Ohiofarmgirl's Adventures in The Good Land is largely a fish out of water tale about how I eventually found my footing on a small farm in an Amish town. We are a mostly organic, somewhat self sufficient, sustainable farm in Ohio. There's action and adventure and I'll always tell you the truth about farming.


Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Store Chicken - soon with more chemicals!

Did everyone see this article a couple days ago about how the USDA is proposing new rules to allow more more chemicals in chicken processing?

It seems they want to speed up poultry processing and so they are "enhancing" chemical use to make that happen. This is supposed to make it safer for the consumer. There could be some glitches in the implementation - including the death of a young man who worked as an inspector. But it's supposed to be totally safe. The government said so - they reviewed "data provided by chemical manufacturers (page1 at the very bottom)."

You might barf if you read the whole article but if you can stick with it thru page 3 you can see my favorite line from USDA Undersecretary Hagen who said, "“Bottom line, plain and simple: We would never put forward a rule that we thought would increase risk for anybody.”

Oh. Well then. I feel much better now.

I can understand that they might want to step up efforts to clean up the meats - seeing as how much of American meat is contaminated with antibiotic resistant bacteria.

Sometimes people ask us why we grow our own food, are we hippies? Trying to make a political statement? Nope. Pretty much it's just out of self defense.

Some people think that we should just eat less meat and that will solve the problem. But I don't think so. I think the answer is that we should take back control of our food and just do it ourselves.


So if you are on the fence about growing some food this year maybe you should just choke your way thru that article and see if it changes your mind.

As for me, I'll be ordering some more meat chickens and some turkeys here pretty soon - no chemicals necessary.

Happy Tuesday everyone. Hope I didn't make your barf.


6 comments:

Traci Sumner said...

Meat growing is going to be tricky around here this year! :(

I'm getting my Jersey steers in the next month, but other than that, I think we're sunk.

The chicken coop is probably beyond repair and it's cobbled together no
(sigh) and the rest of our barn fell over - it was only a matter of time, because the side boards were off before we bought the place.

So, until I can convince my checkbook that we really might be able to squeak out payments on a shed, we're at goats and the steers - which won't be ready for over a year.

Will have stew meat from my bleepity-bleep egg-eating chickens - actually, they are so old and tough that I'm just going to peel the breasts and grind them, and make sausage. I'll have some awesome stock though!

I won't be planting anything in the garden for at least 3 weeks, either. (double sigh)Possible 2-4" of snow in the works for Thursday night.

Cat Eye Cottage said...

The government makes me want to barf! It's actually very depressing to think about the control the government and big companies have over our food source. I love what I do, but sometimes I feel like I have no choice but to raise as much of my food as possible. Look at the alternative.

Unknown said...

You know what makes me mad about this is that the USDA is going after the small farmer who is selling raw milk. I guess goes to show you that bribes and money talk.

Unknown said...

yep, I get what you're saying and as much as I hate butchering the chickens (the hard work and the smell) the meat and the homemade stock tastes SO good and makes it all worth it. If I'm ever unfortunate to find myself accidentally eating shop chicken (for example on an airplane when they give you unidentified "food") it disgusts me. It tastes wrong, I then imagine the animal in one of those horrible sheds and then who knows who actually cut it up and what happened to the meat after that? At least I know everything in my freezer has been handled by me, for better or worse, I know where it came from, how it lived and who cut it up! Self-defense, I like that! That's a good reason to keep a milking animal as well, I don't trust what they do to shop milk either....

David said...

revolting is the only thing i can come up with

Anonymous said...

http://www.foxnews.com/leisure/2013/04/25/14-year-old-mcdonald-hamburger-looks-almost-new/?intcmp=obnetwork

Blech!

Yet another reason to know your food...

Cindy in TX

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