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then it’s not fair that anyone should have this This is the real kicker. Here’s the question
food.” Ever hear that? I think it’s pretty amazing folks: who owns me? If I can’t make choices
to call me an elitist for wanting to eat the food that can hurt me, then I can’t make choices that
that my grandmother ate. can help me. A life without risk is no life at
“But food should be cheap; if food isn’t all. We can live a risk-free life in a bubble and
cheap, then it’s not fair,” they say. Let me ask you a straight jacket. The idea that we can protect
something. Does anyone out there in the greater everyone with zero tolerance is ludicrous. Food
culture spend their money on things that are not safety, in fact, is subjective. It’s determined by
necessary? I mean, think about the biggest food people prejudiced against heritage-based food.
companies in the world, none of them is neces- You can feed your kids Twinkies, Coco Puffs
sary: Taco Bell, McDonalds, Coca-Cola, tobacco, and Mountain Dew but that raw milk, those
hundred dollar designer jeans with holes already compost-grown tomatoes and Aunt Matilda’s
in the knees. We spend a lot of money on things pickles might kill you. You can go hunting on
that are not necessary. a seventy-degree day and gut shoot a deer, drag
How do we get the price of this food down? it a mile through the squirrel dung, put it on the
The primary reason for the high price of our food front of your Blazer and parade it around town
is non-scalable regulations. If we could let people in the heat of the afternoon sun, string it up in
grow food and make food to sell without interfer- the tree in the backyard when you get home, let
rence, this healthy food wouldn’t be expensive. it hang for a week under a tree where the birds
Of course, the best way to save money is roost, and then skin it out, cut it up and feed it to
to buy raw and process it yourself. Potatoes for your children. And that’s patriotic, that’s being
ninety cents a pound instead of potato chips for a great American. . . but I can’t sell any home
ten dollars a pound. We’re a culture that has butchered pork to my neighbor.
gadgetized and remodeled our kitchens so that Who owns me? What good is the freedom
we’re capable preparing food efficiently and ex- to own guns, worship, assemble and speak if we
pertly, yet we’ve never been so lost as to where don’t have the freedom to choose how to feed our
the kitchen is. Today we’ve got bread makers, internal community of friendly bacteria—that’s
ice cream makers, slow cookers, time-bakers, a big community—to give us the energy to shoot,
all of this wonderful stuff that lets us prepare pray, assemble and preach.
food in-house. We don’t have to buy DiGornio’s With apologies to Martin Niemoller whose
frozen pizza. Remember that one pound of Poly- inscription adorns the US Holocaust Museum,
face grass-finished ground beef costs less than let me give a WAPF rendition of that famous
a McDonald’s Happy Meal. And I’ll back our quotation. “First, they came for the moonshin-
nutrition up to that any time of day. ers, and I did not speak out because I was not a
Second, healthy food is worth more, it’s moonshiner. Then they came for the drug dealers,
more nutritious and better tasting. and I did not speak out because I was not a drug
Third, grass-based farmers charge a fair dealer. Then they came for alternative health
price, they’re not externalizing any of the cost. therapists, and I did not speak out because I was
Actually, local pasture-based food is the cheapest not an alternative health therapist. Then they
food on the planet because it’s not sending any- came for me, an imbiber of raw milk, and there
one to the hospital with diarrhea—five hundred was no one left to speak for me.” Fortunately,
thousand cases of diarrhea caused by food-borne there are more and more of us willing to speak
“But food pathogens. What’s one case of diarrhea worth? out. These industrial ag folks had better get ready
I don’t know, but I’ll bet if you paid for it, out of for a tsunami because we’re coming.
should be your own pocket, it would have made chicken
cheap; if food worth more than a dollar twenty a pound. NUMBER TWELVE: FARMERS ARE DOLTS
Our cultural perception is that farmers are
isn’t cheap, dolts. And that’s why I promote the idea of the
then it’s not NUMBER ELEVEN: AMERICANS HAVE Jeffersonian intellectual agrarian.
NO FUNDAMENTAL RIGHT TO
fair,” they say. FREEDOM OF FOOD CHOICE Just three weeks ago, I was coming back into

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