QUESTIONS FOR FOOD FREEDOM

The Socratic method has worked throughout history to help people uncover their own prejudices and faulty assumptions.  Another technique is to ask "why?"  The saying goes that if you ask WHY five times you get to the crux of the matter.

                  Right now, my neighbor can't buy a pound of sausage from me unless the pig leaves my farm, goes up the interstate, out of the county, to a federally inspected processing facility, and then I re-import the meat back to my farm.  Right now, not a single pound of sausage, T-bone steak, or lamb chop can be sold in our county without being exported outside the county to a federally inspected processing plant and re-imported.

                  Furthermore, if I want to make and sell lard to a neighbor, it's illegal.  At most farmers' markets, you can't slice a watermelon to give a taste to a customer--that's food manufacturing and illegal.  I can't make a quiche or chicken pot pie and sell it to a neighbor without a zoning special use permit for a certified kitchen and a plethora of licenses including bathroom and septic field even if the kitchen is 20 feet from my back door.

                  These are absurd hurdles that deter at best and prohibit at worst the access of entrepreneurial prototype food innovators (including both farming and culinary) from accessing neighbors with provenance. I'm not asking for unfettered access to WalMart or the export trade; I'm not an abolitionist asking to outlaw Monsanto and glyphosate; I'm asking for a functional underground railroad for people who want to exit the government-industrial-chemical oligarchical food and farm shackles.

                  Amazingly, most Americans right now don't want this because they're paranoid of unsafe food from unregulated sources.  Here are some Socratic questions for folks to ponder, to break through this logjam.

                  1.  Are farmers valuable in a society? 

                  2.  How can a society show it values farmers?

                  3.  Is affordable, authentic food valuable in a society?

                  4.  What are the biggest reasons why American food is poor?                 

                  5.  Do you trust the government to make our food system better?

                  6.  If not, how would you make it better?

                  I've got a slew more of these types of questions, but I think you get the drift.  The problem is that the local, clean food side has been preaching when we should be asking questions.  I'm learning a lot from Callie Means, RFK Jr.'s right-hand man in the MAHA movement, whose mantra is "curiosity."  Did you know not a single vaccine in America has been subjected to a placebo trial?  Wouldn't you think the pharmaceutical industry would be curious to run this most basic of all scientific studies?  But no, if you ask, you're vilified as an anti-vaxxer, murderer, or worse.                   

                  As a nation, are we too TikToked, celebrity focused, sports addicted, and social media stupored to be curious enough to solve the most basic dysfunctions of our day?