Genetically Modified Components in Pet Food

Dear Subscribers,

Some of you probably don't like the more informal notes that I write so delete now if you are one of those, but others like it when I just "share" so trite as the word has become, it is "in" which means I am also!

I have had my cockatoos for a long time, 20 years or more. Bird lovers all have their favorites, mine are living upstairs with me. When I first got Sky, he was one terrified, trembling, featherless wreck. He was physically adventurous about toys and things to do, but his food interests were very limited. When I found him a partner, Celeste took over this department and he used to put his foot against the edge of the wing and nudge her a bit to try something new and let him know about it. She, elegant lady that she is, very politely tries anything new. Then, once a food is accepted, he will hold it between them and they take turns taking bites. It could hardly be more enchanting. High on their early favorites list was broccoli. They hold up like a little tree and take tiny bites one at a time. When the farmer's market started in Santa Fe, I brought home organic corn and this will keep them busy for hours, but when I moved to Poulsbo, I couldn't find any organic corn and I noticed that they refused to touch the corn. Later, they started picking the corn out of their dishes and tossing it on the floor. When organic corn finally made an appearance at the farmer's market on Bainbridge Island, I had to work hard to convince them to try it. Now, they know that the corn on the cob I am giving them is organic, but they still toss the other corn onto the floor.

Almonds are another of their very favorite foods, but these are now going to be pasteurized. I can almost hear the voice of my mother from the beyond saying, "If almonds needed to be pasteurized, Alexander would never have made it to India." Anyway, I found some frost tolerant dwarf almond trees and have planted them for the birds, literally! Their third favorite food is sunflowers and a big head of sunflowers will keep them busy for a day or two. However, I have just sprouted some Big Mama seeds that I think might produce enough to keep them busy for nearly a week. According to my studies, necessitated by the zero germination of the seeds someone planted for me a few years back, sunflowers remove toxins from the soil. Oh, please don't tell me they concentrate the toxins in the seeds!

You can see what I am doing: the birds will soon get all their greens and many staples from their own garden and thanks to the information provided by the animal communicator, I am growing the starts in their room so they can observe the process. They are obviously highly intelligent and very curious.

Aging Tundra told the animal communicator that when she went missing last August, it was because she had a splitting headache due to the air pressure. I had tried to figure out a reason for chewing through a 2 x 6" to escape and figured the full moon had done a number on her. She is very wolf-like and I felt some call of the wild. It never occurred to me that she would have a migraine. She was found on the next full moon, very thin and quite weak. I have basically been struggling for months to stabilize her and only recently realized that the expensive dog food that is supposed to be so much better than anything else is no doubt the trigger for her distress. I switched to making her food myself, very challenging, I assure you. She is old, fussy, and what works one day fails the next. The one thing that remains very high on her list is black cumin. I saute it in ghee or cold pressed olive oil and then put her yummies in this and she actually licks the cumin off the edge of the bowl. It's carminative and therefore a digestive aid and old as she is, she gained a little weight finally. The wonton soup worked to jump start her appetite. The first takeout order was an enormous success, the second was nearly a failure, the third was encouraging, the fourth ended up mostly in Savika's dish. Right now, I am suffering from the guilt of too much realization about what I should have known before.

People send me emails absolutely all day long: tummy trouble, joint pain, headaches, cancer, chronic respiratory issues, you name it. It's impossible for me to know what the causal problems are so I have a sort of short list in my head that you can study if it suits you.

I don't know if it's true or not, but someone told me years ago that "if you can't compost it, you can't digest it." This was in the context of microwaved food and the person who made the statement said that microwaved food will not compost. I suspect everything will compost eventually, but some things may take years. I have never used a microwave oven. When I have moved into places, I made removal of the microwave oven a precondition for occupancy. I have never come up with a karma-free way to dispose of these monsters. Giving them to members of Congress might be a place to start.

So, not having a microwave oven, I cannot conduct a composting experiment but I will wager someone has already done this and posted it to a blog or youtube.com. I do know that the only times in my life in which I had gall bladder attacks were immediately after eating dinner at an Indian restaurant. This never happened when I had lunch there, only dinner. One day, the owner said his wife wanted to greet me but she was in the kitchen, would I mind going in there to say hello. The entire kitchen was full of Sanyo and Panasonic appliances and thus I learned how it is possible to offer a choice of a hundred menu options when Indian food takes so long to cook! However, at lunch, everything was served as a buffet and cooked the long, slow way. In short, spices don't cause gall bladder attacks, but . . .

I don't care whether or not you buy Stone Free from me, but please don't suffer unnecessarily! When I had the gall bladder attacks, the pain was so bad that I couldn't think straight. I was even allowing unwelcome thoughts like "they can have my gall bladder, I don't want it any more" pass through my mind, forgetting that I have rows and rows of Stone Free sitting on shelves. I took six tablets every half hour until the pain subsided and I have never had another attack. However, I also ask restaurants if they use microwave ovens because I will not touch any food cooked in one.

Ironically, solar ovens utilize a natural variation of the same concept of exciting molecules to move so they are cooked through intensification of movement (which causes friction and heat) but the movement is produced by ultraviolet radiation rather than the frequencies used in microwave ovens. I watched a lot of videos of food being prepared by solar cooking and am convinced that more and more people are going to be exploring this method of cooking, this for a number of reasons. Obviously, the main reason for some people is that the cost is very low. There are several videos on this site:

http://permaculturecairns.com/solaroven.html

and, if you like voting on favorites, try this tinyurl:

http://tinyurl.com/cmjl84

Since all my sites were down this weekend, I spent a bit of online time reading a variety of opinions on the Food Safety bill. As ever, the gamut runs from alarmist (aka extremist) to "way to go" supporters. After considering all the opinions, I am still opposed for several reasons. First of all, we don't need more bureaucracy. We need to fix what is broken. We also do not need to give law enforcement power to agencies that constitute a fourth branch of government. There are people who remain quite naive about the abuse of power of the FTC and FDA and even the USDA. The question is why SWAT teams in flak jackets need to descend on doctors and patients in their clinics or cooperative farms. In the last few years, a great many herbalists I know have folded up shop because they cannot meet the increasingly menacing regulations (aka "new standards") that have been partially rolled out and will roll further for a while to come. Each of these regulations has some protective features and some unwarranted and undesirable features, some of which are forcing herbalists to think and act more like pharmacists than botanists. For instance, no classical herbalist wants standardization but every doctor is trained to think this is a good idea. It's actually a ridiculous idea and flies in the face of everything we understand about Nature, but this would be mandated if industry and government had their way.

Therefore, I would lean strongly towards more "buyer beware" educational effort and less bureaucratic meddling.

I read up a bit on some of the economic woes, but there is nothing new here. It was all predictable and obvious to me years ago that this would happen. That it is intentional is obvious due to the fact that those who caused the problem are being called upon to fix the problems. If we were logical, everyone who caused the crises would be put on leave, investigated, and probably eventually convicted of some conspiracy to create the appearance of an economic disaster. Employees and stockholders would be put in charge of revamping the remains of the collapsing giants, but what is really happening is a feeding frenzy in which those even higher up the chain are devouring competition. I figured this out a long time ago when trying to find out who really owns the Federal Reserve. All that has happened is that the Rothschild and Morgan interests are eating the not quite as big thieves slightly lower down the pecking order so, if I were a Morgan, I'd be watching the Rothschilds.

For once, David Icke has managed to say more or less the same thing without reference to lizards:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4ZjePN-Erw

Yes, I know, I know, but sometimes he gets it right and this is a Conscious Media Network interview and meets their very high standards.

For those who refuse to spend an hour on youtube, I would suggest you look at the bottom line which is that opting out is what frees you and disempowers the elite. You think you can't do it, but Icke uses the line, "What if they had a war and no one showed up." Obviously, this won't happen unless people are too conscious to be manipulated and this is why the hour is actually well spent.

Many blessings,

Ingrid