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The Virginia Independent Consumers and Farmers Association is meeting on Wednesday to address various members of the Virginia General Assembly with concerns about the ways that the government and big agriculture are making it difficult for consumers to have Freedom of Choice in their food supply.

Below are some of the things we will be bringing up (copied from an email sent by a VICFA member). We plan to meet at the Capital at 8:30 am on the 25th of January and spend all day.

Talking Points:

1. Freedom of food choice should be legal. Virginia consumers are denied raw milk, homemade pies and cakes, on-farm processed meat and poultry. The freedom to opt out of government-licensed food is certainly as important as the freedom to opt out of government-licensed education or government-licensed medicine.

2. Food safety is subjective and based on faith. Virginia encourages hunters to gut shoot deer on a 70 degree day, drag it a mile through the sticks, rocks and squirrel dung to display it prominently on the hood of a Blazer and parade it around town in the afternoon sun, then bring it home and string it up in a backyard bird-roosting tree to hang for a week before cutting it up to feed their children and friends. But jams, jellies, pies, canned items, beef, pork, poultry, rabbit and dairy products require government-approved processing facilities. Ultimately, the food safety issue comes down to trustworthiness: a local farmer or government agent.

3. Selling food does not make it harmful. So far, Virginia allows complete freedom for food items to be given away. If unregulated food were as inherently unsafe as bureaucrats and industrial foodists allege, then donated food should be prohibited as well. Clearly, these current regulations are contrived to destroy market access rather than protect the public welfare.

4. Freedom from licensure is granted to small components of other heavily regulated economic sectors: elder care (three), child care (three), farm use vehicles (within 40-mile radius), home education (religious exemption). Recognizing inherent accountability in relationship-based commerce and small-scale transactions enjoys both legal precedent and common sense. To deny one tablespoon of milk from a dairy farmer’s mother is simply tyrannical and nonsensical.

5. Government-licensed food has a questionable track record. Irradiation, pasteurization, genetically modified organisms, pesticides, herbicides, chemical fertilizers, gas-ripening, factory farming, MSG, rBGH, feeding chicken manure to cows: these are all government scientifically proven safe. Yeah, right.

6. Decentralized and locally-based food systems are less vulnerable to bioterrorism. Every government report on this topic agrees in the weaknesses of a centralized, long-transport, far-flung food system. Giving neighbors the freedom to interact in food commerce creates the ultimate food security.

7. Community-based food commerce stimulates local economies by keeping dollars circulating nearby, creating rural and agricultural value, and providing superior nutrition for the populace. This is true rural revitalization and farm preservation.

Hope to see you there! These are not just issues for Farmers, they effect us all.

The Gardening Girl