onoway

Wow The earth is NOT the enemy!! When we believe it to be such we are barely half a step away from the people who used to beat it with sticks in the spring to make it behave and give a good yield to the crops. The problem is that we have been conditioned into the weird belief that we are somehow superior to and apart from the earth and can force it to do what we want. That will only work for a very short time, relatively speaking. Thus, you can drench the soil in chemicals and force it to produce a crop BUT..by doing so you slaughter the life in the soil which makes it healthy. How can you grow healthy crops in unhealthy soil? So you get stray insects and plants and viruses which come in to try to rebalance things and then those are slaughtered with poisonous pesticides and herbicides (some traces of which probably are residual in food crops..this is something which has also been mentioned as possibly culpable for the dramatic rise in autism. There is also some fairly compelling evidence that these things are involved in the bee colony collapse disorder.) The problem is that these things have time on their side; thus as an example we now have a growing problem with corn borers which were supposed to be foiled by the GMO corn. Instead of foiling them, we seem now to be developing superbugs in the fields, much as we have developed superbugs of a different sort in the hospitals. For which we have pretty much limited or no defense when they show up. Such a method of farming is not sustainable over the long haul; already this is becoming more and more obvious; and it will become even more so as the price of fertilizers and the various "cides" rises as the price of oil rises. In the meantime; a 30 year study has shown that farming organically not only yields better but is more profitable than conventional farming.(after a 3 year adjustment period for the land to try to heal itself.) Joel Salatin has determined that his operations yield up to 4 times as much food than the neighboring farms produce on a per acre basis and he brings in NO chemicals of any kind. Geoff Lawton has brought fertility back to saline barren land near the Dead Sea. again without chemicals. Greg Judy has taken "worn out" and waterless farms and brought creeks back to flow and fields back to fertility again without chemicals or even bought seed. Sepp Holtzer has brought dry LAKES back into sustainability in Spain. A man in India whose name I forget took a pile of rock and sand, with two dry wells and turned it over time into such a jungle of trees and vegetation that he could have sold it for a big resort to have been built there; the wells came back into flow as well. Dry wells have also been brought back into flow in Africa. Will Allen claims to be able to raise a million pounds of food on 3 acres of land and there is basis for the claim. All of these successes rested on having a sympathy to and a willingness to work within natural systems. The point is that all these people pay attention to what they observe and they do NOT have the attitude that the earth=enemy but rather that the earth can provide everything we need. However, only if we use what is there wisely and as it is supposed to be used; otherwise we will face disaster. Who knows what we are losing when we lose species daily to extinction? Many if not most of our medicines are derived originally from plants and natural life, albeit now tweaked and artificially produced so as to provide a healthy profit to drug companies. The Fertile Crescent could again become fertile instead of dry and arid. We've proven we know how to do it now, (or at least some of us do and they are spreading the information as far and fast as possible) and it isn't dependant on exotic chemicals or GMO seeds, it's dependant on a cooperative and open minded attitude. Saying mother nature kills off people is just silly; of course people die, we are part of the cycle of things and that is the part of the heritage of existing; even mountains eventually will cease to be mountains. For that matter, even the sun will at some point cease to exist, if I understand it correctly. Our life span is somewhere between that of a fruit fly and a mountain so what's the point of fussing about it? Just be grateful you weren't born a fruit fly! Not to say that we shouldn't try to make things comfortable/better for ourselves but when things get too unbalanced nature tries to put things back into balance and then you get things which make us uncomfortable (or even dead) like droughts & pandemics. In the larger scheme of things mother earth doesn't really seem to consider us as having much more importance than anything else in this big old world. Since we tend to think of ourselves as being the favorite or maybe even the only child, that's upsetting to many of us and we get resentful and angry and try to show that we won't be messed with, dammit. That ranges from someone soaking the lawn in weed-n-feed so as to kill the dandeliions (which probably are more nutritious than 2/3 of the carefully tended veggies in the back garden) to people trenching out rivers to make them easier for boats to navigate (and then blaming mother nature for the resultant flooding)to elaborate schemes for changing the weather. Many of our problems , imo, come from the idea that we are somehow not really part of the whole scenario; we are somehow superior to it all and therefore in charge, and we really aren't. We are in charge just enough to be able to really screw things up. As a species. we need to grow up or we will be as the child with the matches; heading for disaster. we have way more power and knowlege than we have the understanding/maturity to use wisely. If we could get to the point of everyone having enough food and sufficient shelter then many problems would disappear, but that isn't the sort of society that's been promoted for decades now. Years ago it was shown that there wasn't any need for anyone to starve; the food is there but the distribution is wonky. For a time farmers in the States were making more money from land they were paid NOT to put into crop than from the crops they actually grew. If there isn't a profit to be made then to hell with the people who are starving. Until this sort of value system changes we are in a sinking ship.

What seems to have happened in Ontario is an example of a little knowlege being a dangerous thing. Politicians are like anyone else in that they get caught up in hype but they can do a lot of damage when they do. McGuinty will likely not only be tossed out on his ear next chance voters get but a lot of the program scrapped. This is nothing new for politicians, but sorta tough for people in Ontario and has likely sent a lot of otherwise worthwhile projects into the role of villain through no fault of their own. Bad planning all the way down the line. Sorta like the gun registry. Too bad politicians don't seem to have any sense of responsibility when dealing with taxpayer money. It's not as though Ontario energy is dependent on oil or gas, most of the energy comes from nuclear. Seems as though sometimes these guys get in and figure they had better railroad their agendas through fast before they get turfed out and don't realize that a little less arbitrary haste might yield a whole lot better outcome for everyone.

I haven't been following this issue for some time. Have the reported statistics of such things as cancers, birth defects and other problems stopped being more of an issue in more or less direct relationship with the proximity of homes to the power plants? And have people figured out what to do with nuclear waste? Every time I hear about the places that are "safe" to dispose of it I think of things like the Titanic and the BP Oil spill and people moving to the Faukland Islands as the place least likely to be involved in a war and other such ... "oops".

If anyone sends you an email titled incredible DONT OPEN IT! Its a VIRUS. I was dumb enough to do so..it supposedly was from my brother who never ever uses the computer so I wasn't on guard. Dumb, I know. Anyway, it highjacked all my email addresses. First time I've been caught..I thought that the reason people got programs like AVG was to protect us against such spasms of sheer stupidity. Anyway just in case anyone else also occassionally has brain hiccups, there's the warning

What would seem to be a major issue looming is the ability to harvest clean water. Aside from climate warming or not, access to water is increasingly becoming an issue. Even without a drought, supposedly many communities are drawing water from aquifers which do not easilly replenish from rain for one reason or another. So when those aquifers are drained.... There has been a lot of work done showing that a combination of bringing back plant diversity (trees esp) and actually working to make soils healthy has a profound effect on at least the local area climate. In fact, several people in places as diverse as India and the Midwest US have managed to bring dried up wells and creeks back to production with nothing more. Well, the guy in the midwest used cattle to promote plant growth, but no chemicals or fertilizers and no seed brought in. Others have done the same but with minor use of machines to make swales on contour for planting. One big thing that would help a lot would be to stop clear cutting trees and that means in such places as Canada as well as the Amazon. Planting a monocrop of pine or anything else won't do it. Monocrops and healthy soil are very uneasy and difficult associates, if not actually antagonistic to each other; the goals of each are contradictory to the other.

Seems to me there is one person who used to be.. maybe still is... on BBO who knew at least a phrase or two of something like 200 languages. I'd be hard pressed to name 200 languages. At one time I could manage a conversation in Central American Spanish if nobody was fussy about tenses and syntax.

If only the prices were that close! Looking up all the leads I could to various places, it turns out that I can get a new Toshiba or Asus laptop that will do anything I am likely to ask it to do for somewhere between $450-900 but even a refurbished Mac will cost me more than twice that. The thing is that I want a 17 inch screen and even the refurbished ones run around $2000 and up. No way I can justify spending that. Found out that nobody in this neck of the woods has the memory thing ( computer is too old, they say). One place offered to sell me a board they thought MIGHT word for $60 and I could take it back if it didn't. Another quoted me $100 to bring one in but that's not even getting it installed. They also told me that I can only change one out anyway,the other is not removeable. They ALSO told me that the parts number I got from the analysis site was wrong. It all got sorta complicated and messy. It may well be that they were just trying to sell me a new one but for sure nobody is admitting to having the memory board I need. So it's back to getting a new laptop after all, will just keep this one as a backup file, sorta, for the links that I want to keep. Thank you all for your help and advice.

MIKE'S comment! India is a perfect example of how they changed the way they grow food. They increased productivity in food production by giving up the old ways. India is real life proof of comparative advantages between nations. You seem to think it is proof of smoke and mirrors? Absolutely yes it IS smoke and mirrors. Admittedly Dr. Shiva's speech is long. This is a shorter version of what is going on with food production in India. As well, there are now several areas which have declared themselves to be GMO free zones and which are using non chemical and non industrial methods to retain water and improve soil fertility. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102893816

You know what? To me this is smoke and mirrors. If you want to get into a discussion of what things should be grown where then you are getting into a very dicey area indeed. I don't know much about economics but I DO know quite a bit about growing food. You might be interested in the Melbourne Peace Prize acceptance speech by Dr Vandana Shiva as to where your sort of thinking ended up getting farmers in India who were convinced that they would be better off listening to that sort of stuff. At least the farmers who didn't join the hundreds who comitted suicide when they couldn't sustain the farms doing what they had been convinced to do instead of what they had been doing. You might read One Straw revolution by Fukuoka who watched as people abandoned their traditional crops in favor of what they were promised would be more profitable for them, and their subsequent struggles. You might want to consider the Dust Bowl of the 30s which largely was a result of people farming the way business people (banks)told them to so they could make lots of money. The banks ended up with lots of farms out of that one. And as far as that goes, you are wrong as far as needing fertilizers and pesticides etc; learn something about permaculture. I will point you in one direction..check out Joel Salatin of Polyface Farms. He was written about in Michael Pollan's book The Omnivore's Dilemma. He will not send anything further than 400 miles from farm to consumer and he is very successful no matter what terms you choose to use to define success. Or watch some of the videos on You Tube about Sepp Holtzer of Austria. You could look up some of the projects being done by Geoff Lawton with desert being brought back to fertility without chemicals. Or Growing Power in the US founded and run by Will Allen. He claims something like a million pounds of food grown on 3 acres. Without chemical fertilizers or pesticides. Of course, before the companies such as Monsanto managed to get patents on seed, farmers used to save a portion of their harvest to use as seed the following year; this has become illegal in many instances. Farmers have lost their farms for having such plants show up on their land even though the plants are proven to escape from planted fields and show up where they haven't been planted. So seed can be a cost. Pesticides and fetilizers are most certainly required by such seeds, although both are becoming less effective.One of the costs not usually considered is the cost to the environment of using such things; in terms of the pollution of waterways from runoff in paticular. Pesticides are now starting to give rise to superbugs in the same way that overuse of antibiotics has. You can check the growing concern about the corn borer in the States. I am told that in the European Union it is now ILLEGAL to sell any seeds not on an approved list, most of which consists of seeds which must be bought each year. Freedom is a wonderful thing when it becomes illegal to sell celery and bean seeds unless they have officially been approved. The other thing not mentioned is time. Some people claim that people in the first world countries are now working much harder and longer hours than was generally the case 80 or 100 years ago. that is..if they are working at all I suppose. Fukuoka grew barley, rice and citrus trees and he had no machinery, no chemicals. He and the stores which carried his product could have got a premium for his produce but he refused to allow that, going so far as to boycott one store which he caught doing so. He also had the resources and free time to observe, to think, to teach, to write, to travel. He had no debt. Very very few farmers could say that today.

Productivity is a word I dont understand, in economic terms. It appears that the same value in terms of economic worth is given to the production of plastic toys for a McDonald's Happy Meal as the production of the wheat or potatoes used to make the meal. Also, present day robots could likely do pretty much anything most workers can do, German, American, Italian or whatever, as well as likely do it faster and cheaper, so what does it really mean? Also, the whole business of trade between countries appears often to be simple (or not so simple) shenanigans. It is beyond belief that it can possibly be valid to pay less for apples imported from halfway around the world than for the ones grown next door. But that seems to be what much international trade is all about. Then you get the sort of tragic nonsense of a few years ago when the Canadian government paid farmers millions of dollars to slaughter healthy pigs so as to drive the price of pork back up and NONE of the meat was allowed to be used or sent to starving people because that would have violated trade agreements. Absolutely heartbreakingly disgraceful that hundreds of thousands of pounds of food just destroyed. The thing is that although I certainly get the point about carrying around a backpack of gold, when the crunch comes money is actually worthless. If 2 people are stuck in the middle of the Sahara and one has a million dollars, gold or any other currency, and the other has a cup of water, that million dollars has no value at all. Money should be the servant of people and it has gotton reversed.

My impression is that the easier borrowing has had a rather severe consequence for several countries who share the Euro, Greece... Italy... Ireland.... and now they are borrowing even more because they couldnt pay back what they already owed..which is a form of logic which escapes me entirely. Maybe all the countries being held hostage by the IMF should just form their OWN group and tell the IMF (and the politicians who got them into the mess) to get lost. Shared economic specialty of being broke. :ph34r:

Someone was insisting with great conviction the other day that there are plans afoot to try to have one currency for the world. There have been mutterings in Canada from time to time to have one for North America but it hasn't met with a lot of public enthusiasm over the years. Possibly even less at the moment. From here and to somewhat uneducated eyes it seems as though the Euro hasn't had exactly the effects people had hoped it would have. What is the likelihood of anyone seriously trying to promote one world currency and does anyone think it would be a good idea?

It doesn't even have one memory ( stick? I thought it was a sort of board ?) it has one 512 one and one 256 one. So even replacing the 256 one with 1G would vastly extend the memory available. I thought if I replaced one and it didnt help much then I would know a new computer would be in order..sort of a cheap check to see if that's the problem or if there is something darker at work. I'm hoping this is a reasonable course of action and it wont mess things up not to change both at once. Helene, what I am getting are messages saying that I am low on virtual memory and windows is trying to do something about it. I deleted a bunch of stuff last night and then ran the disk storage cleanup , but that looks like it isn't going to help much except to get me through until I get more installed. If I can get that done today then I'll have a day or so to see if that helps before the Black Friday sales are over :) I rteally appreciate all the help.

I missed that post somehow! Thanks for bringing it up, I'll certainly follow up on that.

Hmm I have been trying to figure out how to cut this into bits to answer each bit and I can't seem to do it so sorry if this is a bit disorderly. 1)I have AVG and Spybot Search & Destroy on both of them. The desktop became unable to access windows updates some time back (something I had asked the tech guys to look at but I dont think they did. I'm not very sure they did anything at all, really. But at least they didn't charge me much:). I occassionally buy stuff through the internet so although AVG is getting to be pretty pushy and annoying I'm afraid to go without something. 2) I have no idea how to check on the speed of the connection. It's the only game in town anyway unless I want to go to satellite. 3)I have no idea how to check this. 4)I didnt make a note of what was in it when I got it so now I haven't a clue what's supposed to be there and what isn't. That's what I took it to the techs for. As far as using wireless, not really reliably available in this area..like a cell phone you have to be in a special spot and not move or it wont work at all. So both are used wired up. 5) Registry is something I'm not comfortable messing with. About 8 months ago I tried doing a "return to earlier configuration" on the desktop and almost everything disappeared..I had asked it to go back a couple of months and it apparently went back to about 2004. I never did get back some programs such as Word. So now I don't touch anything if I don't know what it is and since I don't know what much of anything is..... 6) I do do the temporary file removal thing on a regular(ish) basis. Thanks for your suggestions. If I do get a new desktop at least, then I'll get the seller to identify what's in there. Someone said that Linux was a lot easier to use now than it used to be, that they actually even have two versions now one for the "casual"user and one for the real computer people so I was thinking of having someone install it for me. I actually like Windows, Hotmail and Explorer format better than the others I've tried (so out of step with most people it seems) but they are so extremely unhelpful to deal with if there is a problem, frustration is driving me to look for an alternative. Every time I have tried Firefox it kept crashing and Google thinks it's God. So now I am using Opera on the desktop and struggling along with Windows on the laptop. Of course, perhaps I will find an Apple calling my name..in which case it won't be an issue, right? I really appreciate all the great help here ! You guys are terrific!

WOW. I went to the link and it tells me that although the laptop can hold up to 2 GB of memory it currently only has 768 mg. And if I have only 50% of that left...so it makes sense to start there! Now I have to figure out how to get the links of my favorites file onto something to save as many of them are older and impossible to track down through the noise and reverberating echo of search engine results. This looks promising for this geriatric laptop at least, as 1 GB of memory is about $45- a whole lot cheaper than a new computer! I'm not so sure about the desktop, I think it has lurkers somewhere. Thank you!

Talked to the provider people..I have high speed supposedly, and they replaced all the phone wire between where it comes into the house and the jacks, gave me a new modem and wire for inside the house as well. OTOH when I tried it in the shop for about half an hour or so it worked way faster. Very occassionally tho everything seems to work faster here too so that may have been circumstance. One thing that may have given both of them heartburn is that the power goes out ( not just my house!) about once a month, sometimes for a moment or two sometimes for longer. I have them on a surge protector but someone said those don't help much, I should have a built in battery arrangement that would automatically kick in when the power goes out. I don't remember ever seeing this offered. I have no idea what browser cache is much less how to empty it..I clean out unnecessary files, is that the same thing? Probably could dump a lot of email..it's become sort of like a diary so haven't done anything with a lot of it. It is getting pretty big but the available space on both machines shows well over 50% the desktop in the 80% range. OTOH I keep getting messages on the laptop that it's low on virtual memory and Windows is doing something about it so that may be the problem for the laptop? What can be done about that and why is it saying that when it shows as 58% space available after it's defragged? Both machines are getting on in years. The desktop was bought refurbished about 7 years ago and the laptop was bought new about 8 years ago DT is HP and laptop is Toshiba. The laptop has had a bit of a hard life . So neither really owes me anything I just hate to toss things out if they are still viable. It would be lovely to have an Apple but they're pretty pricey..the refurbished ones that Amazon sells might be an option. May have to go try to figure out what the different ones are. Right now I am seriously considering a toshiba from Tiger Direct, one of the priorities for a laptop is a big screen which makes being on it for a while a lot easier on the eyes. Ken: my desktop suddenly had the cursor darting about the screen or sometimes disappearing entirely even when I changed the mouse to a new one.(that was the final straw that sent it to the shop). They couldn't find anything wrong with it but when I carted it home again it started up again. So I tried using a different connection spot on computer for the mouse and the problem instantly disappeared and hasn't reappeared. So that might be something you could try..I had gone to some computer forums and not one person had suggested that, although it seems to be relatively common problem. Perhaps it is too obvious to bear mentioning but it would have been helpful! Thanks for the input. And if I want to know about safe porn sites, now I know who to ask :)

Both my desktop and laptop have developed odd habits which revolve around "hanging" for ages and consistently telling me that a web page link is broken when it isn't and so forth. Took the desktop in and they supposedly cleaned it of everything..both are defragged and so forth regularly. So time for new ones it seems, as waiting for 2 minutes for a page to load gets very old. How do I prevent the same things happening to the new ones? and are there any brands I should avoid? I don't know much more about computers than the very very basics..not even sure what most of the stuff means when places describe their different computers. Any suggestions would be very much appreciated. and btw..anyone have any experience buying from TigerDirect?if so, good? bad?

Terrific! sounds like a lot of fun as well as challenging. Best of luck!

One time I was late for an appointment and when stopped in a radar trap for a speeding ticket I said, "I'm in a hurry, will this take long?" it worked out ok tho the policeman warned me about another radar trap set up further along my route B-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T-SMlTd4lV8&feature=related sorta fun to consider.

My bad for thinking that people actually read something on BBO forums before labelling it nonsense. The post clearly stated that the quote was from a time that TB WAS rampant and even then they found that the incidence could not be connected to drinking raw milk. Your last statement is a generalization which means nothing at all. Herds which supply raw milk are monitored carefully and such a statement as that is nothing but fearmongering based on who knows what. The problem is that nobody who is a blind follower of pasteurization seems to realize there IS cost to pasteurization, in that the milk no longer has all the values it had before the process. There is undoubtedly a place for pasteurization in that some farms don't want to be bothered handling the milk as carefully as they should, but to demonize ALL raw milk for what it "might" pass on (unnoticed yet??) is silly.

I wasn't trying to suggest that pasteurization was invented "for" milk, only that that now ..as your post itself says..it is regarded as a way to make milk "safe" when it is presented to the general population as normally "unsafe". Your post shows to what degree this belief is held. To consider milk unsafe unless pasteurized is to consider all milking herds to be badly managed with little or no regard for cleanliness in handling the product. Undulant fever was a major concern (milk from sick cows) tb (sick cows) and the practice of pasteurizing milk was very reasonably adopted before there was any way to test the cows for such things. That is not now the case and hasn't been for well over 70 years. Armchair Science, a British magazine of way back before WW2 had this to say: "Pasteurization's great claim to popularity is the widespread belief, fostered by its supporters, that tuberculosis in children is caused by the harmful germs found in raw milk. Scientists have examined and tested thousands of milk samples, and experiments have been carried out on hundreds of animals in regard to this problem of disease-carrying by milk. But the one vital fact that seems to have been completely missed is that it is CLEAN, raw milk that is wanted. If this can be guaranteed, no other form of food for children can, or should, be allowed to take its place. Dirty milk, of course, is like any other form of impure food — a definite menace. But Certified Grade A Milk, produced under Government supervision and guaranteed absolutely clean, is available practically all over the country and is the dairy-farmer's answer to the pasteurization zealots. Recent figures published regarding the spread of tuberculosis by milk show, among other facts, that over a period of five years, during which time 70 children belonging to a special organization received a pint of raw milk daily. One case only of the disease occurred. During a similar period when pasteurized milk had been given, 14 cases were reported." (end quote) To say that milk CAN contain e coli and other pathogens is stating the obvious. What vegetable did they finally decide was responsible for the massive e coli outbreak in Europe some months ago?. A few years ago it was strawberries from California. WATER felled a whole bunch of people with e coli in Waterton when the treatment of contaminated water failed. (The point being if the water had not been contaminated it wouldn't have needed to be treated). Chicken is a MAJOR carrier of salmonella. Should we start to boil all our water at home, to pasteurize chickens, spinach and strawberries? If diptheria is such a threat with raw milk why don't the thousands of people who drank it when growing up or who drink it in the few European countries where it is still legal to get it, have a higher incidence of diptheria, TB, etc. than the general population? Now all dairy herds are routinely tested for such things as brucellosis and TB, and animals found to be suffering from such things are destroyed. Actually Canada and a number of other countries have declared themselves to be free of brucellosis as of some number of years ago. Pasteurization is a leftover from a time that there wasn't any other reasonable way to enforce that milk came from healthy cows, and handled correctly. That hasn't been the case for well over the lifetime of most of us. As a side note, something that has been becoming more and more of an issue in hospitals is the question of infections. A head nurse in a major hospital told my sister to have a sign over her bed.."wash your hands before you touch me." and to enforce it. Perhaps another sign of people counting on technology to take care of the results of carelessness. Anyway, the point I was trying to make was that a carte blanche acceptance of the government to take care of any particular segment of societal regulation isn't an especially good idea. Such a group soon develops its own momentum and needs to justify its own growth and importance. Sometimes it's far too easy to manipulate the general population into accepting regulations that are not necessarilly in the best interests of the public at large btw...soured milk from raw milk can and is used with excellent results. Pasteurized milk cannot be used this way, it will not sour, it rots. If you want to have soured milk from pasteurized milk you have to add an acid to it.

Joel Salatin of polyface farms has some very interesting points to make about this. Quite aside from the slaughter house issues: The inspectors are never able to keep up in the first place; every city has places that have had multiple warnings about violations. Food safety courses abound in photos of the most incredible kind..people storing meat on the floor under dripping pipes, thawed fish sitting on counters so long that it is actually at room temperature; fans that haven't been cleaned in so long that they are dripping rancid grease into the food..mice droppings just separated out of the food which is then prepared and served...the list goes on and on and many of the offending places get warnings time after time but nothing is actually done. I forget which city it was in the States where someone used to keep track of the violations written up by the food inspectors but it was quite interesting in a gruesome sort of way how many businesses got cited again and again and again, apparently simply proceeding with business as usual after each visit. Happens everywhere according to people who should know. People are so far removed in North America at least from having any understanding of where their food comes from or how it gets to them that it's really easy to raise spectres where none exist. Joel also makes the point that the public is told it's fine to consume cocoa puffs and sodapop but not ok to buy a jar of pickles or a loaf of bread made in a home kitchen. Gotta have that fridge that's not allowed to hold that lemon pie or veggie dip unless it's destined for the farmer's market. Gotta have that separate sink dedicated only for people to wash their hands in. No matter that there's no record of any problems with food sold through farmer's markets. No matter that most people who are enthusiastic about cooking or baking often have kitchens as clean or cleaner than most restaurants.In most of the States and Canada, the days of someone making a few extra dollars by baking brownies or banana bread and taking them to a farmer's market on Saturday are done, unless the baker has access to a commercial kitchen. We have had inspectors come to camp and care less if the freezer kept things frozen properly or if someone was sneezing into the food, or if the food handlers appeared to have washed their hands in the last week; they wanted to sneak around and find out if anyone was smoking in their room. Not that they had any reason to think anyone was, but what a coup if they could nab someone! Or another who threw out a whole day's baking because the cook had balanced one of the baking pans on an empty clean egg tray to raise it from the counter to cool faster. The baking was sitting on silicon paper in the pan and the pan was about three times as big as the egg tray it was sitting on so there wasn't any way the egg tray could come near the food. The inspector apparently carried the trays out to the garbage and dumped them herself, assuming that the other baking had been handled the same way. OTOH not so long ago I bought a package of duly inspected meat from a large grocery stop and when I opened the package I was greeted by a very live worm easing its way out of the meat. Pasteurizing milk was undertaken not because it made the milk better, but because then they could take milk which was possibly not quite what it should be and make it safe. Properly handled raw milk from healthy cows is not only safe but better for you if you are going to drink milk. Improperly handled milk..the cow wasn't cleaned before the milking machine was put on or she isn't healthy might be another story. So pasteurize everything and then you don't have to worry about it, instead of making sure that things are right to start out with. Now lots of people apparently think that raw milk is some sort of poison magically transformed into something healthy through pasteurization, instead of a process where it's possible to lower your standards of production and count on technology to make up for it. These are the sorts of thing you think benefits everyone except some few farmers who grow their own food?

Polls in these forums always stump me as on my computer all I ever get is the bare poll, never any info at all as to what the question under discussion is or what the poll is actually about. Only way to try to figure it out is to read all the posts and make assumptions. Computers and I have an uneasy relationship so there's probably a button somewhere that connects to the actual question but I've never found it. I'd be surprised if I was the only BBOer with a computer that does this, which might explain why many of us never vote on polls, even those we might actually have an opinion about.