Listeriosis Lessons

In a time when food is becoming a huge issue in the news, I am grateful that I grow my own. Since I was a teenager, I have memories of "food scares". The first I ever heard of and was old enough to understand was the razors in the halloween apples issue. It seems that 30 years ago I was just old enough to understand that some crazy person was putting razor blades in apples that were being handed out to children as halloween treats. I can remember my mother cutting my apples open to be sure they were safe. In the mid 80's the water was unsafe to drink, legionaires disease was the culprit then. Red food dye was suddenly cancer causing, and the color of candy changed. When my children were small in the early 1990's, the hospitals were x-raying the candy because pins were showing up in the food. With the dawn of 9-11 anthrax threats increased suspicions. With rising gas prices people are becoming more aware of where their food comes from. Suddenly everyone is concerned with the distance our food travels and it's freshness. Now, today, listeriosis is a major issue, and again I am hearing people say - "buy local".
Maybe this is sounding like a rant, well, I continue to rant. Our goverment had been doing absolutely nothing to encourage local farmers to continue farming, there is no assistance or compensation for farmers when things go wrong, when taxes rise, and cost of feed rises. In recent years the government is starting to regulate farmers, and has increased our taxes and have instituted all sorts of fees for farmers. They want us to belong to associations and registries all at a heafty price, not to mention, most farmers do not want the governments hands into the running of their farms. One older farmer told me that when the government has a hand in on your farm through incentive programs for instance, and if your farm fails, they will take your farm, they do not care that the property belonged to your family for the past 200 years and that you had planned on handing it down to your child. The government offers significant funding to foriegners to come from other countries to move here and farm on a large scale, they pay them to move here, pay to set them up with large farm properties and modern state of the art equipment, but refuse to help farmers whose families have farmed New Brunswick soil for over a hundred years. New Brunswick farmers are discouraged, angry, and feel helpless. In their hearts they know that local customers are going to be crying out for local produce and meats, but they will not be able to continue farming.
What will happen when we can no longer get our food from across the borders, when costs to ship food are so high that the only place you will be able to shop is from local producers, and there are none - thanks in part to the powers that be (Harper for one)?
I know were my food comes from, I know what the animals were fed, that they were humanely slaughtered, what conditions they were butchered under, and stored in. I know that my food is fresh, and safe. Hormone free, antibiotic and chemical free. My only concern now is how will I keep people from sneaking out from the city and stealing my food from under my nose? Yes, it happens. This winter a chicken-napper was loose. Stealing three of my birds in one day, and five from another farmer who lives nearby. They even took his crate that was stored beside his coop. I anticipate the day will come when people who can not afford the food in the stores (wait, this is already happening), and feel they have no other way to feed their children (the food banks are already running dry), will turn to thievery to feed their children. I know it is coming. I planned this years garden just for that purpose, with the cost of heating and fuel this winter, I expect the chicken theif to return. So when planting my garden this spring, I planted extra food, twice what I normally plant. If I catch someone stealing my food this year, perhaps I will invite them to have something from my garden. How could I turn my back on them when obviously they must be feeling pretty desperate, enough so to sneak into a chicken coop in daylight, and steal my hens. If they had asked I would have given them some beef, pork, lamb, and vegetables too. Honesty would have paid higher dividends.