Is it Organic? - Cornucopia threatens legal action - Mischa Popoff

Is it Organic? - Cornucopia threatens legal action
Click to read the post - I have also pasted it below. It presents an intuitive, and I believe correct, view of what is happening in the organic world. Food security money from the government is funneled through organizations that haven't a clue about the realities of farming. These organizations are urban based and always speak of our broken food system - which, warts and all, is pretty successful at supplying healthy food to all.
Yes, it needs tweaking. But more than a few of these food activists need to spend some time on the real farms that feed real people.

Mischa Popoff, IOIA Advanced Organic Farm and Process Inspector, Author of "Is it Organic?" The inside story of the organic industry
gives his perspective below and I have linked to the posting on his site above:


"No one epitomizes the huge difference between rural organic-farming and urban organic-activism better than George Soros.

With the openly stated goal of undermining the American economy, Soros supports organizations that are devoted to undermining the North-American food economy, the most efficient food delivery system the world has ever known.

Sure, the North-American food economy is far from perfect. But as I traveled across North America inspecting family-run organic farms, I learned pretty quickly what most honest organic farmers seem to know intuitively: there’s no way we’re going to ever replace conventional farming. Improve upon it? You betcha’! But replace it? Never.

The very idea that we could, as Michael Pollan suggests, easily choose between different food systems is an example of what happens when people who’ve never worked a day on a farm receive more money than they know what to do with in the form of tax-exempt donations from rich benefactors who want to change the way you and your family live our lives.*

Chapter 2 of my book, Is It Organic? outlines the many organizations funded by Soros which claim to stand up for small, family organic farmers but which all stand idly by while over 80% of the certified organic food sold in the United States and Canada is imported from places like China, Mexico and Brazil.

The worst scam is when farmers are subsidized for converting to organic production, but every last cent they receive from your tax dollars passes through their hands and goes right into the coffers of urban organic activists whose only goal is to destroy the existing system, not foster the gradual growth of a healthy, domestic alternative system.

A few weeks ago I called out Mark Kastel and his Cornucopia Institute, along with George Siemon and his Organic Valley Family of Farms Brand, for pretending to stand up for family organic farmers. They both attack large players in the organic food chain for no other reason than that they’re large, but they do nothing to actually help organic farmers.

Do they support the replacement of all the useless paperwork with a single annual field test? Nope.

Do they support the reduction of certification fees and onerous Royalty fees that organic farmers are forced to pay year after year to their urban masters? Nope.

People like Kastel, Siemon and Soros won’t ever support such commonsense notions because, at the end of the day, keeping such inequities built into the system are what keep them in business. And it doesn’t bother activists like Kastel, Siemon and Soros that domestic organic farm revenues have basically flat-lined over the last decade while organic retail sales have soared by an average of 20-%-per-annum.

Lastly, and most important of all, it’s quite telling that instead of responding to any of the points I made (which are posted on this website), Kastel and some of Siemon’s supporters chose instead to threaten a lawsuit.

Nice work Kastel, Siemon and Soros. You have managed to take something that is good, honest and wholesome and build your own personal empires upon it. And, at the end of the day, you don’t even care if the food consumers pay a premium for is really organic or not, do you? All you care about is that your political messages sell. And that hurts domestic farmers."

Is it Organic? - Liberals destroy agriculture in B.C.-by Mischa Popoff - Opionion Piece

http://www.isitorganic.ca/liberals_destroy_agriculture_in_bc

Thanks to the B.C. Liberals, this province is now the only jurisdiction in North America that squeezes local meat production right out of business. We now import almost all our meat in B.C.  With no evidence whatsoever that meat from provincial facilities was unsafe, Don Davidson, the point man on the Liberal’s Meat Industry “Enhancement” Strategy, accused B.C. farmers of hauling sick and dead animals to local abattoirs to be processed for human consumption. Instead of sending out inspectors on surprise inspections to see whether this was true, an expensive provincial inspection regime was forced onto the backs of B.C. meat-processors. It mirrors the top-heavy system used in huge, federally inspected facilities. You know… the same system that let the 2008 listeriosis outbreak at Maple Leaf slip by that resulted in 23 deaths. Yeah, that one!
  The Liberals picked a few winners and gave them grants and low-interest loans so they could purchase new computers, renovate their facilities by adding offices and showers for their new federal-provincial inspectors, and hire staff to keep up with all the new “safety” bureaucracy. Feel better yet?
  In spite of this generosity with your tax money, the Minister of Agriculture at the time, Pat Bell, and Premier Campbell still found they faced a backlash as provincial meat processors closed down in droves. So they decided to launch workshops through the Ministry of Health to promote local food!
  This was a brilliant political move since Health had nothing to do with the destruction of local food production that was being carried out simultaneously over in the Ministry of Agriculture. Ironically though, local meat production used to be the jurisdiction of provincial health authorities. But, citing cost-overruns, health authorities claimed they could no longer inspect the handful of meat processors in this province, even though they manage to keep a MUCH larger number of restaurants safe, along with daycares, swimming pools and drinking water systems. No matter. To save money, meat production was shifted from Health to Agriculture. And yet, miraculously, Health bureaucrats somehow managed to find money in their budgets to run the local food workshops that Bell and Campbell ordered.
  If you’re wondering how Health authorities know the food they’re promoting is actually local, safe and (the big money-maker) certified organic, well… it turns out there would be no surprise inspections, no tests, just piles of paperwork! While the Liberals cracked down on local meat, they were completely lackadaisical on all other forms of local food production. Gross negligence or fraud, it’s all perfectly acceptable as long as the appearance of “local food security” is upheld.
  Restaurants are inspected on a surprise basis with routine testing; why not farms? Didn’t this all start because local farmers were allegedly feeding carrion to the public? No matter…just fill out the paperwork, pay your damn fees and everything will be fine! Imagine if daycares, swimming pools and drinking water systems were overseen so carelessly.
  After a couple years of this duplicity the NDP finally decided local food was something they should get behind and launched a private member’s bill which, instead of challenging any of the Liberals’ bureaucratic stratagem, proposes to work within it. Great…
  Steve Thomson, Bell’s replacement as Minister of Agriculture, responds to such lighthearted criticism from the NDP on local food by pointing to all the money his party has thrown into B.C. AgriTourism! Right… like tourism is going to save farming in this province. What a crock…
  Thomson runs a ministry that’s supposed to help farmers, and yet he can’t bring himself to do the one thing that would actually help farmers in this province: repeal his party’s punitive Meat Industry “Enhancement” Strategy. And apparently the NDP can’t be bothered to suggest this either.
  We’re left with one gang of bureaucrats bashing local farmers while another pretends to prop them up. After thousands of farmers stopped raising livestock in this province because there’s nowhere to process it, the Opposition decided to support what remains of local food production because it makes them look good. And the deception is being carried out to the tune of hundreds of millions of your tax dollars.
  I hope you’re not eating while you read this because no matter how this plays out you can rest assured the only winner in the end will be the government. It’s enough to make you puke.

Portions of this column are republished with permission from Field to Plate magazine, Spring/Summer Edition.
Mischa Popoff

is a freelance political writer with a degree in history. He can be heard on Kelowna’s AM 1150 on Friday mornings between 9 and 10.