Vegetables Front and Center

(Page 2 of 5)

April/May 2006
By the Mother Earth News editors 
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May I suggest alternatives for people with acreage? Don’t fence?—?restore habitat and maintain corridors for wildlife.

RELATED CONTENT

Hope Phillips
Austin, Texas

Childhood has Changed

Your review of Richard Louv’s Last Child In The Woods was a breath of fresh air (“Green Gazette,” February/March 2006).

Today’s kids aren’t nearly as active as when I was a child. I grew up on a small farm in a rural area of New York and would often go to friends’ houses, or they would walk or bike over to mine. Pickup games of baseball, kickball and the like were common, but the most common activity was just being kids: seeing who could jump across the stream without getting their feet wet, making a treehouse out of scrap lumber our dads gave us, lying on the back hill in the sunshine watching the clouds go by.

Today’s children are plugged into either computers or televisions for hours at a time. I rarely see the kids of my town out, let alone playing together. Thanks for reminding us again why we need to be connected to our Mother.

Denise A. Gaylord
Philadelphia, Tennessee

Clandestine Use for Cards

In response to comments about insert cards in your magazine, I have a suggestion. First, I have to trust Mother Earth News’ response that this is the best, most economical way to get subscriptions.

Given that, I decided not to recycle the inserts in the traditional way but to place them in the library, the gym, on any bulletin board I can find, etc. You would be surprised at the places you can find to leave them.

I have even, rather clandestinely, placed them inside other magazines in doctors’ offices. I will never know if this actually results in new subscriptions, but it’s better than complaining, and there’s always the possibility that someone out there will take the bait and subscribe!

Virginia Maus
Camp Hill, Pennsylvania

The Call of the Catalogs

I really appreciated your article on great garden catalogs (December/January 2006). However, I would never say that Peaceful Valley Farm Supply’s catalog “overwhelms” me! On the contrary, I read it cover to cover and have learned a great deal by doing so. Not only do they offer a wide range of organic products, they provide the best customer service. Unlike many gardening supply/seed catalogs, this one also has a thorough product index.

Thank you for your many comprehensive gardening articles.

Celia Ann De Frank
Big Bear City, California

Great Wildflower Seeds

Thanks for the great article about seed catalogs. I would add the wildflower catalog from Wildseed Farms in Fredericksburg, Texas. They offer seeds in amounts from packets to pounds, for all areas of the 48 contiguous states. There also is excellent gardening information in the catalog.

Elva Pilling
Great Falls, Montana

Nervous About Imminent Animal ID System

Nothing to do with Food Safety

The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) discussed in “Big Brother in the Barnyard” (“Green Gazette,” February/March 2006) is a serious issue with far-reaching ramifications. If it becomes a mandatory USDA program, all livestock owners will have to register their property and animals with the government. Several states already have implemented mandatory programs. Consumers might think that’s good, because it will keep our food safe, but the NAIS has nothing to do with food safety. It is intended to create a database so animal diseases can be traced through the life of the animal. So what’s wrong with that?—?don’t we need to control diseases like mad cow disease (bovine spongiform encephalopathy, or BSE)?

The truth is, the NAIS would work only after a disease was discovered. It is a backwards tracking program, not a preventive program. Currently, the USDA does postmortem BSE testing on only a very few animals relative to the 35 to 40 million slaughtered in America every year. Since the USDA doesn’t test every cow postmortem, as Japan does, it’s unlikely to find BSE, and no traceback or control can take place. Even worse, we are still eating beef that has never been tested for BSE.

The NAIS won’t work under current USDA standards. Who will pay the price? All of us. The federal government already has allocated about $50 million, final price tag unknown. Anyone who owns even one goat, sheep, cow, horse, etc., will have to buy radio tags or implant chips, so don’t think it will just affect the large factory farms.

Elaine Kist
Hartsel, Colorado

Conflicts with the American Dream

Articles about the National Animal Identification System (NAIS) say the government is planning a mandatory program in which all animal owners eventually will be required to register their land and animals and to insert electronic tracers into all their animals. Eventually, NAIS may require retinal (eye) scans or DNA?samples.

Who will pay for this? It will burden small-scale owners?—?say of a chicken or two or even of a single pigeon?—?leaving large corporations as the only animal owners. This conflicts with the American dream of self-sufficiency. I know I am not alone in the suspicion that government management would mean mismanagement and waste.

My spouse and I have spent the last several years working hard to save for our own land, our own animals, our own lives. I fear this new infringement on my privacy, liberty and enjoyment of life may well destroy all we have worked so hard to build.

I also am concerned about required registration by way of a “secure” database of private information — no database is secure.

Marion Parker
Leavenworth, Kansas

We share your concerns about this new system. The USDA’s take on NAIS is posted at animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais. You can read other perspectives at www.stopanimalid.org, www.noanimalid.com, www.scoop.co.nz (search for “terrorist chickens”) and numerous other Web sites. We encourage readers to convey their concerns to the USDA and to their elected representatives. — Mother

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