MIICFA - Michigan Independent Consumers and Farmers Association

INFORMATION ALERT: from the Michigan Independent Consumers and Farmers Association (MIICFA)

RE: Pfizer Sponsored/Funded Bovine Viral Diarrhea (BVD) Immunization Program--promoted by Dr. Ben Bartlett, Dairy Specialist, Michigan State University (MSU) Extension, Chatham Research Station, Chatham, Michigan.

The following is taken from an article of February 1, 2008, in the Daily Mining Gazette of Houghton, MI:
Western Upper Peninsula (U.P.) Michigan cattle producers are being asked to voluntarily test their cows for Bovine Viral Diarrhea Disease. They are the first to participate in a planned nationwide program. The MSU Chatham office is testing the Western U.P. farms; Pfizer Animal Health is funding the effort. “[Pfizer] wanted to do it in a geographically isolated area. Because of their ties to MSU, the U.P. was a[nother] good choice.” “We’re helping to identify producers in the local counties and being a drop-off location for samples,” said Mike Schira, MSU Extension Director. MSU hosted an initial series of meetings throughout the U.P. in December explaining the procedure to producers.

Since then, MSU has been going farm-to-farm to identify testing needs on the local level. “About a third of the producers in the western U.P. have signed up so far.” The most resistance has come from small producers who believe their herd is too small and too isolated to become infected. If enough farms participate, it will be extended to the rest of the U.P., serving as a blueprint on a national level. BVDV does not spread from cows to humans. Most cows affected with BVDV get over their initial attack and develop an immunity. (Please refer to the complete article. )

From Greg Niewendorp/MIICFA:
Pfizer Corporation and Dr. Ben Bartlett could use the BVD to implement the National Animal Identification System and premises registration, an international Agenda 21 United Nations program emanating from Brussels. Like other disease programs, it is a potential Trojan horse, or maybe a camel’s nose under the tent, to register property under the premises I.D.--premises is synonymous to tenement--and to expand the National Animal Identification System in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which now has TB free status, unlike the lower peninsula where the state’s bovine TB program has spent $100 million to date to eradicate a disease that cannot be eradicated, just like BVD. The bovine TB eradication program kills off healthy animals in the name of eradicating a disease. Bad science, broken science (BS).

Disease immunization programs are not a means to achieve healthy animals. This can only be done through nutrition and sound, full-spectrum mineralization of the organism and remineralization of our soils, both of which have been neglected. Livestock producers have been strapped financially for too long, and it is time to encourage and advocate a sound remineralization program. In the case of bovine tuberculosis, we know through experience that declining levels of soil calcium lead to increased soil acidity which causes an uptake of iron--our soils in this region are high in iron--and suppresses copper uptake both in plants and animals. Livestock and humans need copper for the production of healthy tissue and hair. A discerning eye can see this in a herd of cattle without doing expensive testing.

This acidic soil condition is the environment in which the TB mycobacterium has the mineral terrain to increase and multiply. Mice and other small rodents that live in, or close to, the soil are the feed for scavenger animals, and are the major source of the TB that is found in regions of northern Michigan. TB cannot be eradicated.

BVD can be and has been controlled through mineralization. Dr Ben Bartlett is aware of this. Pfizer Corporation, on the other hand, could care less. They want to sell a product and the Houghton Mining Gazette article makes reference to the fact that this is a program they hope to use as a model to expand across the whole country. To whose benefit? Sorry to say, but Pfizer Corporation will profit at the expense, and the demise, of the small family farm.

The lack of remineralization resulting from decades of soil/animal neglect has created the environment that allows Pfizer to feed on this BVD problem, because the family farmer, financially strapped, has not been able to afford to address the issue of proper remineralization. We know that the ecology of the world’s oceans does not suffer widely from disease, especially degenerative disease. This is why we encourage the use of dehydrated ocean water (sea salt), kelp meal and the product carbonatite. The combination of these three, with additional selenium in the form of selenomethionine, supports/creates animal tissue that discourages disease. A simple and judicious application of dehydrated sea water on our soils provides for grass the minerals that the bovine animal desperately needs to create the conditions referred to.

Grass alone, as a species, is capable of absorbing and making available to ruminant animals all 90 of the elements found in ocean water. Pfizer Corporation and Michigan State Extension will not succeed in spreading this program nationwide. National media attention is being drawn to this issue and as cattlemen, small farmers and consumers become more aware of what is at stake here they will want, and are currently looking for, alternatives to immunization and so called “disease eradication” programs that destroy rather than cure or prevent. We want healthy soil, healthy livestock, healthy small diverse farms, and healthy people, not large corporations profiting at our expense.

We at MIICFA are asking all of the producers in the U.P. to NOT participate in this program. We want to hear from the producers who have chosen not to participate. Please contact us at 231.536.7956 or miicfa@earthlink.net.

For kelp, sea salt, carbonatite, and selenomethionine contact the East Jordan Coop: 231.536.2275 or ejcoop@hotmail.com .

MIICFA is an affiliate of the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association http://www.NICFA.org

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e-mail: miicfa@earthlink.net