DOWN ON THE FARM
DOWN ON THE FARM: A conversation between Peggy Rawheiser and Vernon Chandler
about chemicals in our food and our world
Peggy writes:
After re-reading your "Everyday Fear Factors of a Meat Based Diet" which was published in
the Herald some months ago, there are several points that I want to discuss with you.
Having grown up on a farm and around animals of all sorts, I heartedly agree with you on
some of your views but not for the same reason that you do.
I have for many years been greatly concerned about all the antibiotics and chemicals that
are fed to animals for human consumption, knowing full well that they are passed on to
those who eat the meat. I have not gone as far as you to eliminate meat from my diet but I
have watched for results of any research or programs that advocate not using all those
chemicals on animals and have cheered when I hear of farmers who no longer use them. I
feel the same about the chemicals and pesticides that are put on plants and fruit of the
trees. I know that we are being slowly poisoned by that, so the little that I can do is
thoroughly wash all fruit and vegetables with a cleaning agent and hope I remove some of
it. I don't hear you proposing not to eat fruit and vegetables for that reason that you use as
a reason not to eat meat.
Vernon Responds:
I share your concern about chemicals/poisons on fruits and vegetables. This is why
Nataliya and I only buy organic vegetables and fruits (which are much easier to find in
Europe since all grocery stores have an organic or bio section.)
Peggy Continues:
You don't mention that now there is a mad rush to use great amounts of corn and plant
material to make ethanol to burn in our cars so that they can produce tons more of Ozone
to poison our air. I would rather that those plants be used for human consumption. Now
even the price of food has gone up because all that corn is being diverted to the production
of ethanol. Soy bean farmers saw the possibilities of great profits from corn so they
switched to corn and that made the price of soy beans go up
I realize that water is not the completely renewable resource like some people assume. In
California where there are fights over the water rights to the Colorado River, I gasped to
see rice paddies. When I asked why in the world they were so crazy to use that water for
rice paddies when other farm crops were being denied water. The answer was that Japan
will pay a high price for the rice. That is so crazy.
I feel that there is as much ecological damage done from over use of fertilizers and
pesticides which wash into our streams as there is from animal waste. All of that waste
concerns me. I can't be talked into just being concerned about the animal waste pollution.
Now so many streams and ponds in eastern North Carolina are covered with algae and
scum. These bodies of water are dead and this has been caused by hog farms as well as
chemical run off. Now it has been revealed that our drinking water after having gone
through a filtering plant is also contaminated with potent prescription drugs. Since most
bottled water comes from the same sources, those drugs are also in bottled water which
most people think is pristine clean.
As I said in the beginning, we had all sorts of animals on the farm and we played with the
little ones and took care of them but NEVER with the feeling that they were put here to be
treated like people. We knew they were for our own consumption and that of others. I
cannot accept that they are on the same level of existence as people and must be revered
as the Hindus do. Even the cave men depended on animals for food and I have no thought
that there is any difference today.
Vernon responds:
Your recollection of livestock life from your childhood is almost non-existent today.
According to the latest figures I've been able to attain, less than 1 percent of livestock in the
USA are raised in "non-factory farm" settings. Have you visited any of the factory farms? I
have. When I was a chaplain with Pender Correctional Institution I had to visit inmates who
were assigned to work release in eastern North Carolina. Many worked in various aspects
of factory farms to include the slaughter houses of Smithfield Farms and Carolina Turkey.
Perhaps animals are not equal to humans, but I have come to the conclusion that it is a
more a matter of degrees in our differences. It is absolutely horrible the treatment livestock
animals receive from birth to death in factory farms. If there is a higher power in the
universe, humanity will surely pay for this evil we have created.
Peggy responds:
I do express great horror for the way that corporate farms house and treat animals. I avoid
veal because I know how the calves are treated so their muscles will have never been used.
Animals should be allowed to move around freely and the ones that we raised were never
treated cruelly even though they were to become human food.
I have been near enough to the animal farms that you speak of that I know the horror of
them. I felt better that you softened your view of animals "perhaps they are not equal to
humans" so we are getting closer in our views. We did not eat great quantities of meat
growing up because ours was such a marginal farm that anything that could be sold for
money, did not go on our table. My years of piano lessons were paid for with milk, butter
and produce from our huge garden.
I married into a German "meat and potatoes" family and was that ever a shock to see the
huge quantities of beef they ate. No wonder they were over weight and had clogged
arteries. Moderation was not in their vocabulary. Almost all the super market chains now
have half their produce sections as "organic" but one does not know how pristine clean the
stuff really is. We have a certified organic farm within sight of our house. I don't buy
everything there but do shop there.
One event that I thought of afterwards that I wished I had described to
you---Our daughter lives in the country outside Franklin, VA. That was the only place they
could find to put a manufactured home that they could afford. On one side of them is a
cotton field and on the other is a soy bean field. I was there for a visit and she was telling
me that the cotton was being grown as a "no-till" crop. I thought "Great!" and boy was I
fooled. The next day a tractor with a sprayer that must have covered a
fourth of an acre in each swath spraying the field like crazy. We had to stay in the house
with the windows and doors closed because it was making such a fog. It criss-crossed the
field several times. When I stopped there 10 days later on my way back from Rose Hill,
everything on the field was dead. Then they came in with planters and planted the cotton
without plowing. The process made me so heartsick that it made me never want to admit
that I am a farmer at heart. It sure is different from back when we picked the tobacco worms
off the plants by hand before there were insecticides to kill them.
Vernon Chandler is Chair of the UNIVERSALIST HERALD board and Peggy Rawheiser is a
board member.
about chemicals in our food and our world
Peggy writes:
After re-reading your "Everyday Fear Factors of a Meat Based Diet" which was published in
the Herald some months ago, there are several points that I want to discuss with you.
Having grown up on a farm and around animals of all sorts, I heartedly agree with you on
some of your views but not for the same reason that you do.
I have for many years been greatly concerned about all the antibiotics and chemicals that
are fed to animals for human consumption, knowing full well that they are passed on to
those who eat the meat. I have not gone as far as you to eliminate meat from my diet but I
have watched for results of any research or programs that advocate not using all those
chemicals on animals and have cheered when I hear of farmers who no longer use them. I
feel the same about the chemicals and pesticides that are put on plants and fruit of the
trees. I know that we are being slowly poisoned by that, so the little that I can do is
thoroughly wash all fruit and vegetables with a cleaning agent and hope I remove some of
it. I don't hear you proposing not to eat fruit and vegetables for that reason that you use as
a reason not to eat meat.
Vernon Responds:
I share your concern about chemicals/poisons on fruits and vegetables. This is why
Nataliya and I only buy organic vegetables and fruits (which are much easier to find in
Europe since all grocery stores have an organic or bio section.)
Peggy Continues:
You don't mention that now there is a mad rush to use great amounts of corn and plant
material to make ethanol to burn in our cars so that they can produce tons more of Ozone
to poison our air. I would rather that those plants be used for human consumption. Now
even the price of food has gone up because all that corn is being diverted to the production
of ethanol. Soy bean farmers saw the possibilities of great profits from corn so they
switched to corn and that made the price of soy beans go up
I realize that water is not the completely renewable resource like some people assume. In
California where there are fights over the water rights to the Colorado River, I gasped to
see rice paddies. When I asked why in the world they were so crazy to use that water for
rice paddies when other farm crops were being denied water. The answer was that Japan
will pay a high price for the rice. That is so crazy.
I feel that there is as much ecological damage done from over use of fertilizers and
pesticides which wash into our streams as there is from animal waste. All of that waste
concerns me. I can't be talked into just being concerned about the animal waste pollution.
Now so many streams and ponds in eastern North Carolina are covered with algae and
scum. These bodies of water are dead and this has been caused by hog farms as well as
chemical run off. Now it has been revealed that our drinking water after having gone
through a filtering plant is also contaminated with potent prescription drugs. Since most
bottled water comes from the same sources, those drugs are also in bottled water which
most people think is pristine clean.
As I said in the beginning, we had all sorts of animals on the farm and we played with the
little ones and took care of them but NEVER with the feeling that they were put here to be
treated like people. We knew they were for our own consumption and that of others. I
cannot accept that they are on the same level of existence as people and must be revered
as the Hindus do. Even the cave men depended on animals for food and I have no thought
that there is any difference today.
Vernon responds:
Your recollection of livestock life from your childhood is almost non-existent today.
According to the latest figures I've been able to attain, less than 1 percent of livestock in the
USA are raised in "non-factory farm" settings. Have you visited any of the factory farms? I
have. When I was a chaplain with Pender Correctional Institution I had to visit inmates who
were assigned to work release in eastern North Carolina. Many worked in various aspects
of factory farms to include the slaughter houses of Smithfield Farms and Carolina Turkey.
Perhaps animals are not equal to humans, but I have come to the conclusion that it is a
more a matter of degrees in our differences. It is absolutely horrible the treatment livestock
animals receive from birth to death in factory farms. If there is a higher power in the
universe, humanity will surely pay for this evil we have created.
Peggy responds:
I do express great horror for the way that corporate farms house and treat animals. I avoid
veal because I know how the calves are treated so their muscles will have never been used.
Animals should be allowed to move around freely and the ones that we raised were never
treated cruelly even though they were to become human food.
I have been near enough to the animal farms that you speak of that I know the horror of
them. I felt better that you softened your view of animals "perhaps they are not equal to
humans" so we are getting closer in our views. We did not eat great quantities of meat
growing up because ours was such a marginal farm that anything that could be sold for
money, did not go on our table. My years of piano lessons were paid for with milk, butter
and produce from our huge garden.
I married into a German "meat and potatoes" family and was that ever a shock to see the
huge quantities of beef they ate. No wonder they were over weight and had clogged
arteries. Moderation was not in their vocabulary. Almost all the super market chains now
have half their produce sections as "organic" but one does not know how pristine clean the
stuff really is. We have a certified organic farm within sight of our house. I don't buy
everything there but do shop there.
One event that I thought of afterwards that I wished I had described to
you---Our daughter lives in the country outside Franklin, VA. That was the only place they
could find to put a manufactured home that they could afford. On one side of them is a
cotton field and on the other is a soy bean field. I was there for a visit and she was telling
me that the cotton was being grown as a "no-till" crop. I thought "Great!" and boy was I
fooled. The next day a tractor with a sprayer that must have covered a
fourth of an acre in each swath spraying the field like crazy. We had to stay in the house
with the windows and doors closed because it was making such a fog. It criss-crossed the
field several times. When I stopped there 10 days later on my way back from Rose Hill,
everything on the field was dead. Then they came in with planters and planted the cotton
without plowing. The process made me so heartsick that it made me never want to admit
that I am a farmer at heart. It sure is different from back when we picked the tobacco worms
off the plants by hand before there were insecticides to kill them.
Vernon Chandler is Chair of the UNIVERSALIST HERALD board and Peggy Rawheiser is a
board member.
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