Be Less Boring

What if everything you wanted to do was illegal?  I'm not talking about lighting cats on fire, selling heroin to six year olds, or bankrupting the country by leveraging your too-big-to-fail company with bad credit default swaps.  No, I'm talking about simple things like hiring your neighbor's teenager to mow your lawn or buying some sausage from the friendly farmer down the street that you've known for 20 years.   That's not illegal, right?  Well, you might be surprised.

If you've seen the documentary Food, Inc. or read Michael Pollan's excellent books, The Omnivore's Dilemma: A Natural History of Four Meals and In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto, then you've no doubt heard of Virginia resident and self proclaimed "lunatic farmer," Joel Salatin of Polyface Farm.  He wrote his own book (one of many he's written) describing many of the run-ins he's had with state and federal beaurocrats who want to shut him down for selling healthy, grass-fed beef and pastured poultry to people who are willing to drive hundreds of miles to his farm to buy it.

The book is Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal: War Stories From the Local Food Front and I personally think everyone should read it.

If Joel Salatin is a lunatic, then so am I.  I found myself agreeing with at least 95% of his ideas and I wish he lived around here because I want to be one of his customers. 

He has something to say about nearly everything from the USDA, the FSIS (Food Safety Inspection Service), Land Grant Colleges, CAFOs, child labor laws, drug laws, agribusiness and factory farms, liberals, conservatives, zoning restrictions, building codes, taxes, government subsidies to farmers, illegal immigrants desegregation, and avian flu, just to name a few.  He tells about how one government inspector wrote him a letter of commendation for running an outstanding operation, the next tried to shut him down for being "non-compliant."  The only difference between what Joel was doing between those two incidents was the inspector, himself.  After a year or so of legal wrangling and great expense on both sides, Salatin was allowed to keep doing what he's doing, raising pastured poultry and slaughtering and packaging the animals for sale himself.

The book is full of stories like that from his decades as a farmer.  Some of the incidents are so ridiculous they'll have you rolling on the floor laughing.  Others are so infuriating that your blood will no doubt boil at the arrogance, stupidity, and downright foolishness coming from Washington, D.C.  No, really, it's much worse than you think.

Salatin's book is very personal, folksy, but very well written.  He's ever the polite southern gentleman but he doesn't mince words.  There's no love lost between Salatin and the government inspectors he has to avoid, evade, outsmart, or cow to just to stay in business.  He repeatedly points out how the rules are stacked against the small farmer and small business in favor of large multinational corporations. Even in cases where the rules should control big corporations--such as with their flagrant hiring of illegal immigrants--they have so many lawyers and corporate lobbyists that they can keep the government tied up with lawsuits for years, if the inspectors even bother to make a case.

If you enjoyed the aforementioned Michael Pollan books, take the next step and read a book by someone who has been in the trenches of the Local Food movement for nearly 50 years.   Maybe it won't convince you, but it will certainly give you a lot to think about.  It's an eye-opener.