May Letter from our Director, Zen Honeycutt
Director’s Letter
May 2024
Dear Friends,
The trees, bushes, and bunnies are bursting with life on our farm. May brings a flurry of flowers and a saturation of fresh, green, grassy pastures. The new growth invigorates my family, friends, and fellow activists. Life is what we work every day to protect.
This past week we were in Washington DC, meeting with our Senators and Representatives representing mothers and parents everywhere – requesting their partnership in creating healthy communities by providing access to safe, nontoxic nutrient-dense food.
We exposed the truth about the food supply through the testing we have conducted. Last year we tested school lunches and then the top 20 + 1 fast food brands from across the country and found glyphosate in 93%-100% of them, heavy metals in 100%, and veterinary drugs in hormones in 10-60% of the samples. Vitamin and nutrient density was so low that one could not truly call it food. The lab owner stated “The testing revealed that there are actually more toxins than nutrients in American school lunches and fast food.”
Read moreMonsanto Action Alert
From our friends at the Center for Food Safety
Moms Across America Editor’s Note: The following is an email from our friends at Center For Food Safety about Monsanto's efforts to get a new kind of GMO corn seed approved by the USDA.
If the approval goes through, it will almost certainly mean higher concentrations of even more pesticides in our food. We are appalled that our government allows chemical companies to spray poison on our food and feed for livestock we consume.
Read moreWhy Now Is The Time To Reinvent Processed Foods
by Errol Schweizer, Forbes Contributer
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0959652622027445?lctg=102460690Processed foods are once again a hot topic. Between catastrophic externalized costs, new diet drugs, rampant price gouging and a growing wave of regulations, processed foods are attracting all the wrong attention. But processing may also be key to reinvigorating the best and brightest trends in the food industry.
Read moreIt Takes a Village: Human Milk Sharing Answers the Formula Vs. Breast Milk Dilemma
“Fed is Best” may be the biggest lie in all Big Formula marketing – of which there are many. Formula companies spend billions on promotion and much of their efforts target mothers and medical professionals in hospitals, urging supplementation of formula in the first few days after birth, based on the false premise that all post-partum moms are under-producing. The resulting often unnecessary supplementation then signals the mother’s breasts to underproduce during the time the lactation system is ramping up for the duration of babyhood – a self fulfilling sabotage of mothers who otherwise would have exclusively breastfed (more than 80% plan to).
Read moreThe Tug of War Between Traditional Farming & Corporate-Produced Food: Part Two
The Food Freedom Movement
A promising leap toward more food sovereignty in the US has been the deregulation of local food production and sales at the state level. Several states have passed bills to legalize or expand raw milk distribution, “cottage food” sales, and on-farm slaughter — regulations that had been prohibitive to traditional small farms in the past.
Read moreThe Tug of War Between Traditional Farming & Corporate-Produced Food: Part One
Moms Across America previously reported on a global land-grab involving using carbon and nitrogen regulations as the impetus to cull herds of livestock. The result of these regulations, in the name of climate change, would put thousands of multi-generational family farms out of business and reduce access to meat (raising prices) for millions. However, several fronts in this battle have taken a turn for the better. These should inspire and empower us all to continue taking positive action toward a safer food system.
Read moreGeneral Mills "Loaded” Cereal is Loaded with Dangerous Levels of Toxins
New testing reveals that General Mills’ new Trix brand, “LOADED” cereal, contains high levels of toxic heavy metals and agrochemicals.
- Levels of toxic heavy metals arsenic and cadmium present in two samples of Loaded Trix flavor were 200-400% higher than EPA allowable levels in drinking water.
- Aluminum levels were as high as 3500 ppb, making Trix Loaded cereal a toxic way to start the day according to EU standards, if eaten daily. Aluminum levels were 1,365% and 1,650% higher than the EPA maximum allowable level in drinking water
- Glyphosate levels were 15.83 and 17.47 ppb, 158-174X times higher than has been shown to cause sex hormone changes and organ damage in animal studies when they consumed .1 ppb of glyphosate herbicide.
- Trace levels or higher of 8 pesticides were detected, including Fluopyram-1 a fungicide that has been shown to cause endocrine disruption in humans and wildlife at low levels.
- Piperonyl butoxide - an ingredient used in shampoo to facilitate the killing of lice was detected in Loaded cereal.
Exclusive: Woman Living Near Cell Tower Diagnosed With 51 Strokes
Reposted from Children's Health Defense
In 2007, Marcia and Jason Haller — high school sweethearts who met in Duluth, Minnesota — bought their dream property north of Duluth to peacefully live close to nature and Marcia’s family.
Little did they know then that American Towers, AT&T and T-Mobile would soon build a cell tower just 900 feet from their home — a tower that would later forever change Marcia’s life as she knew it.
Read moreAvoiding Seed Oil
Reposted by Carol Grieve of Food Integrity Now
Are you confused about seed oils? Avoiding seed oil is essential for creating great health and wellness. But why? What are seed oils? Is fat bad for us? If we are a avoiding seed oils, what fats should we use and why? In this article, I would like to address some of these issues.
Read moreLetter from our Director, Zen Honeycutt
As February winds and bitter cold segway into hints of March weather, a few hours of warmth a day coax the sprouting of daffodils on our farm. Spring is soon on its way and I am itching to plant more seeds.
I learned recently from Caleb Warnock, the Renaissance Gardener on our Monday Night Moms Connect Call, that we can plant seeds in the ground in February as soon as the ground is workable. We don’t have to be so careful about managing all of the cool season planting, 2-4-6 weeks before the last frost, and guessing when that might be.
Read more