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March 23, 2018 - Health Ranger - Mike Adams
34:26
Farmageddon - an interview with Kristin Canty
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Welcome, everyone.
This is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, reporting for Natural News.
In the aftermath of a growing number of government-run raids on farmers and raw milk producers and food distribution centers, we do have A place to turn to to get informed.
There's a wonderful documentary that is in the process of being released.
It's being showcased in theaters in the months ahead and we'll share the schedule with you in this interview.
And in this interview we're featuring Kristen Canty who is the creator of the film Farmageddon.
You can find that at farmageddonmovie.com and Kristen joins us today to talk about the film.
Thank you Kristen for taking the time to speak with us.
Thanks for having me.
Yeah, it's great to finally hook up with you again.
We interviewed you a few months back, and at that time, a lot of people weren't really aware of what was going on because they didn't see the guns in their faces, so to speak.
The Rossum Foods raid hadn't happened, and they weren't aware of the Amish raids.
But now the issue is exploding.
What are you seeing out there in terms of public awareness and the attention being given to this issue today?
Yeah, well, when I first set out to make the movie, it was frustrating because this has been happening for a while, and it was frustrating not to be able to get it into the public's attention.
There have been many Amish farmers, Amish farms that had been raided, and the Rossum raid actually had occurred.
And so what I had been doing was just trying to tell people, trying to get the media to pay attention to it.
And what I found was that people didn't believe me that this was happening.
People Generally, people thought that if a farm was raided, it couldn't possibly have been for food.
It had to have been that these people had guns or these people had drugs because the country that we live in, our government would never raid a farm for simply providing food or providing raw milk or meats to willing customers, willing adults who wanted to consume these foods.
And so that's why I made the film, to set out and show people that no, these people did not have drugs.
They did not have guns.
They were harmless people working very hard on their farms to grow and produce their food as organically and naturally as possible.
And they had willing customers that never became sick.
Nobody ever complained.
There were no injured parties.
And the government shut them down very, you know, sometimes harshly with armed raids.
And now it's happening more and more.
Part of this, I think, is the idea that if they come in with all their SWAT gear and government guns, then it makes the party look guilty immediately just by inference.
You know, so they sort of stage a massive assault so that the other party looks guilty.
But also I want to just note here that being someone who lives on a farm in central Texas, it's not unusual at all for ranchers to have a firearm.
I mean, it's considered one of the basic tools, you know, a rifle that ranchers might use to, if they have chickens and there are a lot of coyotes, they actually shoot coyotes with it.
I mean, that's not something I would do, but that's a very common practice.
So having a rifle on a ranch is not illegal in most places.
Right.
But the Amish farmers did not.
Right, right.
And that's not what was on the warrant.
Drugs and guns were not on the warrant.
In fact, most of the warrants were for a third-degree misdemeanor.
Some of them were for operating a retail establishment without a license.
The recent...
The recent raid on the Rossum Club, well actually let me back up.
The first raid on the Rossum Club, the warrant was one of those.
It was operating a retail establishment without a license.
And then they ended up pressing no charges.
They ended up just trying to nickel and dime them with building code violations because they couldn't figure out, there was nothing wrong with the food.
However, the last raid that occurred last week on the warrant, this raid was conducted by the FDA, and they were accused of a felony for a conspiracy to commit a crime, and yet the crime that they were accused of committing was actually a misdemeanor.
So they were accused of the felony crime of conspiracy when the crime was selling raw milk, which is a misdemeanor.
You know, that doesn't really make a lot of sense.
No, this is how the government just tacks on...
I mean, it's clear that this was a personal vendetta against Sharon Palmer and Rawson Foods by a few key people, Treviso and Powell.
We're actually going to release their names and their emails, I think, so that people know who's behind this.
But this is a personal vendetta where they used government power.
They abused it in order to attack people that they just personally hated.
And to try to come up, like you said, felony conspiracy to commit a misdemeanor.
It's ridiculous.
Right.
It doesn't make any sense.
Yeah.
But now in your film, Farmageddon, even though you cover the first Rossum food raid, which happened roughly a year ago, you cover a lot more than that.
And can you describe a little bit about the scope of what your film really talks about?
Yeah, sure.
I mean, the film covers seven extreme examples of government interference with farmers getting their products to consumers, such as armed raids.
There's seven raids in the film, ranging from government crackdown on a very successful sheep farm that was making cheese, and it was a very popular cheese-making farm.
They were on Martha Stewart, and they had won awards in Gourmet Magazine for amazing cheeses.
Again, nobody was ever hurt or injured, but the government killed their sheep and made them take their barn apart and destroyed their business for what they said the sheep could be at risk for mad cow disease even though the sheep never tested negative for mad cow disease and sheep have never been known to get mad cow disease.
So, that's one example of one of the raids in the movie.
Wait a sec, just to clarify, you said the government killed their sheep.
I remember you talking about this previously.
The government came and stole their sheep and then murdered them.
The government, yeah, the government showed up at their house at 5 a.m.
in the middle of a blizzard and stole their sheep and brought them out to Iowa and incinerated them, you know, for a disease that It's just incredible.
It's very sad.
And there's another example in the film of a mom who had 40 Amish farmers around her that had no way to get their product to market and she lives in kind of a food desert where you can really only go to a major chain supermarket that doesn't have a lot of natural foods.
So she decided with some neighbors to start a co-op where sometimes she went around to the different farms and got food and brought it back to her house that was a central location and other times the neighbors did that and the co-op grew bigger and bigger until the Ohio Department of Agriculture caught wind of it and came into her house with, I think, as many as 11 armed agents and kept their kids in a room for six hours, her and her daughter-in-law and their nine kids.
I'm in a room for six hours while the agents tore their house apart, took their computers, their cell phones, their food for their own personal consumption, and their food that was meant for their buying club.
And so the kids were terrorized and the family was terrorized simply for having a private food buying club.
Well, you know, I mean, if this wasn't being done behind a government badge, these would be considered acts of terrorism or kidnapping, armed robbery, burglary.
I mean, these would be multiple felony crimes committed by these government agents if they weren't just wearing a badge.
Right.
And in that situation, it was the same thing.
On the warrant for that particular raid, it said that she was operating a retail establishment without a license.
And so that was the same situation where for a third-degree misdemeanor, they came in with 11 armed agents to a family, you know, that had harmed no one, you know, and kept them, like you said, kept them hostage for six hours.
Now, the amazing thing about all this, and by the way, folks, again, catch this at farmageddonmovie.com, and the spelling on that is F-A-R-M-A-G-E-D-D-O-N, so two D's in there, farmageddonmovie.com.
I got that right, right?
Yes, one D, two D's.
Right, right.
Hard to spell, yes.
Maybe you can register all the variations.
Four D's and seven G's.
But you can learn all this there at the film.
But what strikes me is if you go out and talk to people on the street, just regular everyday people, they have no idea this is going on.
No, I know.
But I feel like...
I do feel that people are opening up their consciousness a little bit.
I know that when I started this out like two and a half years ago, and I would just...
Tell my neighbors about it or people at dinner about it or if I was at a party about it.
People were suspicious or very skeptical, did not believe it, that this would ever happen.
And I find that these days they do believe it.
I do think that they've seen that the government's food control has gone out of control.
I hope I'm not being too hopeful, but I do think that Americans are waking up to this and seeing that the government is subsidizing and condoning all the junk food that is in the supermarkets right now.
That's okay, but if you want to just buy food from a farmer, that's not okay.
That doesn't make any sense, and Americans will wake up to that fact.
You know, you're right.
Thanks to the efforts of people like you, people are waking up.
And, you know, in the Rossum Foods raid situation, I know a lot of people who were previously, they were like, they love the idea of the FDA having more power and more funding, you know, bigger government agencies to keep us safe.
They were all in favor of that, the Food Safety Modernization Act.
And now after the raid, they're talking to me.
And these are people who are very, very progressive, very much on the left.
And they're calling me and saying, oh my god, Mike, I was totally wrong.
We have to limit the power of the FDA so that we can protect the freedom of our farmers.
And I'm like, yeah, that's what I've been talking about.
Yeah, it's very sad.
I felt the same way when we heard about the Food Safety Act.
You know, we thought that it was in order to protect us from the large peanut butter outbreaks and the large, you know, meat recalls from the factory farms and the feedlots.
And they're not interested in going after that at all, the food that really does have more of a chance of foodborne illnesses.
They've really just been going after the small artisanal producers and the small farmers with extreme force.
That's totally the case.
Idealistically, if government was operated by people who had compassion for life, who really respected living systems, who wouldn't incinerate the sheep, Then I can see that a large agency that operated with compassion and respect for freedom would actually be a good thing.
But the problem we have today is of course the FDA, as you mentioned, is just basically protecting all the bad, evil, conglomerate corporate entities while attacking the small guys who are trying to sell honest food locally.
Right.
I feel that even if a farmer, and hopefully they won't, I don't think that anybody should ever become sick from any food, raw milk, any food.
But if a farmer did make, a small farmer did make someone sick, I would think that the government, and I think that the small farmers are actually very well regulated by their towns and by their states.
I don't think we'd really need the federal government also on top of all of that regulating our small farms.
But if a farmer did make someone sick, I think that they would go in, you know, try to help the farmer, try to figure out what happened so that it doesn't happen again, and help the farmer to get back in business and provide safe food, just like they do when the big companies make someone sick.
They don't shut them down with farmed raids.
They instead go, you know, go in and we try to figure out what was the problem and how can we prevent this from happening again.
Oh, it's incredible.
Now, the recent, you know, in the recent Turkey, Recall Ground Turkey.
Recall the government's response to that was, well, it's your fault for not cooking it enough.
But, you know, I think that we should just go in, try to figure out what the problem is, problem solve, and work together to help everybody stay in business.
Yeah, I mean, let's get down to the honesty of the situation.
Two-thirds of the store-bought chicken, fresh chicken meat, is contaminated with salmonella every single day in every grocery store across America.
Right.
And, you know, the FDA doesn't...
Not a word about that.
Not a word.
That's pretty much what my movie's about.
It's just about that these large...
The corporations are just getting off free and these small farmers are just working so hard to keep their food produced the best and, like I said, as naturally as possible.
And they're the ones getting hit the hardest.
That's the thing, like Tyson Chicken, which I consider to be one of the most evil corporations out there just underneath Monsanto and DuPont probably.
But Tyson Chicken, you know, big factory operation.
Who knows what kind of conditions these chickens are raised in.
And again, they're delivered to the stores, contaminated with salmonella in many, many cases.
It's been well documented.
And, you know, they would never think of raiding Tyson Chicken or raiding a factory cattle operation in Greeley, Colorado.
Even though that's probably turning out mad cow disease because of what they're feeding those cows, you know, ground up parts of other animals and things like that.
So, yeah, pretty incredible.
They've been spending too much time on people's backyard chickens and front yard farms, right?
So, yeah, I agree with you.
Let me clue you in on another conspiracy that's going on.
We, Natural News, we are conspiring with Mercola right now to promote your film.
And we want to ask you for a day that we can both, both of us conspirators, can announce your film and sell it.
So I think Mercola wants to sell your DVDs and we want to sell your film through the naturalnews.tv premium channel.
So it's a download sale.
But we want to, we've agreed, we've conspired behind closed doors.
To do this on the same day.
Do you have any ideas of what day would be a good day for that?
Oh, I have no idea.
I need to talk to my distribution people about that.
I'm pretty sure that they said that that was fine, and I just have to figure out when.
Because I do have to wait until I'm done theatrically.
Yes.
And in order to...
I'm trying to get it out into the theatres right now.
I'm trying to get the most press out there.
It seems that if I play for, you know, actually sometimes one day, but I get radio interviews or, you know, it gets the word out there.
But if I can play as many cities as I can play in a week for, then it gets mainstream press.
And that seems to, I'm hoping that that really helps the issue.
Because like I said before, I just think that if more Americans knew that this was happening, they would be outraged.
And I've had so many people come up to me also that have told me to my face that they don't care about what they eat, they don't care about what they put into their body, they don't ever care to drink raw milk, but they find this, they really don't want the government spending their money raiding Amish farmers and spying on sheep farmers and just the amount of money.
That's the other thing, yeah.
So I'm trying to get this out into the mainstream as much as possible.
And then as soon as I can, hopefully I'll be able to sell the DVD. I can't wait for that part, actually.
People are just begging to be able to see this entire film, and there's a lot of demand out there.
So yeah, keep us posted on when we can do that.
And by the way, by even having this discussion, you are now conspiring with us.
It's a positive conspiracy.
Yeah, a positive conspiracy here.
We're all conspiring to educate people, and that might be a crime in the near future, so be careful.
In any case, do you have a schedule of where people can find your film playing in cities?
Yes.
I'm working hard to get all the screenings on my website.
My website is farmageddonmovie.com.
And my Facebook page is Farmageddon The Movie.
And my Twitter is, I'm not the best tweeter, but my Twitter is Kristen Canty, at Kristen Canty.
And I try to keep everything, you know, I try as best as possible to keep everything posted there.
So I'm going to have a bunch of new dates in different cities in the next two days.
All right.
All right.
Awesome.
So folks, check out those websites again, farmageddonmovie.com and Facebook.
You just mentioned that is The Farmageddon Movie, right?
Yes.
Farmageddon, the movie.
Oh, okay.
Farmageddon, the movie.
Got it.
And if you do, send out some tweets.
Put a hash mark in front of the keyword term, Farmageddon.
So, hash mark, Farmageddon.
We've been doing that.
That little campaign has been going viral across the Twitterverse.
And people are enjoying that.
Everything on my website is downloadable and open to everyone.
There's pictures there.
And there's clips on Vimeo.
And there's my trailer on the website.
Which I do believe says copyright, but it's open to everybody to use and promote.
That's fantastic.
Yeah, it's cool.
You keep the copyright, but you give people permission to share it, and that's really awesome because that's what we need right here.
We need this sense of openness and sharing of information and paying forward the education about this.
That's the only way we're going to beat these tyrants at their game and restore the freedom for our farmers and our food.
Yep.
Definitely sharing information is helpful.
Yeah, well, and remember, folks, if you share that information, you are joining our little conspiracy group, and you might be brought up on conspiracy to educate.
That's a misdemeanor, I'm pretty sure.
Yes, and we were talking about this a little earlier.
I think that the left wing, the right wing, the Tea Party, I just think that this is an issue for everyone.
I've been approached by Democrats who think that it's the Republicans' fault, and Republicans that think it's the Democrats' fault.
Both parties have been to blame for this.
You know, all administrations have been to blame for this, and it's going to take all of us to fight this, to fight this issue.
So I'm hoping that, you know, food does not, we all need food, and we all need our farmers, and I think that that's something that we should all agree on.
That's a really good point.
I'm glad you brought that up because the systems of control in our world, they love people to bicker about left versus right.
That's a little distraction fight that you're supposed to pay attention to while they steal everything from you.
The real issue here is...
I'm sorry, go ahead.
No, that's okay.
I just see a little bit of that happening on my Facebook page and just the real message I'm trying to get out there is that everybody needs to come together.
And I say the same thing, I've said it often to the vegans, the vegetarians, and the people that like their raw milk and their grass-fed meats.
I also say that I'm trying to get all of us together also on this issue because we have a big fight and if we come together we can be stronger.
I think that even the vegans and vegetarians for the most part think that If you eat animals, that they should have lived a happy life before you eat them.
And so if we can all just come to agreement on that, we can be a lot stronger and stop fighting, stop the infighting.
You know, you're right.
There's so much common ground here.
I'd be open to giving a speech to a group full of vegan Tea Party members.
Exactly.
Everybody agrees that we should have the freedom to choose our own food and that farmers shouldn't be molested by the government, accosted, raided at gunpoint by the government.
You're right about the idea that the FDA is out of control, but how did it get out of control?
Well, it's because Congress Stopped being responsible and it delegated its powers to this agency and let the agency grow on its own like a cancer tumor.
And this has happened under every administration, you know, from Clinton and Bush and Obama and the other Bush.
I mean, it just...
Nobody has reigned in these agencies, and the head of the FDA is unelected, right?
So no one put that person into office, and no president has the willpower to stand up against the industry, the pharmaceutical industry and big food and big agriculture and Monsanto.
So we have a situation here where you're absolutely right.
This terrible monster, regulatory monster, has been created from both parties not doing their jobs.
Right.
Well, it's tough.
I was in Congress last week speaking to some members who, you know, when they voted for the food safety bill, they really thought that the small farms were exempt.
You know, the bills are 1,200 pages, and the people that go and talk to them about how great these bills are, they sound very reasonable.
And, you know, like we said, the bill was proposed as, you know, there's so many foodborne illnesses in the United States.
And, of course, Like we said, they're all from the large factories, the large operations.
And so that's what they were voting for.
They were truly voting for that.
They were voting for the FDA to regulate that more.
I don't think that they...
I don't think any of...
You know, I think that we all expect the FDA to act reasonably and regulate that.
We don't expect them to go under the small, you know?
I mean, I know that's why they voted.
And so we just really need to...
Wake everybody up, that the FDA is not acting reasonably.
They are attacking our small farmers.
In my movie also, there are seven extreme examples of government intervention, like I said, but there's also a bunch of examples of just smaller regulations that really impede the small guy from getting their food to market.
Like if you're an organic farmer, you need to fill out an amazing amount of paperwork.
In order, you know, just mind-boggling amount of paperwork in order to sell your vegetables that are just grown in dirt the way that they're supposed to be grown.
But if you're a chemical farmer, you're exempt from all that.
You don't have any.
That's right.
If you just decide to spray chemicals on your garden, you don't have any paperwork to fill out.
And so just little, and there's, you know, a lot of other issues in the movie that come out that are interesting.
And I've received phone calls from all over the world from Co-op owners, from small grocers, from restaurants and chefs, from butcher shops, saying, you know, thank you so much for this movie because I'm trying so hard to support my neighbor.
I'm trying so hard to support this guy down the street, this local farmer, and you have no idea how hard the government is making it for him to get his product to me.
It's just, it's so difficult.
Right.
If they just went with Cisco or one of the large distribution companies, they wouldn't have any problem.
It's gotten to the point where the government is chasing these people underground, where you have to become a milk smuggler.
Literally, you have to smuggle milk across state lines because the FDA has a law out there that transporting raw milk across state lines is a felony federal crime.
That exists right now.
Hopefully, Ron Paul has introduced legislation To allow the sale of raw milk over state lines.
So that would help a lot if we could get more sponsors for that bill.
But it'll never pass.
It'll never...
You know, Ron Paul has put out...
I'm sorry.
I'm sorry.
I don't mean to be a pessimist.
But Ron Paul has put out so much great legislation over the years.
Another one was the Food...
No, what was it?
The Health Freedom Protection Act.
That would allow people who make herbal supplements and nutritional supplements to tell the truth on their product labels.
He has sponsored that I don't know how many years in a row, and it never gets out of committee because there's just so much pressure from Big Pharma to suppress that, that Congress is bought and paid for by the corporations.
It just never gets out of committee.
Well, hopefully they'll start waking up and supporting.
So I've been talking to different Congress people that I agree with you there.
And your film will be a positive force in waking people up and reminding them that, hey, we've got to stand up for our freedoms and our rights, otherwise they get taken away.
And, you know, you mentioned that people who supported the food safety bill, they thought, you know, in their hearts, oh, we're doing something good, we're going to make the food supply safer.
And that's the way it's always sold.
But remember, you know, under Bush, the Patriot Act was also sold as, we're going to protect Americans from terrorists.
And now the Patriot Act is used to prosecute animal rights activists who are protesting outside these cruel laboratories that are doing inhumane things to animals.
So, Every law gets perverted and twisted and then used against innocent people rather than the intended targets.
Right.
The Patriot Act is supposed to protect us from people that are trying to bomb us, not people that are protesting.
Well, I think this all comes down to the interpretation of these laws.
I think under the Patriot Act, in fact, any farmers who get together and decide that they're going to take action to protect their rights, I think farmers could be called terrorists and arrested under the Patriot Act.
Well, I hope not.
I think that that would be...
You know, the one thing, if they did that, I think that that would take it so far over the top that, you know, it would just cause a huge outcry.
And I'm hoping that what's happened so far will cause a huge outcry.
We're really doing a number on our farmers, and it needs to stop to help all of us.
Well said, Kristen.
We're just about out of time.
By the way, I didn't want to make this interview too negative, but I do want to let people know what's really going on.
If you want to have a positive impact out there, watch this film, Farmageddon.
Check out the website, farmageddonmovie.com.
Watch the film in your city.
Buy the film once we have it available through the Conspiracy of Natural News and Mercola.com.
Where we're going to be conspiring to promote this educational documentary.
That's how you can have a positive impact.
Spread the word.
In fact, share this audio interview.
You can share this right on SoundCloud.
Share this with your friends.
Let people listen.
Kristen, is there anything else you want to add as a closing comment?
No, I think that we covered it all.
As I always say, support your local farmer.
Go meet a farmer near you and support them and make sure that if they're getting into any trouble that you let your voice be heard.
Well, thank you, Kristen, for taking the time and for putting up with my interruptions here today.
Really appreciate your time.
Thank you so much.
All right.
Take care.
Have a great day.
You too.
Bye-bye.
Bye-bye.
Alright folks, there you go.
The interview with Kristin Canty from Farmageddon Movie.
Be sure to check out that website.
It's a great film.
I've seen the entire film and it is shocking.
You will see footage and scenes that will just absolutely blow your mind.
Unfortunately, the full film is not yet available.
She's doing the circuit of the film festivals, attempting to get some press and some publicity for the film in advance of its release on DVD. But once it goes out on DVD, once again, the conspiracy between Natural News and Mercola.com will be bringing you this film and helping to educate, spread the word, and also raise some money.
I know, by the way, I didn't even ask Kristen about this on the record here, but she spent an enormous amount of her own money to create this film, and it was really a large financial loss.
Which is often the case with these kinds of films.
So we hope to help her recoup some of that money that she lost on this through sales of the DVD and sales of the film.
So watch naturalnews.com for that announcement in the months ahead.
I'm hoping that will happen sometime this year in 2011.
And again, thank you for your interest in this topic.
Thank you for sharing the word on this.
We do have to work together.
I don't care if you're on the far left or far right or independent or libertarian or if you believe in God or if you're an atheist.
It doesn't matter to me as long as you are willing to...
I think that's something that we can all agree is crucial to the future of our civilization, our basic civil rights and human rights as human beings living on this planet.
We need to stop the government raids on these Amish, on these farmers.
We need to stop the government from stealing and incinerating our sheep.
It's absolutely insane.
These are criminal actions by a terrorist government that is out of control, that needs to be stopped, that needs to be in fact brought up on criminal charges itself.
We need to see these people who masterminded these raids, arrested in handcuffs, prosecuted behind bars, serving hard time for their crimes that they have committed against not just humans, but animals as well.
I mean, the serious, serious crimes that they have committed here, and they should be brought up under federal charges.
Which hasn't happened yet.
So it's time to turn the tables on these people and make them, hold them responsible for the crimes that they are committing in their attempt to squash food freedom.
So once again, check out the film FarmageddonMovie.com.
Thank you for listening.
This is Mike Adams, the Health Ranger reporting for naturalnews.com and you can also watch videos about all this on naturalnews.tv which is the YouTube of the natural health industry featuring thousands and thousands of videos serving 1.5 million video views a month out to the entire world and we do not delete the videos like YouTube does and we don't we don't artificially modify your view numbers to make them look smaller than they really are like YouTube
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I'm the creator of those cartoons.
Dan Berger is the illustrator.
So thanks for listening and take care.
Thanks for watching.
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