The best food is simply grown. It is what the human race grew up on, before chemistry stepped in to provide “better living.” We wouldn’t have the agricultural disasters that are constantly threatening agriculture if we didn’t have monocultures in most segments. We would be better off and more stable if we had stopped at “pretty good” instead of pushing for “best.”

“Increased crop yield” is pretty meaningless when the entire crop is destroyed by a slightly improved microbe. The push for better pesticides is also the race for better pests.

Corporate farms are ruining food for all of us — the stockholders get filthy fucking rich, the CEOs garner bonuses that equal the national budgets of small countries, and we get the filthy, unhealthy, bottom-of-the-food-chain “food” as a result. Yeahhhh, that sounds fair.

I guess that we’re all going to have to go back to farming our own food before it’s over.

We are back in the days of The Jungle, in more ways than one, and The Grapes of Wrath isn’t far off. These people want to return to the policies of Herbert Hoover. The first act of the Democratic President in 2009 may have to be a bank holiday.

But I depend on the FDA to inspect the various Chinese wheat gluten products that I buy in grocery stores, or that local Chinese restaurants use in their vegetarian dishes. Who inspects those products for me, especially the canned imports?

I love cats very nearly as dearly as I love myself and my partner; she is also a sprout-eater. But make no mistake: this whole scandal exposes the vulnerability of humans to toxic foods inadequately inspected (if at all) by the FDA. As I am aware from previous contract computer work I’ve done, agencies such as USDA and FDA are very much at the mercies of the administrations that appoint their top administrators. To no one’s surprise, Bush’s appointees in these agencies aren’t doing their jobs in protecting us.

If I don’t show up to blog some week, please send out the City of Houston health inspectors. I know some of them; they do their jobs. I wish I could say the same about the FDA.

You can’t clear customs when you come into this country on a airliner with food, but you can ship in tons of it in a container with no inspections. What kind of BS is that?

They skip the testing and investigations that are necessary before deeming drugs “safe” for consumption, in order to save the pharmaceutical corporations MILLIONS and drive up the stock values, and thousands of people die or are made seriously ill as a result.

And I’m sure that none of this has anything to do with Poppy Bush being (since, oh, the dawn of TIME) on the board of directors for Eli Lilly Co., huh. Riiiiiight.

Why should they give a fuck about our pets, when they can make a KILLING by cutting quality and importing CRAP from China, where the government beats thousands of dogs to death because ONE dog had rabies? China, where human beings are treated like less than animals because Wal-Mart needs the money. THIS is where they buy the ingredients that we’re supposed to trust, to take care of our furry family members.

Corporate Murka rules the world, and we pay the cost.