The Reckoning published this story in early 2024. With the Senate confirmation of Robert Kennedy Jr. as Secretary of Health and Human Services, it seemed appropriate to share this with our readers again.
I’ve lived my life dodging trees.
That’s right, I’ve been a logger all my life. There’s no way to describe walking through a South Arkansas pine thicket toting a 460 magnum Stihl chainsaw to earn a living.
For a better understanding, most log cutters are paid by production. Trees equate to tons. When I started falling timber, the going rate was two dollars per ton. The average pine log tree weighs around 1.5 tons per stem. I made a living one tree at a time, and most of those trees didn’t pay me over three dollars to saw it down, trim off the limbs and measure it into usable lengths so that local sawmills had lumber available for construction projects all over the country.
There’s really not a good way to explain how physically demanding cutting trees was to earn a living and put food on the table.
Have you seen the price of food?
I took a trip to our local Walmart to pick up a few groceries today. I had no idea what I was getting myself into. I noticed a bag of crawfish tails in the frozen food section.
I was shocked to see that Walmart wasn’t getting the crawfish from our neighbors down in Louisiana to stock the freezers. I was somewhat disturbed to see that the crawfish available in Walmart are from China. How can Walmart buy crawfish tails in China and turn profit over here?
Needless to say, I decided that I had better pass on crawfish so I moved on. I picked up a package of frozen lobster tails. I thought surely they’d be from Maine.
Nope, product of Canada. At least that’s on the same continent.
Who remembers Bubba-Gump Shrimp? Bubba would be shocked to see the delicious arrangement of cocktail shrimp from Vietnam. I grabbed a bag of frozen shrimp. I’m pretty sure Forrest and Lt. Dan weren’t shrimping in India.
Sadly, seafood is off the menu at my house at least until I can find a source that supports American producers. Or maybe I should just hope for North American producers.
I have a bag of frozen crappie in the freezer. I caught them myself so there’s no question about what’s in that bag. I went to grab a bag of frozen French fries. I just about fell out right there in the store when I saw the Great Value brand French fries were a product of Belgium. How can a farmer in Belgium produce more potatoes than an American farmer? Something is off here.
Across the aisle is where they keep the frozen pizza. Now I’m on a mission. I’m not grocery shopping I’m looking at labels.
I’ve enjoyed Totino’s pizza rolls in the past, and now I’m thinking, where are they made? Well, the bag tells me they are produced in Minnesota, but as I continued to read I see the disturbing passage: “Contains Bioengineered Food Ingredients.” What the hell does that mean?
That was enough for me to realize that we are in more trouble than we even realize. Americans are no longer producing groceries. Is the public really aware of where the food is coming from that we feed our families?
As I was leaving, the end cap on the frozen food aisle caught my attention, just as it was intended to do.
Little Debbie Sweet Rolls. Little Debbie is known all over South Arkansas as the go-to snack on a deer stand this time of the year. I flipped the box over just to see. Sure enough, I’ll never look at a Sweet Roll the same again.
By now you’ve probably guessed it: “Contains A Bioengineered Food Ingredient.”
I left the store empty handed and thinking. How did we get to this point? When did we lose America to the world market? What will we face in the future as we become more and more dependent on foreign countries to feed us?
I guess it’s going to be deep fried Arkansas crappie and hush puppies for supper. Thank goodness deer season is still in. I’ve got freezers to fill. It’s funny, those feral hogs are looking a lot better today than they were last week!
At least I don’t have to wonder where they come from.
