DR DAVID PASCOE WRITES AN IMPORTANT NEW YEAR LETTER TO THE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE:
...''WE ARE RAPIDLY LOSING THE ABILITY TO FEED OURSELVES - AND MUCH OF OUR IMPORTED FOOD IS TOXIC..AS A SCIENTIST AND CITIZEN I BELIEVE THE ISSUE OF IMPORTED FOOD THAT HAS BEEN CHEMICALLY CONTAMINATED MUST BE URGENTLY RAISED AND DISCUSSED BY THE AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC BECAUSE OUR POLITICIANS ARE REFUSING TO MENTION IT.
AS THE EMINENT AGRICULTURAL JOURNALIST JULIAN CRIBB WRITES BELOW "'WE ARE GETTING B GRADE STUFF AND ITS HEAVILY CONTAMINATED BUT NOBODY IN GOVERNMENT CARES BECAUSE THE POLICY IS TO LET PEOPLE GET CANCER AND THEN CURE IT,” " HE SAID
WE BELIEVE WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILTY TO PUT THE HEALTH OF THE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE FIRST. SO PLEASE READ ON:
THIS LETTER ACCOMPANIED THE VIDEO POSTED ON DR VANDANA SHIVA SO SOME OF YOU MAY HAVE MISSED IT YESTERDAY.
...''We admit we’ve never heard of the an Indian environmental activist and anti-globalization author Dr Vandana Shiva, but when somebody sent us her New Year’s message this morning, we just happened to come in for a coffee at the farm – so we all sat down and listened to it.
And this wise and powerful woman simply blew us away with her message.
If there is only one thing that you do today, sit down and listen: it might be the six minutes that changes the way you look at life.
It felt as if Dr Shiva knew exactly the extreme crisis situation we are facing in Australia as we are being forced to watch our farmers being driven off their land: it was as if Dr Shiva knew exactly that Australians are being forced to watch our prime farm land and water being destroyed by corporations, banks and corrupt politicians.
The truth is we are not only losing our farming soils to the foreign corporations, with mining consuming vast quantities of our best farm land, we are allowing coal seam gas to frack our aquifers and we are allowing salt and toxic chemicals to be dumped everywhere as well
The truth is that we helplessly watching in anger as the Abbott Government allows our best dairy farms and vast tracts of our Northern Cattle Country to be sold off to China and other foreign buyers – and the faster the better.
And the truth is we are being told there is nothing we can do since its national policy to allow this to happen, especially since Trade Minister Andrew Robb bulldozed his China FTA into policy - and Tony Abbott meekly went along with it as well.
Yet the Australian people have never been consulted about this. Not one. We have effectively had our democratic rights stripped away from us.
THE MOST TERRIFYING FACT IS THAT THE AUSTRALIAN PEOPLE ARE RAPIDLY LOSING THE ABILITY TO FEED THEMSELVES
The eminent author and science journalist Julian Cribb says that Australians shouldn't just be worried about a looming global food crisis: he has warned about a looming “’nightmare” that is about to hit us hard in Australia, ranging from the loss of prime agricultural land, through to claims about cancerous chemicals present in supermarkets' imported foods.
Since releasing his book 'The Coming Famine' in 2010, Julian Cribb has continued to fiercely advocate for Australia's agriculture industry.
Cribb spoke on ABC radio in South Australia recently and warned that agriculture in Australia has been 'abandoned', with enormous amounts of farmers leaving the lands, the investment into agricultural science and technology 'savaged', and a large cutting back of state agricultural departments like CSIRO.
"When I started reporting in agricultural journalism there were 19,000 dairy farmers in Australia, today there are less than 3000 and they're still leaving, so how many are we going to have left in 20 years’ time?" he said.
After reading what Cribb had to say, we need to ask exactly why we are importing such massive amounts of food from China and allowing supermarkets to sell it without any health warnings at all?
Cribb points out that we are importing between 1/4 and 1/3 of our fresh fruits and vegetables from overseas now, and a lot of them are coming in from China.
‘’It’s a crazy situation – the Chinese have got a food problem of their own and yet they are exporting food to Australia,” he said.
Cribb argues this is not just problematic for Australians into the future, but right now, saying a lack of testing for chemicals on imported food products is putting people's health at risk.
"You can walk into any supermarket around Australia and you'll find a whole range of imported food, they haven't been checked, you don't know what's in them.
"We know from American and European surveys that there are a lot of pesticides and various chemicals in the food, and not just from the food itself but also from the wrapping and things like that."
He says many supermarket foods are grown in countries where farmers are not as educated in safe agriculture practices, increasing the risk of food product contamination.
"If you grow it in these third world countries no-one is teaching the farmers how to use the chemicals properly, they're not like our farmers who have been educated in these things.
"They are used badly, they are sloppy, they often overspray because they think more is better, there's no inspections, there are no Ag departments helping them to use chemicals wisely- so the stuff that's coming in is a bit of a nightmare."
“We import into Australia 85% of our fish – a ridiculous situation in a country with the world’s second largest ocean zone – and the fish are usually heavily contaminated with things like mercury, cadmium and heavy metals because it is grown with very, very dirty water in Asia.”
“’All the good quality Australian fish that get sold overseas demand a nice fine price of course but our consumers are not getting it. We are getting B grade stuff and its heavily contaminated but nobody in Government cares, because the policy is to let people get cancer and then cure it,” he said.
Cribb is absolutely right: our Australian food future is now shaping up as a complete nightmare. No other country in the Western World is allowing mining on their prime food producing country, and no other country in the western world – especially an arid nation constantly in the grip of drought where water is considered the most precious commodity of all - is allowing mining companies to tap into their underground water reserves completely free of charge – and to take whatever they want.
There is no pulling punches here: this is utter madness, pure and simple, and we are heading towards a virtual genocide situation at some time in the future.
Once the delicate waters of the Artesian Basin - some thousands of years old - are damaged and virtually sucked dry by mining companies - which the experts assure us will happen – then we will have no permanent water available for human settlement west of the Great Divide.
If we cannot feed ourselves then we can no longer consider ourselves to be a nation – but rather, a fly-blown basket case instead.
Henry Lawson knew Australia well, and he warned us never to end up stony broke and walking.
Yet that seems to be exactly where our Governments are taking us these days; they expect us to meekly stand back and watch as our farms are either taken over for mining or sold off to foreign buyers.
The reality- according to some of Australia's smartest economists - is NOT that we need our farmers to feed us – the reality is that we need our farmers to get our nation out of debt. Only agriculture has the kind of size and scale that can finally get this nation out of the red.
Of course we all wish we all could understand how a disaster like this really happened, how we didn’t see it coming, how we stupidly trusted politicians to do the right thing by our people.
Let me assure you that the rising mood of anger in Australia is unlike anything I have ever seen in my lifetime: our Facebook page has reached a peak of 2.7 million readers in the last month, and even on a slow day we still have around half a million readers.
Our politicians need to understand the sense of anger and betrayal that is sweeping right across our nation as people begin to wake up and fully comprehend what has been done to them.
My wife and I have fought alongside Alan Jones and Drew Hutton for nearly four years in a bitter battle to save the farmland – along with thousands of other courageous Australians - the turning point for us came during our visit to Winton in early December.
Once the nation met the honourable Mr Charlie Phillott of Carisbrooke Station and discovered the truth for themselves about what the banks were really doing to farmers, this nation suddenly remembered how deeply it cared for its farmers, and how much it really wanted to protect them.
This is no time to look back, however. We need to stand together to find a way out of the mess that we have been dumped in.
As Dr Shiva says, 2015 is the year that we will finally step up and shape our own democracy.
PLEASE SHARE THIS TO EVERYONE YOU KNOW - AND ASK THEM TO DO THE SAME - IF YOU CARE ABOUT THE HEALTH OF YOUR FRIENDS AND FAMILY
No comments:
Post a Comment