Barbara H. Peterson

Farm Wars

Let’s face it. If we want something edible, we need to grow it ourselves, or at least deal with companies that actually care instead of simply saying they do in a public relations campaign all the while treating their customers like red-headed step children.

Take for example, Grimmway Farms. This company is the largest grower, producer, and shipper of carrots in the world. I recently acquired a package of their conventionally grown bagged whole carrots, so I decided to see if my goats would like them. They are being raised with no pesticides or GMOs (genetically modified organisms). Well, I may as well have been holding a skunk in my hand because they would have nothing to do with them. Fiona was raised on a porch and hand fed for a good portion of her life. She eats everything out of my hand. Except those carrots… Red is a good eater also, and will eat just about anything on the ranch. Except those carrots…

So, I contacted Grimmway. Here is the question and response:

Question or Comments:                               

What pesticides do you use for your conventional bagged carrots? My goats refuse to eat them.

Response:

Thank you for contacting us with your question. The best I can reply is that potentially we could use any pesticide approved by the USDA for use on carrots. Products actually used is considered proprietary information and will vary depending on the needs of each particular field.

Best regards,

Sherilyn Curti

Consumer Relations Coordinator

In other words, it’s none of your business, trust us and the USDA. Yeah, the same USDA that hides GMOs that are banned in other countries, yet are miraculously declared “safe” in the good old USA. Hey, the stuff doesn’t even have to be labeled!

So, why is it surprising that Grimmway would respond that knowing what pesticides are on my carrots is basically none of my business? Just eat the garbage and shut up. We know what’s best, and what’s best is our bottom line. Don’t bother us with your insipid questions.

I checked out What’s On My Food.org and found that there are typically 26 pesticide residues found by the USDA pesticide data program on carrots alone. No wonder my goats won’t eat them. I won’t either. Evidently goats are smarter than humans. They know poison when they smell it.

I’m done with Grimmway carrots, and I’m done with big box companies that don’t think we have a right to know what we are purchasing and putting on the table. Trust them? In a pig’s eye. Eat your own poison, I’ve had enough, thank you!

©2012 Barbara H. Peterson

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28 Responses to “If a goat won’t eat it, why should I?”

  1. Sammy S. says:

    I’m sure many in here can fruit and veggies. I love canning food. The whole family gets together and we can enough in a couple days to hold us for the whole Winter. I have been cooking on a wood stove and if you like to cook you got to get wood cook stove. In the Winter when you use it anyway it always has a fire and ready to go. But if youd spend the money and get a new one for a couple thousand. The old ones will leak smoke and the newer ones have more amenities like being able to heat lots of water and the stove is set up better.

  2. Sammy S. says:

    I usually wash off the fruit, but apples is the one thing you might forget about and eat it anyway, but I always peel the apples. I think it would be wise to peel all fruit and veggies. It’s a shame, because we have an apple tree and the only thin you get is a few worms. It’s not worth sprayihg the tree.

  3. Becky says:

    To take the test to the logical next step, it makes sense to confirm they will eat organic carrots.

  4. Steve B. says:

    If they want us to eat this crap you have to wonder if that crap dog food is even got any nutrition in it. You feed them and the whole pen fills up with dog fedes. I think there isn’t anything in the stuff that is beneficial to the dog. I started feeding my dog chicken, rice and mix in some vegetables and it made a difference by reducing the amount of feces.
    Dogs will even eat fish and that has to benefit them. You can buy frozen herring probably cheaper than regular dog food. We have chicken plants and you can buy chicken for 50 cents a pound. Cheaper is never the best way. Sometimes I buy sardines and mix in their food.

  5. Tina says:

    My cats have done that. I tried feeding them the cheap stuff from the grocery store. The store had a new cheap kind. When I opened a can of it up, I thought it looked bad, and sure enough, the cats wanted none of it.

    Shame on me- I went back to the good, organic stuff. That’s NOT the way to save money!!

    I GROW all my own vegetable. What fruit I can’t grow, I buy from a health food store, and it says ‘organic’.

    Great post Barb.

  6. If animals are not familiar with certain food items, they are reticent to touch them, and once they find out that it tastes good, chow them down. Fiona was hand raised with every type of snack imaginable fed by hand. If it’s food, she’ll eat it. All except for those carrots…

  7. irene says:

    OK, m goats wont eat carrots either!;; only difference is they are my carrots grown in my organic garden. Now, I have restricted the food I feed them to only ground organic tiny bits of oats and grassy weed hay from the neighbors pasture that I’ve been grooming to be good goat fodder. I have seen horses who wont eat carrots also. If its not familliar they wont do anything but sniff for about three tries.{days} I trick trained the welch pony but only after I taught him that carrots were delicious. I also have goats who will do tricks for carrots, apples and other trash. Its an aquired taste.

  8. Robert says:

    CalDre, are you a flack for the pesticide industry? Your answer is misleading blather. Technically they didn’t say “none of your business” but they DID answer with the BS dodge “Products actually used is considered proprietary information and will vary” which is an evasion, since it’s in no way “proprietary information” under our current legal definition of what that is. It’s certainly not any violation of anything we define as “proprietary” to disclose what poisons you are using on a product. That’s a dodge. I call BS on your statement. That fact that you end with an “I trust the USDA” clearly shows you’re flacking for the system. Anyone that listens to you will obviously go along with roach parts in their peanut butter, since that’s also “USDA approved.”

  9. CalDre says:

    Barbara – I am simply reacting to your conclusion that the company told you “it’s none of your business” and all the hay you make from that. She didn’t write “it’s none of your business”, she wrote, pesticide usage varies for each carrot and we can’t tell you precisely what pesticides were used on any particular carrot in a bag, all we can tell you is that we only use USDA-approved pesticides. Either you are comfortable with that, or not, but it’s hardly a response of “none of your business”.

    I am not saying you should eat the carrots or that they are healthy, I am saying your allegation is not justified by the facts.

    On the other hand, she did reply in essence “trust us and the USDA”. The “trust us” holds true for every company you buy from. As to trusting the USDA, I agree it’s a far stretch, but think of all the food that enters our food chain from China and third world countries, I actually do trust the USDA more than I trust the farmers / regulators in those countries ….

  10. Steve B. says:

    Cancer has been cured many ways. They use herbs, food grade hydrogen peroxide, and breathing pure oxygen and drinking oxygenated water. They use B-17. I read stuff everyday, but if you got cancer the one thing that will kill it is oxygen. So even though I’m not a doctor if you have cancer you need to drink plenty of oxygenated water and breath pure oxygen. Now you might want to check, but I don’t think breathing pure oxygen will hurt you. Then you need to eat right and exercise.
    No matter what the docotyrs say oxygen is qhy few athletes get cancer plus they eat better and they aren’t fat and they don’t smoke and a whole slew of stuff.

    But all you got to do is do a search for doctors treating with alternative treatments and you’ll find a whole slew of doctors.

  11. deb liguori says:

    We need to do more that just leave comments here and there. We need to stand up and be heard in large numbers all over this nation of ours, so that the biased media and our lack of backbone representatives will have to take notice. Our forefathers must be ashamed right now that we aren’t doing more.

  12. solo_poke says:

    The petroleum industry has permeated every industry possible especialy the petro-chemical industry. They have established monopolies and have the sheeple fooled into believing in the ‘necessary evil’ of their existence. The 1937 Marijuana tax act was a direct attack on organic farmers (the majority of farmers at the time)and the weapon was the prohibition of hemp. The main motivation behind this law were Rockefeller, DuPont, Hearst and Mellon. Hemp was an amazing crop they rotated to replenish their fields without reliance on petroleum based chemical fertilizers.

    The corruption at the top levels of corporations and government are beyond comprehension for the average 9-5 debt slave trying to survive. The problem is, when you blurr the line between corporations and government the result is fascism. Nothing blurrs the line between corporations and government like the revolving door in Washington.

    PS. Your goats are awesome…:)

  13. john says:

    Glad I read this – I just bought some non-organic carrots because they had no others available. Now Im gonna toss them.

  14. Tyranny Exposed, Please, eat my share of GMOs too. If you choose to be a lab experiment, that is up to you. Some of us do not, and forcing GMOs down an unsuspecting populace that has been brainwashed to think it’s okay is criminal.

  15. LOL!!! CalDre – Let’s take your line of reasoning one step further. Let’s just say all these large companies decide to put a proprietary blend of noxious poisons on their produce and hide behind FDA labeling regulations so that they are unaccountable for any and all effects of those poisons. Then let’s just say that we all understand that because they are too big to fail that we shouldn’t expect this accountability. Oh, wait a minute! That’s what they are doing already! Guess I should just keep my mouth shut and accept it, eh? In a pig’s eye.

  16. tyranny exposed says:

    I am more concerned with fallout from Fukashima than I am with pesticides and GMO’s. I have been eating GMO’s since 1993, and so have you. How long have you been eating radioactive food? Since March or April of 2011.

  17. CalDre says:

    Well if they are the largest carrot distributor in the country of course they can’t tell you what pesticides were used on the carrots! They get their carrots from countless farmers, I’m sure they don’t even know what farm the carrots in your particular bag came from, much less are able to share that information with you. Obviously they have guidelines for their vendors (farmers) that only USDA-approved pesticides may be used, but what else can they realistically tell you?

    I agree it is better to buy organic and local, but it is just wrong to attribute these motives to someone just because they don’t track the precise pesticides used for the carrots in each bag they sell. It’s just not a reasonable question. Buy organic if you don’t want pesticides.

  18. Abe says:

    The old joke is that a goat would eat anything, tin cans and such. Back in the day they used glue made of crushed bones of our livestock. It was edible and not bad for them to eat.
    4 years ago I talked to a couple beef ranchers. Once they figured out what was making there herds sick, they did an experiment. They filled a feed trough with real corn and GMO corn. The livestock would eat the real corn first, and would have to be really hungry to eat the GMO corn. Lets face it, animals aren’t as dumb as we think!! It’s time to talk to the animals!!

  19. George H says:

    Barbara’s goat is actually a canary. The canary in the mine, that warns us of the poison in the air or in this case of the poison in the food. I thank God for people like Barbara, who have the courage and wisdom to expose these evil poisoners. Yes I said POISONERS, for that quite simply is what they are, POISONERS! And what do we normally do when we catch poisoners, WE PUT THEM IN JAIL. So let’s get the ball rolling, or should I say, ball and chain rolling, and get them in prison. The world is changing rapidly now and the information highway is hurtling us along faster and faster into the next paradigm, where this EVIL WILL NOT STAND. Sixty one nations now ban GMOs, and as soon as we reach the tipping point, all the nations of the world will ban them. God sees all but waits, and the waiting is just about up. Monsanto and their ilk are on the wrong side of history, they just don’t see it yet, but I can assure you that their time is just about over thanks to Bodhisattvas like Barbara, and all the millions who are now saying “Enough is Enough” it’s time to CUT OFF THE HEAD OF THE SNAKE and take our rightful place as a happy and healthy people on GOD’S GREEN EARTH, without fear and without greed. Amen.

  20. Susan Barrett says:

    I need a goat!

  21. Stephanie says:

    My dog became our ‘detector’ of foods nefarious; green beans, broccoli. Won’t touch ’em if not organic. I read that chimps in some Scandinavian zoo won’t eat bananas and oranges with the skins on if not organic. I suspect some food avoidance in children might also be tied to this.

  22. Karin says:

    Monsanto is under the gun hard this time w/group of “Anons” out of OZ. These are the ppl that doxed them before and got alot of date.

    They have hoards of stuff they haven’t even gone through yet, plus back door to access more. Now, I’m not a fan of this type of ‘warfare’ particularly, but we aren’t dealing with your average Company either.

    All efforts to slow them down or better yet, close them down, have failed. Some countries are refusing them, but they aren’t the huge food supplier countries like US and OZ and Canada.

    Times are desperate and if they willingly will not give up their info ( Halliburton also comes to mind ) then I say hell yes!
    Hack away.

    This is the HEALTH of billions of people and a horrid bombardment on Mother Nature, Animal Kingdom , and all things flying.

    I’m sick of the way these huge Corporations throw their weight around. They need reigned in and damn soon.

    Hi Barb (hugs) Your goats are cute as heck! :)
    Keep fighting and I am right by your side.
    Karin

  23. Bill D says:

    Steve B, Witch cancer cure are you refering to?

  24. Steve B. says:

    I think we need to increase the pressure on these companies. I know a guy who discovered cancer is a lie and St. Jude’s hospital receives 200 children every single day with cancer and lies to them. I suggested let’s advertise on the billboard on the road beside the hospital that cancer has been cured. But he won’t do it.
    I think we need to go to billboards and warn people and do it as close to these companies as possible. Peole who have web sites and things the can sell would benefit from people going to the web site.
    We could find people retired and young people to protest these places. Because you will only touch a certain segment of the population online. Old people and young people don’t even learn on the Internet. You are reaching people between 35 and 60 and you will reach some that are older, but I bet 80% of the people fall into that age range.
    If they are selling us poison is there anything we can do that would be considered radical? There is no limit to what we can do. I won’t go into detail, but there is NOTHING that should be outside the sphere of what we can do to combat these people. This is war.
    I used to put out a lot of literature and I would put some papers in a food bag and a couple stones and tie it and throw them out in the neighborhood. You can easily put out a thousand of those in a couple hours.
    You put out literature about the companies feeding them poison that will kill them and they’ll take notice. They need to learn web sites and places to contact to voice their opinion. Our couch potato populace are still obese filling their carts with bacon and hot pockets and have no clue. But this is something people will wake up to real fast. Then just don’t patronize grocery stores anymore. Hardly anyone grows gardens anymore. I notice some people have started recently, but when you have five grocery stores in a town of 6,000 people, then people are getting most of their food in boxes.

  25. Gary says:

    What in the hell happened to my countrymen/country!
    What about your children,I don’t have any and I seem to care about them more than you-All!.,For God’s Sake’s STAND THE HELL UP WILL YOU?

  26. usor says:

    Pity the young today who will have to eat more and more of this poison as the mad people who force their murderous desires on the world get a larger and larger grip on everything. I hope they rot in hell – it’s ok to use righteous judgment, don’t believe the guff your pastor tells you which keeps you compliant to the wishes of these murderers.

  27. suss says:

    Yes for sure “grimm” its in the name, thats funny! I just sent a letter to the usda as per cornacopia institute in regards to the open letter forum for the chemicals/fake nutrients in organics and i basically told them that they will creat alot of self sufficient people that won’t buy their fake organic processed food- i kind of turned the tables on them- since this is what i’ve had to do i am a food processor- ie i make all my own food- ha ha ha- they can take their garbage and shove it- its really inspiring to become informed and then do something about it like unplug get self sufficient etc.

  28. Shine On says:

    Grimm…the name says it all.