=1333 and the poultry industry is now using a crisis it caused, inflaming fear, to push out small farmers. www.ens-newswire.com/ens/feb2006/2006-02-27-01.asp
The USDA is an abomination and working as a intensely destructive totalitarian agency on behalf of corporations which have totally corrupted it. Your agency is operating like Nazis and for corporations that are taking over control of food around the world. As a citizen of what is supposed to be a democracy, and as a taxpayer who has to spend all my time trying to stop this immense human cruelty, population manipulation, and biologic insanity, I can't begin to express what I think of those responsible.
Shame on you as human beings. Shame on you for the evil you are doing to innocent people and animals. Shame on you for what you are doing to our whole population's health. Shame on you for subverting your own country's freedom and for damaging the very lives of your own children and grandchildren.
Shame on you all.
