Got the Right to Choose Your Food?

Individuals and communities are fighting for the right to make their own food choices. Isn’t that a little backwards? How did this right get taken away from us in the first place?

Slowly but surely, it has disintegrated until consumers have few choices. Various restrictive laws around the “civilized” world include the inability to legally buy milk, eggs, and meat from your neighbors. Often we’re also unable to buy foods guaranteed to be free of GMOs (genetically modified organisms), also known as GE (genetically engineered).

Some communities are banding together and taking a stand.

Sedgwick, Maine, has declared food sovereignty. This means, and I quote, “Sedgwick citizens possess the right to produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing. . .It shall be unlawful for any law or regulation adopted by the state or federal government to interfere with the rights recognized by this Ordinance.”

How did this become “crazy talk?” How did our governments (lumping my home-and-native-land, Canada, in here with the USA) get the “right” to tell us what we can’t buy and eat locally while allowing (yes, encouraging!) chemicals, additives, food coloring, and GM (genetically modified) organisms in our food?

Speaking of genetically modified “foods,” the village of Telkwa has become the 11th GE-free-zone in British Columbia, Canada. The wording here is less forceful than Sedgwick’s–and yes, I know it’s not exactly the same topic, either! Telkwa says, “the use of GMOs is inconsistent” with their community plan, and “is unwelcome in the Village of Telkwa.”

Bravo!

What about you? What are some food laws where you live that drive you crazy? What can you and your neighbors do about it?