farming practices that are illegal for us right now

[Paul Wheaton]

So I'm reading the NAIS and other threads here. I get a stomach ache. And a lot of it is a lot of fretting over stuff that never will be. And, nearly all of that, I think, never happens because people were fretting about it before it got too far.

So frustrating.

So I thought it would be good to list the things that are currently illegal for small farmers. These would be the things that seem like they should not be illegal, but currently are because not enough people made a big enough stink in the past.

At the top of my list: if I harvest a pig, I cannot sell bacon. I would be okay with stamping it "NOT USDA INSPECTED - SO THE USDA THINKS IT COULD MAKE YOU SICK!"

[palani]

If I planted heirloom corn I would be hoping that it wouldn't be infected by the GM stuff. Monsanto frowns on cross pollination.

[Stephen in SOKY]

I'd milk if I could sell the surplus.

[Gary in ohio]

Originally Posted by Paul Wheaton

At the top of my list: if I harvest a pig, I cannot sell bacon. I would be okay with stamping it "NOT USDA INSPECTED - SO THE USDA THINKS IT COULD MAKE YOU SICK!"

We get our whole milk, labeled not for human consumption to get around those silly rules.

[Lazy J]

Dumping unused herbicides into the creek is now illegal. Boy I sure with the USDA and EPA would butt the heck out so we could still get rid of our excess chemicals that way. What an inconvenience they have forced on us!!!

SARCASM Alert!!!

[BillHoo]

Oh yea, and what about how they made DDT illegal!

http://spectator.org/archives/2005/0...ud-and-tragedy

THE FIRST CHARGE AGAINST DDT was that it causes cancer. No search has ever turned up any evidence, despite massive use of DDT in agriculture in the 1950s and 1960s. Wayland Hayes, U.S. Public Health Service scientist, for 18 months, fed to human volunteers, daily, three times the quantity of DDT that the average American was ingesting annually. None experienced any adverse effect, then or six to ten years later.

Workers without wearing protective clothing, with nine to 19 years of continuous exposure to DDT in the Montrose Chemical Company which manufactured DDT, never developed a single case of cancer. DDT caused no illness in the 130,000 men who sprayed it on the interior walls of mud and thatched huts, nor the millions of people who lived in them. Professor Edwards in his classroom occasionally ate a tablespoon of DDT to illustrate to his students that it is not harmful. Indeed, DDT is so safe that canned baby food was permitted to contain five parts per million.

[Alice In TX/MO]

The banning of DDT wasn't due to carcinogens, as I remember. It was due to the effects of bird reproduction.

[Danaus29]

How about complaining about stuff that does NOT harm the environment? There's no regulation against you dumping your pesticides and herbicides on your soil (I did see the sarcasm note, I do know of farmers who were royally po'd by that law and still do it anyway) and DDT has been proven to cause the depopulation of predatory birds. There were also some studies that linked DDT to the death of human infants. Adults ingesting the same or higher amounts were not affected. But this was from DDT being sprayed on cattle grazing land, cows consumed DDT, DDT was concentrated in the body and excreted through the milk, women drank the milk, DDT was concentrated in their bodies and excreted in the milk.

I checked my egg and poultry sales laws just a couple days ago. I can legally sell directly to the end consumer as long as I produce and process less than 1,000 birds a year. Got hold of an attorney and found out that as long as I am not in a municipality I am permitted to have livestock, and I can install an electric fence as long as I put warning signs on it. So other than not being able to buy raw milk and not being able to eliminate documented livestock killing wildlife, I'm good.

ETA, read a bit more of the DDT ban, google "DDT human infant mortality". Some previously permitted applications of DDT are now being banned because of the relation to premature birth and early weaning due to the mother's milk drying up in areas where DDT was sprayed in huts.

[Paul Wheaton]

Now folks,

there is no shortage of stuff to be upset about.

I guess by starting this thread, I'm trying to think of things we want to do that are now illegal because there are laws against it.

Things that make good sense for us to be able to do.

I, for one, think I should be able to sell meat to anybody that wants to buy it. Sure, folks in big cities probably want to buy stuff from the safeway that is USDA inspected. But I don't see how that should make me selling some bacon to a neighbor illegal.

[Razorback21]

Originally Posted by Paul Wheaton

Now folks,

there is no shortage of stuff to be upset about.

I guess by starting this thread, I'm trying to think of things we want to do that are now illegal because there are laws against it.

Things that make good sense for us to be able to do.

I, for one, think I should be able to sell meat to anybody that wants to buy it. Sure, folks in big cities probably want to buy stuff from the safeway that is USDA inspected. But I don't see how that should make me selling some bacon to a neighbor illegal.

I second that...it is just crazy that I can give away a T-Bone steak, but if I collect even a penny for it, I violated the law. That isn't about food safety, it is about meat processors' profits, pure and simple.

[foxtrapper]

It's illegal for me to sell eggs in used egg cartons.

It's illegal for me to sell eggs that are unwashed, unrefrigerated, not date stamped, not sized, not graded.

It's illegal for me to sell my produce from home.

It's illegal for me to put up a sign advertising produce.

It's illegal for me to engage in beekeeping without a 2.5 million dollar liability insurance policy.

The list goes on and on of what I do being illegal. Long to the point that I generally ignore it, as do most people. It's created a long standing contempt of the law.

[Kmac15]

I can sell eggs from the end of my driveway but it is illegal for DH to take orders and take them to work. (yes he does)

[bill83]

I could be wrong but I understand that in France, it is illegal to sell a washed egg. Since eggshells are porous, who wants fecal material in it?

[Danaus29]

Some states are much more restrictive than others. I'm so glad I live in one of the more lenient ones. Where are you located, foxtrapper?

[edcopp]

Nobody knows where you are, so why not at least tell us what state you are in so none of us think about moving there?

[palani]

Originally Posted by Danaus29

Got hold of an attorney and found out that as long as I am not in a municipality ....

Here is the definition of a municipality from Bouviers Law Dictionary

MUNICIPALITY. The body of officers, taken collectively, belonging to a city, who are appointed to manage its affairs and defend its interests.

Now if you are one of these I would suggest you follow his advice. Otherwise, why are you volunteering into a status that injures you?

[Paul Wheaton]

Howzabout ... riparian areas ... ponds ....

logging ...

building codes ...

selling jams, jellies, breads, etc. (USDA kitchen stuff)

[Wisconsin Ann]

Paul, most of those laws are in place to protect consumers. If anyone could sell meat from the farm without any restrictions...how many people are going to be sold tainted meat? ... and...how many buyers are going to SUE THE PANTS OFF YOU for them getting sick? Even if it wasn't from YOUR meat...how do you prove that without going into debt?

Like it or not, the government was given a mandate long ago to protect the citizens of their county/city/state. Some states have opted to go further than others in an effort to protect the idiots as well as the rest of us.

I'm guessing Foxtrapper lives in a state that follows the Georgia egg law...REALLY restrictive. 1 of the laws inthat is you have to use NEW cartons and they have to be stamped with your name, and the date of the collection. Me...I wouldn't sell eggs in an old carton. How do I know that the person who traded that carton in didn't put something really nasty in it? It's just too easy to spray a poison onto a pulp carton and pass it into the eggs. There are some really ding dong nasty people out there.

Building codes...er....what's your problem with having to build a house/barn that passes inspection and won't fall down on someone's head? Electrical codes...the number of house fires that are started by someone who wired electrical outlets or breaker boxes .....

[Paul Wheaton]

Ann,

I would like to sell the meat and stick a big sticker on it that says "not USDA inspected, Consume at your own risk."

After all, people go into burger joints right now and order their fat burger "rare" and there is a blurb at the bottom of the menu that says "ordering undercooked food can make you sick or dead."

At the same time, I think there are practices at some USDA facilities that I think are really gross and I don't want to eat that food. And I think my stuff is cleaner.

As for housing: why not live in a shelter that I make myself? And then if I sell the property, then maybe that cannot be counted as something a bank would lend money on because it doesn't qualify for a COO.

[Wisconsin Ann]

My point isn't really that YOU would harm people...but without the regulations, there are an awful lot of folks out there that wouldn't practice safe storage or slaughtering practices. Doing the "buyer beware" thing...that's just asking for trouble....as many restaurants have found out after serving very rare hamburger.

I'd love to have a society that was free enough to get rid of over 50% of the current regulations and laws. We're really over run with them. Seems like good old common sense has been legislated right out of existence But as long as we've got people who are willing to run to a lawyer on any pretense, or who like to push the boundaries to see how far they can get, I don't see how it can happen.