Rejecting rBGH Foods

Recombinant Bovine Growth Hormone (rBGH) is a genetically engineered form of Bovine somatotropin, which is administered to dairy cattle in order to increase production. It is marketed under the name Posilac by Monsanto, an agri-business giant (the same company produces Roundup to control weeds, another product I no longer use).

The use of rBGH is what prompted us to start buying organic foods, especially milk, which our young daughter consumes in large amounts. The price difference is really negligible.

Currently the United States is the only Western nation that allows rBGH to be used. The European Union, Australia, Japan and Canada have outlawed its use due to adverse side effects in both the cattle who receive the injections and in people who consume the milk. Cows that receive the steroid injections are productive for only half as long as a cow that is raised naturally; they are more likely to suffer infections and thus need antibiotics, which are passed along in milk; are more likely to suffer from mastis (swelling of the utters); digestive problems; birth defects (including underdeveloped legs and hoofs).

Humans are at an increased risk of cancer, antibiotic resistance, and early onset of puberty (especially in girls).

As is typical, our government agencies act in the best interest of corporations, not on behalf of the people.  As recently as 2007, the State of Pennsylvania made it illegal to advertise milk as rBGH free, striking a blow to free speech and liberty everywhere. (Note: the decision was reversed earlier this year, allowing labeling and advertising of rBGH free products) The best way to fight this sort of corporate bullying is through consumer pressure, which has led to the decrease in use of rBGH. The Organic Consumer Association lists the following companies that have gone either partially or fully rBGH free:

Top rBGH & rBST-Free Processors

1. Dean Foods ( P)
5. Kroger (C) (as of 2/08)
6. Dairy Farmers of America (P)
7. HP Hood (P)
11. Darigold (P)
12. Prairie Farms Dairy (C) (as of 2/08)
14. National Dairy Holdings (P)
16. California Dairies, Inc. (C)
18. Safeway Dairy Group (P)
30. Publix Super Markets (C)
42. Tillamook County Creamery Assoc. (P)
43. Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Inc. (C)
53. Stonyfield Farm, Inc. (C)
58. Michigan Milk Producers Assoc. (C) (as of 2/08)
59. Wilcox Farms (C)
72. BelGioioso Cheese Inc. (C)
73. Cloverland/Green Spring Dairy (C)
74. Smith Dairy Products (C)
85. Oakhurst Dairy (C)
88. Wawa Dairy (C)
92. Joseph Gallo Farms (C)
97. Oberweis Dairy Inc. (C)

Number: Rank by total dairy sales (2006)
P: Partially rBGH-free
C: Completely rBGH-free

If you can’t find organic milk, at least try and find rBGH milk from one of the above sources. Starbucks and Chipotle have also gotten on the bandwagon. Ben and Jerry’s (producers of my favorite ice cream flavor) have long been rBGH free.

By continuing to put pressure on companies to stop using this dangerous product, we can hopefully eliminate it from the market.

Merton on Freedom

Religious belief, on the deepest level, is inevitably also a principle of freedom. To defend one’s faith is to defend one’s own freedom, and at least implicitly the freedom of everyone else. – Thomas Merton, Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander

Gardening as an Act of Subversion

In my last post, I admitted I had never grown anything in my life. So why this sudden urge to start planting vegetables? Part of it is linked to the rise in food costs at a time when the quality of food seems to be diminishing. Rising food costs have led to riots worldwide. In April, riots broke out in multiple locations as staple items such as rice and corn increased by as much as 75%. When a person is already living at the poverty level, such an increase can be devastating.

I am not an alarmist. I realize that the riots that have have taken place have occurred in third world countries, where extreme poverty is a reality and people constantly teeter on the edge of starvation. It would be foolish to suggest that it couldn’t happen here, however. Even in the metro Atlanta area, warehouse stores like Sam’s Club and Costco restricted the amount of bulk rice a person could purchase. While this mainly affected businesses and not individual consumers, it should serve as a wake up call to those of us who thought that the world’s supply of food would always be cheap and readily accessible.

Another factor was the desire to move toward more healthy and sustainable living. While factory farming has given high yields of some foods, it has also brought with it many issues, not the least of which is concern about the long lasting impact of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. Some foods absorb more of these potentially hazardous compounds than others. If you are thinking about going organic, you might want to try starting off by avoiding the so-called Dirty Dozen. I know I feel much better seeing my kids eat grapes that weren’t sprayed with any of the more than 35 chemical pesticides found in imported grapes.

The other part of the equation was our desire to keep more of our income for ourselves. We have paid up to $3.99 for a pound of tomatoes. For the same amount of money, you can grow your own, with an exponentially higher yield. There is a cool article here from the UGA Agriculture extension on this topic. (Note: check out the ag extensions for local state universities. Most of them have good websites with relevant info on growing vegetables in your locale).

We have started a very humble garden this season. Because we started so late, we did not have time to properly prepare the soil for planting, so we planted a container garden. There was a great article from Mother Earth News on how to do this, as well as countless places online that gave tips for growing vegetables in containers. We tried to select items that we eat regularly that would give us a chance to have a small yield while catching up on the learning curve. This first time around we have planted tomatoes, green bells, red bells, habaneros, cucumbers, jalapenos and cayennes. We have used store-bought organic fertilizer so far, but we are hoping that by the next time we plant we will have a decent supply of compost to cut down on our need for anything purchased. Pests have not yet been an issue, so there have been no insecticides (organic or otherwise) used on any of the vegetables.

There has been something amazing about watching our small garden go from seedlings into vegetables. Our first round of tomatoes are getting close to coming off the vine. The red bells are still green but growing. The hot peppers are starting to bud and form fruit. The cucumbers and green bells aren’t doing so hot (another post about this later, I made a few early mistakes here). The cool thing is that we grew these. Even if just for a few bites here and there I know where my food came from and how it was grown. And the things we have learned will be things that go into planting for the Fall.

LP’s Suburban Homestead, v.1

If this site is to be about the transformation of our suburban home into a suburban homestead, it would probably be a good idea to describe our surroundings nd how we came to the realization that we want to become self-sufficient.

In the Fall of 2007, I was extended a new call from a small congregation in an Atlanta suburb. We had not yet sold out home in North Georgia (still haven’t, actually), and with the housing market doing what it was, it became quickly evident that if we intended to purchase a home in our new location, we needed to focus on new construction rather than a resale. Needless to say, when we picked this place, creating a suburban homestead wasn’t even on the radar for us, and didn’t factor into the decision. We found a home in a new subdivision that was big enough for the family and close to work and school for everyone. The housing market allowed us to make a low-ball offer, which was accepted.

The house itself is your typical suburban house for this area, indistinguishable from every other vanilla house in every other Atlanta subdivision. It is large by many standards, a little less than 3,000 square feet. It sits on a postage stamp of a lot (.25 acres) that was farmland less than a decade ago. It is a restricted covenant community, meaning that a Gestapo-like group of bus bodies (aka, the Home Owner’s Association) dictate whatyou can and can’t do to your own property. I have already received nastygrams about my refusal to use chemical treatments to prevent weeds growing on the lawn. If it can’t be hand pulled, then it is staying. I mean, Jesus H. Christ, kids and animals play on these lawns. In other words, everything that people hate about suburban life and subdivisions is alive and well here.

For the past couple of years, my wife and I have talked about how much we would like to retire to a rather secluded place to enjoy the peace and quiet that you don’t always enjoy living right next door to someone. We figured this was many decades in the future, but the more we discussed it the more we realized that we could begin to incorporate certain aspects of country living and values regardless of where we found ourselves. We never thought of ourselves as being materialistic or overly consumptive, and always tried to place value on the things of the Spirit. After our move to our new house, however, we both found ourselves in a funk. She was several months pregnant with our third child and had left a high paying job as a private school administrator to take a classroom position at a school with a poor reputation. I don’t think that using the word depressed would be too strong to describe her for the first few months here. My first few months were spent with my nose to the proverbial grindstone, trying to develop and implement a plan for the small mission church I was serving. On top of this, I had just lost my youngest brother to cystic fibrosis, and was really struggling with my own grief.

On Easter we got a huge surprise. Our beautiful son decided he couldn’t wait to be born, and joined us more than two weeks early. We named him after my brother. His birth was not only a blessing, it was the catalyst we needed to start re-examining our lives on a deeper level. We realized we had always talked a good game about consumerism and societal resistance, but it had been mostly talk. As stupid as it sounds, I felt like being heavily tattooed was enough to demonstrate that I wasn’t playing along by the same rules as everyone else, when the reality was clearly that I had been playing the game just like everyone else.

The consumerist lifestyle is subtle and seductive. The problem is that living life in order to secure more goods and services is a life of perpetual slavery. Those in power know this and create powerful systems to keep the general population dependent. I always knew this on some level, but the birth of my son was like a moment of satori, calling me to not just recognize the evil of our culture, but to begin to find ways to actively resist it.

Though an awakening has taken a place, and our family’s consciousness has been raised, I am the first to tell you that we have so much to learn that it is downright frightening. I have never grown a single plant in my life, and what few house plants I have had I managed to kill with relative speed. I haven’t raised an animal other than a house cat since I was in 4-H as a kid and raised one cow. There is a lot to do, and none of it is easy. But damn I am glad we are getting started living.

The Path to Freedom

If you have not yet seen the Path to Freedom website, you should stop what you are doing and start reading their materials. What the Dervaes family is attempting to do is cultivate true revolution but reducing their dependence on consumer culture. They have transformed a 1/5 acre urban plot into a sustainable homestead. Of course, it didn’t happen overnight; the family has been at it on this same plot of land for more than 20 years. Check it out!

Urban Homesteading

An awesome article on urban homesteading from Reality Sandwich.

Tabula Rasa

A fresh new blog…like a chalkboard that has never been written on, or a jar of peanut butter that has just been opened and has no knife swirls. There’s just so much potential.

For those of you redirected here from the old “Idle Ramblings” site, you will see a few changes. Rather than being all theology and music, this blog will also include political ramblings (especially about Libertarianism, Anarcho-Capitalism, rejection of the the two party system, and the preservation of civil liberties) as well as reflections on the lifestyle change my family is attempting to make toward self-sufficiency and suburban homesteading.

The site is just starting to take shape, but I hope it will be fully functional and brimming with content in the next few weeks.