Two years ago, I was taking multiple steroid inhalers every day for asthma, which began in the aftermath of a couple of bouts of pneumonia, and was always accompanied by typical seasonable allergy issues—coughing, sneezing, runny nose.
In the summer of 2010, in addition to the usual asthma and allergy symptoms, I also came down with a severe intestinal infection, requiring antibiotics to overcome.
When, in the wake of the course of antibiotics, my digestion was still troubled, I decided to experiment and see if removing gluten from my diet made any difference.
Lo and behold! After just a month without gluten, my intestinal issues made huge progress. And even more impressively–and completely unexpectedly–my asthma and allergies also disappeared.
When, after a while, I also decided to give up meat, except for the occasional small portion of chicken, the results were nothing short of miraculous.
Longstanding feelings of intestinal bloating disappeared overnight. Bleeding hemorrhoids totally cleared up. And the asthma and allergies, which had sometimes been so severe that I ended up in the ER begging for more drugs, were gone for good.
This remarkable shift in my own personal health, as a result of giving up meat and gluten, really makes me wonder.
Why is it that the gluten-free market is one of the fastest growing packaged food sectors right now?
Why are so many of us getting sick from our food supply?
Could it have something to do with the fact that most of our nation’s food supply is produced by industrial agriculture, relying on GMO seeds, as well as herbicides, fungicides, and pesticides in the growing process, not to mention all kinds of preservatives once the corn and wheat is on its way to the table?
I am heartened by the news that hundreds of thousands of farmers and consumers are pressuring the USDA to reject Dow AgroScience’s 2,4,D-resistant corn.
It is high time that all of us stood up to Big Ag and said enough is enough! Why should we have to spend top dollar to buy organic, when the truth is that all food should be produced in an organic and sustainable manner?
Big Ag will reply that it would be too expensive to produce tons of corn, wheat and soybeans–not to mention beef and pork– organically.
But you know what? Being sick is very expensive. Health care is a huge drain on our national economy, as anyone who has been paying attention knows.
Could it be that the industrial agriculture/pharmaceutical/insurance conglomerates actually want a sick populace?
Imagine the outrage if that story were to break.
Imagine if it were proven that the incredible spike in autistic children is due to pesticide poisoning.
Imagine if we could prove that the asthma epidemic in this country is due to auto-immune problems generated by toxic food.
Imagine if we could nail the chemical companies for the explosive growth in cancers, diabetes and heart disease!
I don’t think this is far-fetched at all.
In fact, it’s low-hanging fruit for a cadre of well-trained lawyers with the guts to go up against the big bad guys.
In our parents’ generation, it happened with Big Tobacco.
The evidence is staring us in the face.
What are we waiting for?
Transition Times 
Martin Lack
/ April 29, 2012Reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring (as I did last year) was a real revelation to me. I had seen the famous scene in North by North West where the bad guys try and run Cary Grant down using a crop-spraying aeroplane… but I had never asked myself why we don’t see farmers using such indiscriminate methods of optimising their yield per acre anymore…
The answer of course is truly terrifying, as is the fact that the big businesses behind the lies have – like the Borg – adapted. They have become much more clever at selling the benefits of their technology and, when things go wrong – in Bhopal for instance – they just walk away and deny responsibility… We should not really be surprised at this. These people did not go into business to kill millions of people (and neither did mining companies). Killing people was not part of their business plan. Therefore, when it turns out that their products (or processes) damages the environment and/or kills people, they have to avoid responsibility (because bankruptcy beckons if they do anything else).
However, in the future, they will be without excuse. We have known for some time now (in some cases decades) that nearly all our brilliant ideas damage the environment and/or kill people. Good environmental management and site restoration must be planned for.
In the meantime, we may all have to accept that, where companies can still use the “we didn’t plan for this” excuse… all taxpayers will have to share the burden of clean-up. If that is the case, if governments will have fund the work, then we are all shareholders in the solution; and we all have a stake in it being done properly. We also have a right to demand that all businesses stop doing things for which they have no intention of accepting ultimate responsibility. Unfortunately, I suspect that this is exactly what Monsanto et al have being doing for a long time; and the sooner they are called to account for it the better it will be for all life on Earth.
Jennifer Browdy de Hernandez
/ April 29, 2012Amen to that!