Health department raids community picnic and destroys all food with bleach

Video: Swat Teams Raid US Farms, Destroy Food with Bleach and kill Livestock

We were told our food was unfit for consumption and demanded that we call off the event...

Quail Farm

The evening was everything I had dreamed and hoped it would be. The weather was perfect, the farm was filled with friends and guests roaming around talking about organic, sustainable farming practices. Our guests were excited to spend an evening together. The food was prepared exquisitely. The long dinner table, under the direction of dear friends, was absolutely stunningly beautiful. The music was superb. The stars were bright and life was really good. And then, …for a few moments, it felt like the rug was pulled out from underneath us and my wonderful world came crashing down. As guests were mingling, finishing tours of the farm, and while the first course of the meal was being prepared and ready to be sent out, a Southern Nevada Health District employee came for an inspection.

Community Dinner at Quail Farm

Because this was a gathering of people invited to our farm for dinner, I had no idea that the Health Department would become involved. I received a phone call from them two days before the event informing me that because this was a “public event” (I would like to know what is the definition of “public” and “private”) we would be required to apply for a “special use permit.” If we did not do so immediately, we would be charged a ridiculous fine. Stunned, we immediately complied.

We were in the middle of our harvest day for our CSA shares, a very busy time for us, but Monte immediately left to comply with the demand and filled out the required paper work and paid for the fee. (Did I mention that we live in Overton, nowhere near a Health Department office?) Paper work now in order, he was informed that we would not actually be given the permit until an inspector came to check it all out. She came literally while our guests were arriving! In order to overcome any trouble with the Health Department of cooking on the premises, most of the food was prepared in a certified kitchen in Las Vegas; and to further remove any doubt, we rented a certified kitchen trailer to be here on the farm for the preparation of the meals.

The inspector, Mary Oaks, clearly not the one in charge of the inspection as she was constantly on the phone with her superior Susan somebody who was calling all the shots from who knows where.

We were told our food was unfit for consumption and demanded that we call off the event because:

EH Specialist II Mary Oakes

1. Some of the prepared food packages did not have labels on them. (The code actually allows for this if it is to be consumed within 72 hours.)
2. Some of the meat was not USDA certified. (Did I mention that this was a farm to fork meal?)
3. Some of the food that was prepared in advance was not up to temperature at the time of inspection. (It was being prepared to be brought to proper temperature for serving when the inspection occurred.)
4. Even the vegetables prepared in advance had to be thrown out because they were cut and were then considered a “bio-hazard”.
5. We did not have receipts for our food. (Reminder! This food came from farms not from the supermarket! I have talked with several chefs who have said that in all their years cooking they have never been asked for receipts.)

At this time Monte, trying to reason with Susan to find a possible solution for the problem, suggested turning this event from a “public” event to a “private” event by allowing the guests to become part of our farm club, thus eliminating any jurisdiction or responsibility on their part. This idea infuriated Susan and threatened that if we did not comply the police would be called and personally escort our guests off the property. This is not the vision of the evening we had in mind! So regretfully, again we complied.

The only way to keep our guests on the property was to destroy the food

Bleach is poured on organic food

I can’t tell you how sick to my stomach I was watching that first dish of Mint Lamb Meatballs hit the bottom of the unsanitized trash can. Here we were with guests who had paid in advance and had come from long distances away anticipating a wonderful dining experience, waiting for dinner while we were behind the kitchen curtain throwing it away! I know of the hours and labor that went into the preparation of that food. We asked the inspector if we could save the food for a private family event that we were having the next day. (A personal family choice to use our own food.) We were denied and she was insulted that we would even consider endangering our families health. I assured her that I had complete faith and trust in Giovanni our chef and the food that was prepared, (obviously, or I wouldn’t be wanting to serve it to our guests).

Farm food is destroyed

I then asked if we couldn’t feed the food to our “public guests” or even to our private family, then at least let us feed it to our pigs. (I think it should be a criminal action to waste any resource of the land. Being dedicated to our organic farm, we are forever looking for good inputs into our compost and soil and good food that can be fed to our animals. The animals and compost pile always get our left over garden surplus and food. We truly are trying to be as sustainable as possible.) Again, a call to Susan and another negative response. Okay, so let me get this right. So the food that was raised here on our farm and selected and gathered from familiar local sources, cooked and prepared with skill and love was even unfit to feed to my pigs!?! Who gave them the right to tell me what I feed my animals? Not only were we denied the use of the food for any purpose, to ensure that it truly was unfit for feed of any kind we were again threatened with police action if we did not only throw the food in the trash, but then to add insult to injury, we were ordered to pour bleach on it.

Food Lined up to Be Destroyed by Health Department

Now the food is also unfit for compost as I would be negligent to allow any little critters to nibble on it while it was composting and ingest that bleach resulting in a horrible death. Literally hundreds of pounds of food was good for nothing but adding to our ever increasing land fill! At some point in all of this turmoil Monte reminded me that I had the emergency phone number for the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) on our refrigerator. I put it there never really believing that I would ever have to use it. We became members of the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund several years ago as a protection for us, but mostly to add support to other farmers battling against the oppressive legal actions taken against the small farmers trying to produce good wholesome food without government intrusion. The local, sustainable food battle is being waged all across America! May I mention that not one battle has been brought on because of any illness to the patrons of these farms! The battles are started by government officials swooping down on farms and farmers like SWAT teams confiscating not only the wholesome food items produced but even their farm equipment! Some of them actually wearing HAZMAT suits as if they were walking into a nuclear meltdown! I have personally listened to some of their heart wrenching stories and have continued to follow them through the FTCLDF’s updates.

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Source: A Distinctive World ^  - Thursday, March 15, 2012 7:06:09 PM · by Sopater – h/t to AJ

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Perils of Peanuts and Peanut Butter… Even Organic

Pretty much everyone is aware that many people are allergic to peanuts, and many schools even ban any form of peanuts because of the dangers to children who may be allergic.  Any severe allergy to a food, or something else, can be life threatening.  (It may actually be the molds/fungus or aflatoxin that people are allergic to rather than the peanuts.)

What a lot of people aren't aware of are the other dangers of peanuts.  I don't eat peanuts, in any form, mostly because of that.  Peanuts can be confusing because we hear they contain a good fat, monounsaturated, but so do avocados, nuts (which peanuts aren’t)and olive oil, which would be healthier choices.  Peanuts also contain a high amount of omega-6, but a more balanced omega-6 to omega-3 ratio would be best as in hemp seeds, fish oil or a high grade natural supplement.  We also hear peanuts are high in antioxidants and some vitamins and minerals.  The biggest claim to health lately has been that they contain resveratrol, which they do, but so do other foods, such as grapes, cranberries and blueberries, so you don't need to eat peanuts for that benefit either.

One problem with peanuts is that they are one of the most highly pesticide contaminated crops there is.  One important reason to only use organically grown peanut products if you choose to continue to eat peanuts.  Conventional peanut farmers have a disproportionately high rate of cancer, mainly because of all the pesticides they use, and because they eat a lot of peanuts.

But the most important reason not to eat peanuts or peanut butter is because they are often contaminated with aflatoxin.  Aflatoxin is a mycotoxin that is produced by many different species of a fungus called Aspergillus.  It is very dangerous, and it is a carcinogen.  It is so potent it has been known to wipe out complete tribes in Africa because of contaminated food there.  In smaller amount it can be a slow killer, as in cancer, and is believed to cause liver cancer.  (Aflatoxin can be in other products as well, corn is another likely one, which is another thing I don't eat.)

Peanuts are particularly susceptible to contamination during growth and storage. Poor storage of peanuts can lead to an infection by the mold fungus Aspergillus flavus, releasing the toxic and highly carcinogenic substance aflatoxin. The aflatoxin-producing molds exist throughout the peanut growing areas and may produce aflatoxin in peanuts when conditions are favorable to fungal growth.

Organic Peanut Butter is part of the top 5 items to buy organic.  Why should you focus on peanut butter? This is because, many peanut farms contaminate their peanut crops with a chemical to treat mold. This mold is one of the major problems that causes peanut crops to die. This chemical is classified as a fungicide.

The peanut, or groundnut (Arachis hypogaea), is a species in the legume or "bean" family (Fabaceae).

The most common way most people get aflatoxin in their diets is through peanut butter. Peanuts have an especially high naturally-occurring concentration of aspergillus flavus mold. Furthermore, while most peanuts are roasted, the roasting process rarely kills all the mold. The longer peanuts sit around in the store or in your house, the more of the mold will grow back--and again, it generally won't be visible to the naked eye. The longer the mold grows, the more aflatoxin builds up.

Here's the most interesting thing about all this: usually your "organic" or "natural" peanut butters will have the highest aflatoxin concentration. The highest concentration of all, though, will typically be the stuff you buy in the store where they take peanuts and grind them into peanut butter for you while you wait. Because while the USDA and FDA has rules for how much aflatoxin is allowed in food before it's shipped to stores, there's no measure of it after it reaches the stores. Those peanuts could have been sitting on the shelves at the story for weeks or months at room temperature, building up mold. It's even worse if the air is mildly moist. Furthermore, if you fresh-grind those nuts into peanut butter, the mold keeps growing in the peanut butter.

This means that your safest source of peanut butter is generally your cheap, garden variety Jif or Skippy or the like (But Skippy just had a recall). The companies that make those generally get the peanuts fresh, roast and grind them immediately, put them through an effective cooking and homogenization process, then seal them in airtight jars. The mold buildup on those will be much lower than your typical "fresh" or "natural" peanut butters and they pretty quickly out of the stores.

The risks for children are the highest as their health can be even more impacted then adults because of their size and their still developing immune systems.  And often they eat more of it regularly than adults.  Pets can also have both allergies or negative affects from the molds, fungus and toxins.

Our suggestion… don’t eat peanuts, peanut butter or organic peanut butter… period!!

By the way, the aflatoxin threat is taken seriously enough that OSHA actually requires workers dealing with large quantities of peanuts to wear facial masks so they don't breath in too much of the mold. And statistically, just as a rule of thumb, two tablespoons of peanut butter a day (regular or organic) produce a higher risk of death than living next to a nuclear power plant.

The number one thing to look for in organic peanut butter is that it is made from organically ‘grown’ peanuts and that it is a brand bought at a store where the jars move quickly!

From the lists and surveys, these seem to be the top 6 Organic Peanut Butters:

1. Nature's Promise - This peanut butter is made of 100% natural ingredients. Also, Nature's Promise has been around for a while, and supplies many products. Such as, milk, butter, broth, snacks, pizza, and cookies.

2. SunLand Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter- SunLand has been around since 1988, and it is dedicated strictly peanut butter. Best of all, it is United States based; New Mexico to be exact. SunLand's peanut butter is very unique also; the company has many different flavors. The flavors range from "Regular" to "Hickory Smoke".

3. Santa Cruz Organic Peanut Butter - Their peanut butter comes in four flavors; Dark Roasted Creamy, Dark Roasted Crunchy, Light Roasted Creamy, Light Roasted Crunchy. Although, this brand does not only make peanut butter. They also make a variety of items from juices to chocolate syrup.

4. Adams - Adams has been around since 1922. There peanut butter is 100% all natural. They make natural, organic, and no stir peanut butter. While their natural peanut butter has four choices, their organic peanut butter has two choices of varieties.

5. Justin's Organic - This brand is awesome. They now make chocolate flavored peanut butter. Those flavors are "Chocolate Peanut Butter", "Chocolate Hazelnut Butter", and "Chocolate Almond Butter". My personal favorite is "Chocolate Hazelnut Butter", and "Chocolate Almond Butter".

6. Maranatha Nut Butters  - This company has been around since 1982 in Ashland, Oregon. The company to use the purest ingredients, and now allows for their peanut butters to be brought online. I favor two of the products by Maranatha Nut Butter. Those products are Dark Chocolate Peanut Spread and Dark Chocolate Almond Spread. Both have a dark chocolate flavor, making them both irresistible.

 

Does anyone else long for the days when rat droppings were the scariest thing about peanut butter? Anyone? Show of hands?

Let's see. The problems with peanut butter now include:

• Really scary chemicals, including neurotoxins (as if we need something else getting on our nerves).
• Deadly salmonella outbreaks.
• The mysterious rise of very serious peanut allergies.
• A peanut butter aisle so big that it makes you want to curl into a ball and rock back and forth -- right there in the store -- from stimulation overload. (Omega-3 peanut butter ... really?)
• Rat feces, still.
• The Frankenut-butter threat. Although there are no genetically modified peanuts on the market right now, according to the National Peanut Board website, money is being poured into genomic research. (Note to peanut growers: Consider inserting the genes of a Labradoodle. As far as I can tell, no one is allergic to them.) But seriously, on the upside genetically modified peanuts could save lives.

OK, peanut allergies aside, some of the contemporary problems with peanut butter can be avoided by buying organic peanut butter. Of course, this begs some questions: Do any of these organic spreads taste good? And do you have to break the bank for a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich?

And while we're at it, is the "Skippy Factor" real? A while back, when I wrote about turkey, I spoke with Cooks Illustrated senior editor Lisa McManus. She described the Skippy Factor this way: Tasters often favor foods that are comfortingly familiar, such as Skippy peanut butter, over something higher quality. (This also explains why Cooks, which I read regularly, is so shockingly successful. For these food science geeks, taste trumps all. They don't really give a rip about health-consciousness or greenness or food trends.)

So, back to the point: Do organic peanut butters taste good? ARe they worth the extra money? And if they are… choose from the six organic creamy peanut butters that were readily available at local grocery stores that move off the shelves.

 

h/t to Lou Bendrick, Jeanne Coffey, Sanoviv, Dr. Mercola

 

One Way To Mitigate The Risks Of Aflatoxin

The best way to avoid any risks from peanuts is to avoid eating them. There is something you can do, though, if you still feel the need to consume peanuts and peanut butter, even with all the risks.  One type of peanut has been fairly resistant to aflatoxin, and that is the Valencia peanut, which is grown mostly in New Mexico.  These type of peanuts, when they are grown in the southwest of the US, mainly New Mexico, grow in dry conditions not conducive to aflatoxin, a mold which likes moisture.

One problem is that not all Valencia peanuts are grown in that area, but most are.  If you use Arrowhead Mills organic peanut butter, you will avoid the pesticides and the aflatoxin, because it is made with organic Valencia peanuts, and that particular brand has never been shown to contain aflatoxin at all.

Although, that is no guarantees it will be that way forever, but it is certainly the safer way to go.

Choices:

• Stop eating peanuts and peanut products
• Eat regular peanut butter because is moves quicker and there is somewhat less chance of getting sick from the molds and fungus (aflatoxin)
• Eat organic peanut butter because you won’t get the pesticides, but you might get more of the mold and fungus
• Through care to the wind and take your chances…

 

So in the end we suggest… skip eating peanuts, peanut butter and organic peanut butter all together… period!!  And definitely don’t feed feed them to your kids or pets!

Organic food not nutritionally better than conventionally produced food… but healthier

Systematic review of literature over 50 years finds no evidence for superior nutritional content of organic produce

There is no evidence that organically produced foods are nutritionally superior to conventionally produced foodstuffs, according to a study published today in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

Consumers appear willing to pay higher prices for organic foods based on their perceived health and nutrition benefits, and the global organic food market was estimated in 2007 to be worth £29 billion (£2 billion in the UK alone). Some previous reviews have concluded that organically produced food has a superior nutrient composition to conventional food, but there has to-date been no systematic review of the available published literature. **See note below)

Researchers from the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine have now completed the most extensive systematic review of the available published literature on nutrient content of organic food ever conducted. The review focused on nutritional content and did not include a review of the content of contaminants or chemical residues in foods from different agricultural production regimens.

Over 50,000 papers were searched, and a total of 162 relevant articles were identified that were published over a fifty-year period up to 29 February 2008 and compared the nutrient content of organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs. To ensure methodological rigor the quality of each article was assessed. To be graded as satisfactory quality, the studies had to provide information on the organic certification scheme from which the foodstuffs were derived, the cultivar of crop or breed of livestock analyzed, the nutrient or other nutritionally relevant substance assessed, the laboratory analytical methods used, and the methods used for statistical analysis. 55 of the identified papers were of satisfactory quality, and analysis was conducted comparing the content in organically and conventionally produced foods of the 13 most commonly reported nutrient categories.

The researchers found organically and conventionally produced foods to be comparable in their nutrient content. For 10 out of the 13 nutrient categories analyzed, there were no significant differences between production methods in nutrient content. Differences that were detected were most likely to be due to differences in fertilizer use (nitrogen, phosphorus), and ripeness at harvest (acidity), and it is unlikely that consuming these nutrients at the levels reported in organic foods would provide any health benefit.

Alan Dangour, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine's Nutrition and Public Health Intervention Research Unit, and one of the report's authors, comments: 'A small number of differences in nutrient content were found to exist between organically and conventionally produced foodstuffs, but these are unlikely to be of any public health relevance. Our review indicates that there is currently no evidence to support the selection of organically over conventionally produced foods on the basis of nutritional superiority. Research in this area would benefit from greater scientific rigor and a better understanding of the various factors that determine the nutrient content of foodstuffs'.

By Gemma Howe

Source: London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Press Office

*There are better reasons to buy organic foods, which are grown without the use of most synthetic chemicals--if you can afford to: Organic farming uses less fossil fuel, produces less pollution, and isn't as likely to endanger farm workers and wildlife. And though organic foods are not necessarily pesticide-free (pesticides are ubiquitous in the environment and can drift onto organic farms), they generally contain fewer pesticide residues than conventional foods--and no antibiotics or growth hormones.

**Organic Farms that use mulch and rotate their crops effectively do improve the nutritional content of their food.

Posted:  True Health is True Wealth