BST bad

Canada is not even testing BST’s safety. No, unbelievably, we are relying on safety tests conducted only by the chemical company who sells BST.

We were once assured that DES for pregnant women, thalidomide, urea-formaldehyde insulation, and asbestos were completely safe. Our government helped finance urea-formaldehyde insulation. Countless women who were given the “absolutely” safe DES now see their now-adult sons and daughters develop cancer in unprecedented numbers.

Sure BST is natural. But if BST is to increase milk production, it must be in a higher-than-nature-level dosage. Water, the most natural of all substances, is safe and desirable in normal amounts, say 10 glasses a day. But if you drink double the normal amounts, you’d upset your electrolytes seriously.

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Cows that produce above-normal amounts of milk are under stress. They “wear out faster”, have to be replaced sooner. BST cows have more mastitis, so they get more antibiotics. Antibiotic-containing milk gives problems with antibiotic allergies and antibiotic resistance in people.

Your kids drink milk. The young are most susceptible to side-effects of extra antibiotics and whatever other problems might arise from BST….

If it’s more milk that we need, let dairy farmers increase their herds. If it’s lower consumer prices that we care about, let’s look for other savings in the supermarket. Let’s not reduce grocery bills a few cents by forcing people to drink milk from BST cows just so big multi-national companies can make millions on their chemical.

It takes 20 or 30 years for most human cancers to show up. BST milk might not cause cancer. But then again, it might. Why would Canadians join such a long experiment?…

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. We now have safe, nutritious milk.

Have you ever heard anyone say milk is too expensive? Have you ever seen supermarkets run short of milk? The dairy farmers are doing a great job as they are. Get out your pen and write to your MP.

– Irene Morck, Innisfail, Alta.

No green revolution

To the Editor:

“The water won’t clear up ’til you get the hogs out of the creek,” (Jim Hightower, Native American).

This letter is in response to the opinion expressed by one Garry Fairbairn, in the June 15 edition of The Western Producer. As editor of the magazine, one would hope the author of such “free advertising” would at least have an objective view. Then again, perhaps this really is his objective view.

If the world really needed “high-yield farming” what happened to the “Green Revolution”? No other course in history had such a devastating effect on the world as the push toward the use of chemicals. The entire world is paying the price, and will do so for the next 100 years, if not forever.

Mr. Fairbairn mentions the use of DDT and Alar as if they were just a couple of things we bought at the local store and the kids ate a bit too much of. Sorry, Mr. Fairbairn, this is definitely not the case.

The use of deadly chemicals, mainly since the end of the Second World War, has been the major contributor of the destruction of the immune system, allergies, the drastic increase in asthma (one of the leading causes of death among young people), the need for more and stronger pesticides, insecticides, fungicides, etc….

If Mr. Fairbairn would like to witness first-hand some of the destructive capabilities and results, perhaps he should visit the former residents of Love Canal, the present residents of both sides of the Rio Grande River, the Beluga of the St. Lawrence, or the residents of southern Chile. …

Perhaps he could also have a drink of water from the South Saskatchewan River. He could have a good taste of those very same pesticides and fertilizers he so rigorously promotes.

If current monocultural practices work so well, why is there the need to import so much of our food? Why is unemployment so high? Why are so many farmers leaving the farm? Why are so many rural residents now fighting cancers? And why are farmers needing to be subsidized? …

And, why are the major agri-business corporations constantly searching for new varieties of grains that are resistant to their own chemicals? Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that monoculture, in any form, simply does not work! As Bill Mollison (author of Permaculture) states, “If we don’t stop agriculture, we all face starvation.”

– Roy Tweedle,

Prince George, B.C.

Aluminum use

To the Editor:

Re June 29, 1995 Western Producer, page 59. I read with considerable interest that Max Woodcock, Aberdeen, Sask., is having great success adding aluminum sulphate, also known as alum, to his dugout water. It would be really interesting to be able to monitor the users of this water for the next 20 years or so to see if they will develop Alzheimers from the aluminum.

At least they must be totally convinced that researchers finding 10 to 20 times more aluminum in certain parts of the brains from those who have died of Alzheimers is meaningless.

Alum or aluminum sulphate is well known and widely used as a coagulant in many water treatment plants to make filters more effective. I would suggest that to be really safe the dugout water should go through either distillation or reverse osmosis treatment before being used as drinking water.

I personally pay $1 per gallon to get water that has been treated by reverse osmosis, as I don’t want chlorine, alum or fluorides in my drinking water.

Instead of chlorine we could use ozone with more safety to kill off detrimental organisms. The city of Paris, France gets along on it. I have a book called Coronaries, Cholesterol and Chlorine by Joseph M. Price, M.D. who deplores the use of chlorine in our domestic water supply….

If you religiously believe in the integrity of the big chemical companies who dictate what you drink together with your water then have a look at a short review in the June issue of the Scientific American of the India Bhopal disaster. No less a character than Union Carbide was involved. They state that no less than 2,500 to 7,000 people perished and now nine years later 50,000 are still suffering from the effects of the accidental release of Methyl-isocyanate.

The responsibility for this and other disasters from the large chemical companies is spread internally so wide, and becomes so thin that you can’t find anyone to blame in particular. Okay, so it was termed an accident. Putting lead into gasoline never was an accident and we must by now have considerable proof that it wasn’t necessary.