Food. We grow it, we purchase food, we eat it several times a day. Technically speaking, we choose what we eat. If we’re farmers we choose what we grow. But dig under the surface a bit and you’ll find that the walls and boundaries that have sprung up in the last fifty years in and around our food system are everywhere. They subtly bar us from purchasing the foods we want to put in our bodies, and not-so-subtly prevent farmers from producing foods the way they’d like, The walls are strong and tall and they exist in places you’d never guess. To the consumer, they’re largely invisible.

That such barriers are invisible is surely part of the plan – keep consumers in the dark and they won’t make a fuss, but we must accept some of the blame. Consumers often don’t bother to ask the important questions about the food they buy, and don’t understand that their desires and demands can drive the marketplace. Often we don’t even realize what we can and can’t buy.

For example, here are a few foods a consumer cannot purchase legally in New York State:

1. Raw milk from an unlicensed farmer
2. Fresh-pressed cider that has not been pasteurized or UV treated
3. Meat from a pig or cow that was slaughtered on-farm
4. A loaf of bread that your neighbor baked in her kitchen

The laws that govern our food system are different in each state, and are constantly shifting and changing, becoming more convoluted and less sustainable. Some barriers to consumer choice are long-standing and have attracted more attention – such as the legalities surrounding raw milk purchase and consumption. Others have emerged recently, with little notice.

The law barring apple growers from pressing cider and selling it raw in New York State is new – enacted in January of 2007 in response to some small outbreaks and at least one death, all traced back to the consumption of untreated cider. No matter that the cider may have been pressed in an unsanitary facility or stored incorrectly — for the past two seasons, all growers have been required to treat their cider. While most of us didn’t give it a second thought, it was quite a significant shift. Farmers, already stretched thin financially, had to purchase special machines and change their operations to meet regulations. One bad apple had literally spoiled the barrel. There was little consumer reaction, and the law stands.

I’ve been working at an orchard in Columbia County, New York for the past few years and last week we pressed a batch of sweet cider from the farm’s pesticide free apples at a small press about an hour away. We carefully washed down the press beforehand, scrubbing the trays, washing the pressing clothes. The apples passed through a special washer with bristle brushes and streaming water. We worked quickly and efficiently. The cider was the best I’ve ever tasted, and there was no doubt in my mind it was safe and healthy to drink. But none of it could be legally sold before it passed through a UV treatment machine or a pasteurizer.

I’m not about to argue that those treatments render cider undrinkable, unsafe or toxic — I’m not an expert. I’d simply prefer to purchase cider that hasn’t had anything done to it. I believe that a raw product contains beneficial enzymes that my body needs, and I believe it should be my choice. I’m an independent, informed adult with my own money and buying power – why shouldn’t I be able to choose products that I know are good for me? These are the questions we consumers need to be asking, and frankly, we need to begin to raise our voices and make a bit of a fuss. Walls don’t crumble simply because we hope they might.

These walls, ostensibly put into place to protect us and our food supply, often end up preventing small scale farmers from producing and marketing the way they’d like, while allowing large scale producers to continue to produce our food in unhealthy, environmentally disastrous ways. Most regulations have very little to do with the true health qualities of whole foods, or the sustainability of our farms. They’re about presenting the consumer with a sterile, uniform product in which they can have blind faith. “Blind” being the operative word.

I’ve heard, and understand, the argument that we need to regulate our food supply to prevent disease outbreaks and other illnesses. I would agree that the large factory farms and monoculture operations that supply most of our food ought to be regulated. Actually, they out to be regulated far more than they currently are. A consumer is not going to be able to visit a feedlot in Iowa or huge spinach farm in California, and on such a large scale, there’s more room for unsanitary conditions and unsafe food to enter the food supply. My stance, is that if you know your producers, know where those apples came from, know how your beef was raised or trust your neighbor’s baking abilities, food safety becomes a non-issue.

True, not everyone has the time to ask every question, or to visit every farm they support, or to make it to the farmers’ market each week, but we’ve all got to start somewhere. We have to start looking at the type of food system we are moving towards, and ask what we want our food future to look like. Do we want to trust government regulators to tell us what is safe and what we can and can not eat, or do we want to ask our farmers directly how they grow and raise our food and why? Do we want to be informed consumers making educated choices about our food, or do we want to walk blindly into a supermarket and purchase whatever’s on sale, or has the flashiest advertisement?

Our current food system disempowers the consumer. It assumes that we aren’t interested or don’t have the time to ask the questions that matter, to understand our food and where it comes from. On a day-to-day basis, we as a nation reinforce that assumption. When we don’t ask questions of our farmers, store managers, or favorite chefs, we miss an opportunity to affect change in the system.

The truth is, farmers want to please consumers – in fact, they need to. They will grow what the consumer asks for, and fight to make sure that they can, but if we don’t ask anything of them, we can’t expect anything to change. Most dairy farmers I know drink their milk raw and then pasteurize it for their consumers, because no one asked that they do otherwise. There’s no incentive for them to challenge the regulations. Most meat farmers who send their pigs and cows to a USDA slaughterhouse so that they can retail the meat legally would prefer to be able to kill their animals on the farm where they were raised, rather than ship them off on a stressful journey to a sterilized, unfriendly facility where they have no control. But consumers haven’t asked for that change.

If we are to tear down the walls that stand between us and a healthy, just and sustainable food system, we must be willing to take a stand, whether it be finding a raw milk producer to support, lobbying our local politicians or committing to shopping at a farmers’ market once a month. Change must come from the consumers – we are many and we can be powerful.

What can you do?

Get informed

Talk to your farmers, to the produce manager at your grocery store, to your local butcher. If you need some guidance, Sustainable Table has a series of documents you can download giving you the right questions to ask.

Vote with your Wallet

Where we spend our dollars really does matter. Join a local buying club, find a raw milk source, shop at a farmers market, discover sustainable farms near you.

Get Fired Up
Sometimes we need to get pissed in order to take action. If this article didn’t do it for you, you might want to check out Joel Salatin’s Everything I Want to do is Illegal. It’s inspiring, frustrating, controversial and important.

Anne Dailey is a writer and locavore who grew up in Maine and now lives in the Hudson Valley where she writes about food and farms, grows a little garden and runs a small farmer-to-consumer food co-op. She maintains a blog, Raw Milk & Liver and loves doing yoga by the Hudson River. Her previous articles for Last Exit examined humane chicken slaughter, farm stands, heirloom tomatoes, forgotten foods, homemade saurkraut and raw milk.

Copyright Last Exit 2009