Page 22 - Winter2010

We’ve all heard of Louis Pasteur and his to go right into their blood stream and poison their livers and kidneys. Of
germ theory. Well, we should all know about course, we would eliminate exercise, make sure they’re all couch potatoes.
Michel Bernard, his French nemesis, who looked We’d put them on slabs of concrete and we’d feed them artificially fertil-
at Louis Pasteur and said: au contraire. Sure, ized junk food. What have I just described? Modern American farming,
there are germs out there, but when it comes to science-based farming.
disease, what we should be looking at is the ter- The assumption is that factories are much cleaner than farms; that’s
rain. One of the greatest recants in history was why I’m called a bio-terrorist in our community—because our pastured
Pasteur who, on his death bed, rose up on his chickens are going to commingle with red-winged black birds who will
elbow in a moment of awareness and was able take our diseases to the science-based environmentally controlled Tyson
to audibly say, “Bernard was right, it is all about chicken houses and destroy the planet. We laugh, but trust me, my neigh-
the terrain,” and then he fell back and died. bors really believe that.
But we still in this culture worship the germ Last fall, I needed some sawdust so I called the sawmill where we’ve
theory. I know we do because if we didn’t we’d always gotten it before. The guy told me they didn’t have a truck anymore;
be far more concerned with getting the corn they had subleased it to a guy up the road. So I called the guy, who said he’d
syrup vending machines out of our schools than be there about nine o’clock, no problem, with the truck loaded. Then he
giving our children a heavy metalized H1N1 flu called back. He said, “You know, your name sounded familiar to me.” This
vaccine. So entrenched is the germ theory in guy lives just a few miles from us. “I found out you’re that guy. I wouldn’t
our culture that we go all out for eradication of bring you sawdust for anything, not for a million dollars. I wouldn’t bring it
diseases instead of assuming it is management’s because you abuse your cows, you don’t vaccinate and medicate them, you
fault. abuse your chickens because you don’t give them hormones so they grow
The fundamental veterinary perspective faster, you expose your pigs to the outdoors where they can get viruses.”
today is that disease is caused by either germs or The phone was melting in my hands. I didn’t ask him to come to a picnic
genetics. There’s nothing about the terrain in this with me or anything, I just wanted some sawdust. These people can feel
science-based perspective. Let me ask you this: extremely good about their moral high road in protecting the world from
if we wanted to create a pathogen-friendly kind folks like me because, after all, they don’t want the world to starve.
of farm, what would we do? Well, first thing we So there’s a real societal prejudice against dirt. You know what, no
would do is go to just one species, eliminate all other society has ever had the luxury of putting so little effort into acquir-
diversity, and then we would take those animals ing, preserving, distributing and preparing food. This has led to completely
and crowd them together and eliminate fresh aberrant thinking, namely, that a farm is a negative place to be.
air and sunshine—make them breathe fecal
particulate so they get nice lesions in their mu- NUMBER SIX: GOVERNMENT AGENTS ARE
cous membranes, allowing the fecal particulate MORE TRUSTWORTHY THAN ANY BUSINESS PERSON

FOURTH ANNUAL POST-CONFERENCE FARM TOUR

Sixty-five enthusiastic particpants joined Kathy Kramer, Will Winter and Jerry Brunetti on a farm tour to the Lancaster
region of Pennsylvania. Will’s and Jerry’s narrative helped everyone appreciate what they saw on the farms. First stop was a
tour of Amos Miller’s farm by a horse-drawn wagon and on foot. Brunetti explained that Miller’s farm shows us that a “small
to medium size diversified livestock and product farm can be a source of a cornucopia of value-added food products.”
Next the group visited
Miller’s Natural Foods Store
for a WAPF-friendly lunch,
Levi Miller, son of the owners,
explained how several years
earlier he and his wife suffered
some health problems. In spite
of having a supposedly healthy
diet already, the problems were
resolved once they introduced
the fats recommended by
WAPF

22 Wise Traditions WINTER 2010

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