100 Years of Corporate Greed Still Threatened by Healthier Food Alternatives

In her article, "Raw Milk Rights," published in the Daily Texan, Kate Clabby does a good job informing her readers about the issues surrounding current and proposed laws governing the sale of raw milk in Texas. While current law forbids the sale of raw milk except under very limited circumstances, HB 75 and SB 237, currently under consideration by the Texas Legislature, would loosen the almost 100- year-old ban on selling raw milk and allow it at farmers markets, pick-up sites, and residential deliveries. Clabby supports the proposed legislation, but ignores the history of the original ban on raw milk sales, a history far more sinister than one would infer from the article. The bottom line is that the profit-driven industrialization of the food supply has undermined the very health of the population.

In the early 1900’s, industrialization was at its peak, and corporations were looking for ways to drive efficiency into every possible market. Food and food distribution had been, up to this point, provided primarily by small, local, family-run farms. But with the ever-increasing efficiency of large-scale production, corporations saw the means to take over these food markets and make huge profits.

By altering the cows’ diet to cheap, mass-produced grains, it was now possible to produce more milk for a fraction of the cost of the traditional method. In addition, cows were permanently confined to small stalls with poor sanitation. As a result, the new commercial dairies soon contained mostly sick or diseased livestock that produced contaminated milk.

The milk produced by cows on the grain diet was of poor quality. Cows unable to eat their natural diet of nutrient dense green grasses cannot produce healthy bacteria in their systems. Without the good bacteria to fight off the bad, commercial raw milk spoiled easily. It even infected and lead to the death of several people, and the commercial dairies products quick lost consumer confidence.

To combat the disease and contamination, the commercial dairies didn’t change how they raised and fed the cows. Instead, they adopted a process breweries were using to keep their beer from souring. Pasteurization solved the spoiling and disease challenges faced by commercial dairies, but it also destroyed the very qualities that make milk both healthy and digestible to humans.

Milk is a complex, living food that has been refined by over a million years of evolution. Milk's quality is directly related to the health of the animal producing it. Raw, unpasteurized milk contains active enzymes that assist in its digestion. Without these enzymes, many people develop allergies or other health problems related to the consumption of milk. Additionally, raw milk contains vitamins and minerals in precise proportions to facilitate their usage and absorption in the body. Processing milk has all but destroyed the original nutrient content of milk. In its raw form, milk also contains antibodies and living organisms commonly referred to as friendly bacteria. They protect the milk from the invasion of harmful bacteria and spoilage as well as aid in its digestion. Friendly bacteria are now thought to be essential to a healthy immune system. Industrialization of this near perfect food was a mistake. Milk was not a car or a textile. It wasn't that simple. Raw milk is complicated, and raw milk is alive.

The pasteurization process gave commercial dairies the edge they needed with the ability to prevent their inferior raw milk from spoiling by sterilizing the milk in sealed containers. Pasteurization prolonged the milk's shelf-life, getting rid of all bacteria good and bad. The milk no longer soured or spoiled. The dairies then used pasteurization as an advantage over small farmers who lacked the expensive pasteurization equipment saying unpasteurized milk was unsafe. With the public scare over bacteria in raw milk, big business lobbyists were able to influence state legislatures across the country to pass laws outlawing of the sale of raw milk for the safety of the public.

Small farms that wished to continue to provide milk were forced buy expensive machinery and conform to the new industry standards, but the consequence was turning their superior raw milk into the same dead product the large commercial dairies were producing with a massive increase in operational costs. That put nearly every small dairy farmer out of business.

The real tragedy of the victory of big business in the dairy market is not small dairies going out of business or the corrupt business practices that were employed or even the inhumane treatment the cows were subjected to. The tragedy is that when the small farm dairies' raw milk was no longer freely available to public, outlawed by the states, the whole nation lost its healthiest food, a staple of the human diet for thousands of years, replaced with product that creates illness rather than cures it. It is even reported that Pasteur sadly lamented, "What are they doing to my wonderful food?" when informed that pasteurization was being used for milk.

Without knowing the history of the industrialization of the dairy industry it is impossible to fully understand the laws that affect the industry today and the true motivation of the parties fighting for and against it. When it comes to food and health, misinformation is rampant. It is critically important that the public regain access to the healthy foods required for long and productive lives by freeing the restrictions on small farms. Without access to healthy and affordable food, a people cannot prosper. In Texas, local small farms are in a position to provide the healthiest and freshest foods possible.

It is time to recognize the harmful agenda and corruption of corporate interests, how they are set to make gains no matter what the cost, and strike down the corporate misinformation campaigns that cleverly disguise the real issues. It’s time to take back the rights of the small farmer, again freeing him/her to support the health of the nation. Supporting HB 75 and SB 237is an important first step toward restoring the fundamental well-being of human beings.

Texas Responds to Economic Demand for More Education in the Job Market with Cuts in Spending to Critical Institutions

When the glaring fact that more, not less, education is critical for the turn around in the local and national economy, making cuts to the education budget  is showing how Texas government is leading the way bull headed and backwards toward the precipice of economic disaster. Not only is more education continually being required to get a job in a global market where constant growth and integration of technology is replacing unskilled labor, but with trend of exponential increase in Texas population, more schools and faculty are needed every year just to keep up with the growing numbers of students. The cry of there being "too much wasteful spending" is the out of touch with the reality that the society that upholds and supports those that would make such proclamations takes money and effort to maintain. Without adequate taxation to support a workable budget, the greater civil causes like equal opportunity in education will not have the support to be instituted to the public.

Education is the leading indicator of the qualify of life of an individual and as a society. The cuts being made in education are not what is going benefit Texas as a whole. Texans stand to suffer in the longterm by producing a majority of the workforce unfit to fill the jobs that will be needed in technology sectors as well as passively enforcing the growing disparity between the rich and the poor. You can only squeeze so much juice from a lemon before the results you get become less than worth the effort. As so, you can only make so many cuts in the education budget before what you have left over is just one mangled and unworkable mess. And according to statistics, the state of education in Texas was already mangled before the proposed budget cuts.

As Texas is part of the United States of America its inhabitants pay taxes into the federal government, and when that money comes back, as it is suppose to, in the form of grants and aid which are meant to improve and maintain the civil institutions like education for those tax payers, Texas Governor Rick Perry turns that money down. In his own words:

“I will not commit Texas taxpayers to unfunded federal obligations or to the adoption of unproven, cost-prohibitive national curriculum standards and tests,” Perry wrote. “Texas is on the right path toward improved education, and we would be foolish and irresponsible to place our children’s future in the hands of unelected bureaucrats and special interest groups thousands of miles away in Washington, virtually eliminating parents’ participation in their children’s education."

Governor Perry might want to consider that Texas taxpayers already committed to working with the federal government the moment they started paying their income taxes. It is unjustifiable that Rick Perry is essentially throwing away 700 million dollars of money already payed out by Texas workers and business owners while slashing an already crippled state budget. One might even speculate on the notion that they are being ripped off by this policy. Even so, this sort of unbalanced policy implementation of paying in and not being able to cash out is unsustainable. Eventually, something is going to have to give.

• Texas is #49 in verbal SAT scores in the nation (493) and #46 in average math SAT scores (502).
• Texas is #36 in the nation in high school graduation rates (68%).
• Texas is #33 in the nation in teacher salaries. Teacher salaries in Texas are not keeping pace with the national average. The gains realized from the last state-funded across-the-board pay raise authorized in 1999, which moved the ranking from 33 to as high as 26th in the nation, have disappeared over the last five years.
• Texas was the only state in the nation to cut average per pupil expenditures in fiscal year 2005, resulting in a ranking of #40 nationally; down from #25 in fiscal year 1999.
• Texas is #6 in the nation in student growth. The general student population in Texas public schools grew by 11.1% between school years 1999 and 2005, with the largest percent of growth seen among low income and minority children.
• Between school years 1999 and 2005, the number of central administrators employed by Texas public schools grew by 32.5%, overall staffing in public schools grew by 15.6%, while the number of teachers grew only 13.3%.

• From fiscal years 2002 to 2006, average tuition and fees at public universities increased 61.4%. Average tuition and fees at community colleges increased 51.3%.
• From fiscal years 2002 to 2007, the Texas state budget was cut in terms of real dollar, per-student funding for universities by 19.92%; for community colleges the per-student cut was 35.29%.
• California has nine nationally recognized research institutions; New York has seven; Pennsylvania has four; while Texas, the second most populous state in the nation, has only three.
• Out of Texas’ 145 public and private higher education institutions, only one private institution, Rice University, ranked among the nation’s top 50.
• The number of students attending Texas colleges and universities increased by 23.6% from Fall 1999 to Fall 2005 with the highest growth in community and technical colleges. 
  

The fact that our comparative state rankings are so low proves that Texas could use federal help in education. If the governor is concerned about parents giving up control of their education he should put that notion to the test of the Texas voters and let them decide whether 700 million dollars of federal grant money--we already paid for out of our income taxes--gets thrown away based on some deluded prideful notion that we should be able to have it our way or no way. Considering how poor Texas's record on education, maybe Perry should give the Harvard guy (Obama) a chance.