Big tobacco shills now trying to stop GMO labeling initiative in California

From Michelle Simon, on Appetite for Profit:

Modified frame grab from Michelle Simon’s Appetite for Profit website.

“The food industry really hates it when you compare them to Big Tobacco. They try to deny the negative association by claiming that food is different than tobacco. Of course that’s true, but why are the same consultants that have worked for the tobacco industry now shilling for Big Food, opposing the ballot initiative that would require labeling of all foods containing GMO ingredients?

What do raw milk, junk food and tobacco all have in common?

From David E. Gumpert on the Complete Patient blog:

.

“I was at a food safety conference a few years back that focused on raw milk, and one state public health official concluded his remarks by saying, to effect, “I personally don’t see why we spend all this time going after raw milk. If people are going to be stupid enough to drink it, then let them go ahead and kill themselves.”

Then, at a raw milk symposium a couple years after that, I heard a raw milk proponent give the other side of the same mind-set. “You know, things will change over the next few years, because the people who oppose us will die off from all the junk food they eat,” she said, referring to the public health regulators.

“What does it profit a man?” — farmer Michael Schmidt — on our culture of profiting from death and destruction

By Michael Schmidt, special to The Bovine:

Profits paving the way to a bright future in rural Ontario? Photo by Michael Schmidt.

Health Canada, CFIA and the local health departments across Canada are on the loose to chase the wrong goose.

First of all please read the following excerpt based on official data from the US.

Since Government is  relying a lot on the research data from the US, I will assume that I can do the same thing.

Abolish the food industry?

From Raj Patel, in The Atlantic:

If public health is a legitimate reason to curb corporations' advertising to kids, why limit bans to cigarettes, booze, and toys in happy meals, and not include, say, all unhealthy food?

“In the fall of 2008, San Francisco polished its progressive credentials by banning something. From October 1, 2008, the sale of cigarettes was prohibited in certain places. You could still buy them in convenience stores, of course, and bodegas, gas stations, and even the occasional bar. But the city thought that perhaps it was a bad idea to allow them to be sold in pharmacies. As the city attorney, Dennis Herrera, put it: “Consumers — and especially young people — should reasonably expect pharmacies to serve their health needs, not to enable our leading cause of preventable death.”

“Bring raw milk industry udderly out in the open” — the Calgary Herald

Rob Breakenridge, writing in the Calgary Herald:

Dairy farmer Michael Schmidt toasts with a mug of his own raw milk following a media scrum following a court case in Ontario on the legality of raw milk. Photo by: Aaron Lynett, Postmedia News

“How strange, that as Ottawa announced last week new, large and graphic tobacco warning labels, proponents of raw milk were still fighting even to get their product on the market.

Food Deserts — what if, in your neighbourhood, you could only buy junk food and processed food?

Anthropologist Michael Powell looks at food in America, from Farmers Markets to “Food Desertification” (that’s about how in poor urban areas, opportunities to buy healthy food without driving a long distance are severely limited). Excerpted from the “Savage Minds” blog:

Food desertification across the U.S. circa 2000. Via Foodmapper blog

“One of the most rapidly growing retail forms today is the farmer’s market, a transitory gathering of local farmers who set up tables under tents and provide access to locally grown fruits and vegetables. There are many different types of farmer’s markets, some limiting what a vendor can sell to only produce grown on the vendor’s own farm, while others allow more leeway and may include prepared foods. In California, where I live, farmer’s markets were made legal about 25 years ago. The original intent was to provide access to locally grown fruits and vegetables to lower-class neighborhoods.

Michael Schmidt on new challenges to freedom on the legislative front in B.C.

Michael Schmidt, with cowshare member and reporter, following the not-guilty verdict in January 2010

Michael Schmidt: I have been watching with real concerns the recent developments regarding the tactics Government and bureaucrats are using across this continent to enforce compliance amongst farmers and consumers, amongst health practitioners and patients, amongst those who want to live, who want to work and who deserve respect.

Health Canada says raw milk more dangerous than cigarettes and alcohol

Here’s another in Darcy Wintonyk’s series for CTV B.C. on the politics of raw milk, this time titled “Do Consumers Need Protection from Raw Milk?”:

Those Californians must really be "playing Russian roulette with their health", judging by all these raw milk jugs for sale to just anybody who walks by a supermarket shelf. Photo from CTV.

“What’s more dangerous for your health: smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol or drinking unpasteurized milk?

According to Health Canada, it’s drinking milk.

Canada is the only G8 country where the sale of raw milk is illegal. The country outlawed its sale in 1991. However, drinking raw milk is legal.