Everything I Want to Do Is Illegal

[xoxoxoBruce]

Tell it bro

As if a highly bureaucratic regulatory system was not already in place, 9/11 fueled renewed acceleration to eliminate freedom from the countryside. Every time a letter arrives in the mail from a federal or state agriculture department my heart jumps like I just got sent to the principal’s office.
And it doesn’t stop with agriculture bureaucrats. It includes all sorts of government agencies, from zoning, to taxing, to food inspectors. These agencies are the ultimate extension of a disconnected, Greco-Roman, Western, egocentric, compartmentalized, reductionist, fragmented, linear thought process.

ON-FARM PROCESSING
I want to dress my beef and pork on the farm where I’ve coddled and raised it. But zoning laws prohibit slaughterhouses on agricultural land. For crying out loud, what makes more holistic sense than to put abattoirs where the animals are? But no, in the wisdom of Western disconnected thinking, abattoirs are massive centralized facilities visited daily by a steady stream of tractor trailers and illegal alien workers.

But what about dressing a couple of animals a year in the backyard? How can that be compared to a ConAgra or Tyson facility? In the eyes of the government, the two are one and the same. Every T-bone steak has to be wrapped in a half-million dollar facility so that it can be sold to your neighbor. The fact that I can do it on my own farm more cleanly, more responsibly, more humanely, more efficiently, and in a more environmentally friendly manner doesn’t matter to the government agents who walk around with big badges on their jackets and wheelbarrow-sized regulations tucked under their arms.

OK, so I take my animals and load them onto a trailer for the first time in their life to send them up the already clogged interstate to the abattoir to await their appointed hour with a shed full of animals of dubious extraction. They are dressed by people wearing long coats with deep pockets with whom I cannot even communicate. The carcasses hang in a cooler alongside others that were not similarly cared for in life. After the animals are processed, I return to the facility hoping to retrieve my meat.

When I return home to sell these delectable packages, the county zoning ordinance says that this is a manufactured product because it exited the farm and was reimported as a value-added product, thereby throwing our farm into the Wal-Mart category, another prohibition in agricultural areas. Just so you understand this, remember that an on-farm abattoir was illegal, so I took the animals to a legal abattoir, but now the selling of said products in an on-farm store is illegal.

Our whole culture suffers from an industrial food system that has made every part disconnected from the rest. Smelly and dirty farms are supposed to be in one place, away from people, who snuggle smugly in their cul-de-sacs and have not a clue about the out-of-sight-out-of-mind atrocities being committed to their dinner before it arrives in microwaveable, four-color-labeled, plastic packaging. Industrial abattoirs need to be located in a not-in-my-backyard place to sequester noxious odors and sights. Finally, the retail store must be located in a commercial district surrounded by lots of pavement, handicapped access, public toilets and whatever else must be required to get food to people.

The notion that animals can be raised, processed, packaged, and sold in a model that offends neither our eyes nor noses cannot even register on the average bureaucrat’s radar screen — or, more importantly, on the radar of the average consumer advocacy organization. Besides, all these single-use megalithic structures are good for the gross domestic product. Anything else is illegal.

ON-FARM SEMINARS & ‘AGRITAINMENT’
In the disconnected mind of modem America, a farm is a production unit for commodities — nothing more and nothing less. Because our land is zoned as agricultural, we cannot charge school kids for a tour of the farm because that puts us in the category of "Theme Park." Anyone paying for infotainment creates "Farmadisney," a strict no-no in agricultural zones.

Farms are not supposed to be places of enjoyment or learning. They are commodity production units dotting the landscape, just as factories are manufacturing units and office complexes are service units. In the government’s mind, integrating farm production with recreation and meaningful education creates a warped sense of agriculture.

The very notion of encouraging people to visit farms is blasphemous to an official credo that views even sparrows, starlings and flies as disease threats to immunocompromised plants and animals. Visitors entering USDA-blessed production unit farms must run through a gauntlet of toxic sanitation dips and don moonsuits in order to keep their germs to themselves. Indeed, people are viewed as hazardous foreign bodies at Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs).
Farmers who actually encourage folks to come to their farms threaten the health and welfare of their fecal concentration camp production unit neighbors, and therefore must be prohibited from bringing these invasive germ-dispensing humans onto their landscape. In the industrial agribusiness paradigm, farms must be protected from people, not to mention free-range poultry.

The notion that animals and plants can be raised in such a way that their enhanced immune system protects them from kindergarteners’ germs, and that the animals actually thrive when marinated in human attention, never enters the minds of government officials dedicated to protecting precarious production units.

COLLABORATIVE MARKETING
I have several neighbors who produce high-quality food or crafts that complement our own meat and poultry. Dried flower arrangements from one artisan, pickles from another, wine from another, and first-class vegetables from another. These are just for starters.

Our community is blessed with all sorts of creative artisans who offer products that we would love to stock in our on-farm retail venue. Doesn’t it make sense to encourage these customers driving out from the city to be able to go to one farm to do their rural browsing/ purchasing rather than drive all over the countryside? Furthermore, many of these artisans have neither the desire nor time to deal with patrons one-on-one. A collaborative venue is the most win-win, reasonable idea imaginable — except to government agents.

As soon as our farm offers a single item — just one — that is not produced here, we have become a Wal-Mart. Period. That means a business license, which isbasically another layer of taxes on our gross sales. The business license requires a commercial entrance, which on our country road is almost impossible to acquire due to sight-distance requirements and width regulations. Of course, zoning prohibits businesses in our agricultural zones. Remember, people are supposed to be kept away from agricultural areas — people bring diseases.

Even if we could comply with all of the above requirements, a retail outlet carries with it a host of additional regulations. We must provide designated handicapped parking, government-approved toilet facilities (our four household bathrooms in the two homes located 50 feet away from the retail building do not count) — and it can’t be a composting toilet. We must offer x-number of parking spaces. Folks, it just goes on and on, ad nauseum, and all for simply trying to help a neighbor sell her potatoes or extra pumpkins at Thanksgiving. I thought this was the home of the free. In most countries of the world, anyone can sell any of this stuff anywhere, and the hungering hordes are glad to get it, but in the great U.S. of A we’re too sophisticated to allow such bioregional commerce.

EMPLOYING LOCAL YOUNGSTERS & INTERNS
Any power tool — including a cordless screwdriver — cannot be operated by people under the age of 18. We have lots of requests from folks wanting to come as interns, but what do we call them? The government has no category for interns or neighbor young people who just want to learn and help out.
We’d love to employ all the neighboring young people. To our child-awning and worshiping culture, the only appropriate child activity is recreation, sitting in a desk, or watching TV. That’s it. That’s the extent of what children are good for. Anything else is abusive and risky.

Then we wonder why these kids grow up unmotivated and bored with life. Our local newspaper is full of articles and letters to the editor lamenting the lack of things for young people to do. Let me suggest a few things: digging postholes and building a fence, weeding the garden, planting some tomatoes, splitting some wood, feeding the chickens, washing eggs, pruning grapevines, milking the cow, building a compost pile, growing some earthworms.
These are all things that would be wonderfully meaningful work experience for the youth of our community, but you can’t simply employ people anymore. A host of government regulatory paperwork surrounds every "could you come over and help us . . . ?" By the time an employer complies with every Occupational Safety & Health Administration requirement, posts every government bulletin requirement, with-holds taxes, and shoulders Unemployment Compensation burdens and medical and child safety regulations — he or she can’t hire anybody legally or profitably.
The government has no pigeonhole for this: "I’m a 17-year-old home-schooler, and I want to learn how to farm. Could I come and have you mentor me for a year?"

What is this relationship? A student? An employee? If I pay a stipend, the government says he’s an employee. If I don’t pay, the Fair Labor Standards board says it’s slavery, which is illegal. Doesn’t matter that the young person is here of his own volition and is happy to live in a tee-pee. Housing must be permitted and up to code. Enough already. What happened to the home of the free?

[Flint]

Don't worry. According to Undertoad, everything will just sort of work itself out.

[Griff]

Salatin occasionally writes for Mother Earth News. His farm is spectacular. He is an innovator. We hate innovation.

[xoxoxoBruce]

Salatin's Polyface farm

[Griff]

The sound of our government failing will be muffled by red tape. I think it was Salatin who spoke out pretty early against handing the word "organic" over to the Feds. A bunch of left-leaning farmers who believed in government went to the Feds for protection from competition. The idea was to apply the word organic in such a way as to prevent the big guys from using the label. The Feds engaged the red tape machine, ratcheting up the rule making and fees and suddenly the big guys were in the driver's seat.

I told my cousin about my bureacratic nightmare in education then he told his tale of woe getting permission to clean out a "stream." It seems design and enforcement are two different groups who don't interact. It took all summer to get through the tape and a weekend to do the work.

[DanaC]

It seems design and enforcement are two different groups who don't interact

I think that's a sad fact about a lot of government schemes/approaches.

[Griff]

A Tale of Two Salads asks whether we are really rich when our food tastes as it does? This is the kind of thing innovators are addressing but if we legislate them out of existence... To me it is interesting that we talk about choice being a value in our society but real choice is swept away.

[DanaC]

To me it is interesting that we talk about choice being a value in our society but real choice is swept away.

A similar situation is in play in the UK. Our politicians seem obsessed with offering 'choice' regardless of whether that's actually wanted, then each successive governent brings in measures which give an illusion of increasing choice whilst actually reducing it. We've seen it in education, health, transport etc. The idea is always to free these up to allow competition and choice to drive the market towards improvements. But, it's always done so cackhandedly that no actual choice or improvement ensues. In the case of health and education they sold us the choice concept, but didn't put in place enough of an infrastruture to deliver it. In the case of transport, we just end up with one major consortium or company running most of the transport in any one area and the independants clear up the scraps and fill in the blanks on the timetable. On telecoms, they basically allowed a monopoly to develop and the monitoring body have managed over a period of years to force them to loosen their grip on the market slightly (not before it had held us back in developing our internet usage, by several years).

If I go to a doctor and he needs t send me for a test, I really don't want a brochure...I want him to tell me which hospital/clinic will deal with my problem best and send me there. If I have a child starting school, a degree of choice is a good idea, but it's no choice at all if it's between a successful school and a failing school, especially since the schools which are more popular aren't able to take all applicants.

When I go to buy a train ticket, I ask for a ticket for the town to which I want to travel. He then hands me a ticket that takes me there. If I need to leave at 10am I leave at 10am, if i need to leave at 12:30 I need to leave at 12:30. I am really not taking on board the fact that the early train is a Virgin train and the later is Arriva. Nor, do I care that the tracks and stations and trains are all owned by different companies. Nobody says "which train companies are running trains to location x?" when they go to the ticket booth, they say "ticket to location x please" and the companies just work out the timetable between themselvles.

All these areas have been 'freed up' to pursue markets and choice, and a handful of people have become very rich in the process (stuff like rail travel and amenities were sold off practically to the lowest bidder, then heavily subsidised in the early years, costing the tax-payer money in the short term and removing their assets in the long term) meanwhile the customer/consumer is left with a reduced service at higher costs. Dismantling a primarily state-owned infrastructure (note just infrastructure, we're not anti-business inthe UK, we aren't called a nation of shopkeepers for nowt :P)

Basically I think I am saying that we (Brits) do American style capitalism as badly as people say you'd do European socialism.

[edited to note] Sorry...I went off on a bit of a drift there...:P

[Griff]

Drift is good.

We do see this thing differently. I'll have to consider this more deeply to see if there is a way to allow folks of opposing ideologies the choice they both crave.

[Hime]

Wow, that was a depressing read. The main reason why I don't eat meat is that the practices of the meat industry are so fucked-up. I hope that Salatin has some luck getting his message out -- it's not one that many people want to listen to.

[xoxoxoBruce]

BUILD A HOUSE THE WAY I WANT
You would think that if I cut the trees, mill the logs into lumber, and build the house on my own farm, I could make it however I wanted to. Think again. It’s illegal to build a house less than 900 square feet. Period. Doesn’t matter if I’m a hermit or the father of 20. The government agents have decreed, in their egocentric wisdom, that no human can live in anything less than 900 square feet.

Our son got married last year and wanted to build a small cottage on the farm, which he now oversees for the most part. Our new saying is, "He runs the farm, and I just run around." The plan was to do what Mom and Dad did for Teresa and I — trade houses when children come. That way our empty nest downsizes, and the young people can upsize in the main family farmhouse. Sounds reasonable and environmentally sensitive to me. But no, his little honeymoon cottage — or our retirement shack — had to be a 900-square-foot Taj Mahal. A state-of-the-art accredited composting toilet to avoid the need for a septic system and sewer leach field was denied.

When the hillside leach field would not meet agronomic standards and we had to install it in the floodplain, I asked the health department bureaucrat why. He said that essentially the only approvable leach fields now are alongside creeks and streams, because they are the only sites that offer dark-enough colored soils. Sounds like real environmental steward-ship, doesn’t it?

Look, if I want to build a yurt of rabbit skins and go to the bathroom in a compost pile, why is it any of the government’s business? Bureaucrats bend over back-wards to accredit, tax credit, and offer money to people wanting to build pig city-factories or bigger airports. But let a guy go to his woods, cut down some trees, and build himself a home, and a plethora of regulatory tyrants descend on the project to complicate, obfuscate, irritate, frustrate, and virtually terminate. I think it’s time to eradicate some of these laws and the piranhas who administer them.

[Happy Monkey]

It would serve him right if he got that law repealed, and someone surrounded his property with trailer parks.

[DanaC]

lol

[Griff]

Originally Posted by Happy Monkey

It would serve him right if he got that law repealed, and someone surrounded his property with trailer parks.

I missed the part where he said he wanted to control everyone else. At least we've laid that whole left-wing tolerance thing to rest.

[DanaC]

He doesn't need to want to control everyone else. The point is if planning regulations are set aside then that would apply to everyone and not just him in his yurt. He could well end up losing out to that if someone else successfully built a bunch of stuff that the planning regulations may have prevented. (Unless I have totally misunderstood the situation....)