by Dr. Ridgely Muhammad
�Guest Columnist�

"Is it organic?" Please do not ask me or any other Black farmer that question. Number one, you probably do not know the meaning of the word. Number two, the reason that most of you left the farm was because of the work involved with "organics." And number three, you really don�t care.

I was a part of that "you" myself until just a few years ago. Let me start with number three. I just finished reading a book called "Fast Food Nation" by Eric Schlosser. The Honorable Elijah Muhammad taught 30 years ago in "How to Eat to Live" that there was little pure food on the market. He also said that soon there would be "no pure food" on the market. You may not see his divinity as I do, but he was 100 percent correct on this warning to us according to Mr. Schlosser�s book.

What really caught my attention was his description of the food additive industry that produces the flavors and smells that make processed food taste like "real" food in his chapter called, "Why the fries taste good." He states that the area around the New Jersey Turnpike "produces about two-thirds of the flavor additives sold in the United States." One of these companies "comes up with flavor for popular soft drinks, sport drinks, bottled teas, and wine coolers, for all-natural juice drinks, organic soy drinks, beers, and malt liquors."

Now what got me was the "all-natural juice drinks" and the "organic soy drinks." I thought that "natural" meant natural and "organic" meant made without chemicals. Mr. Schlosser says "natural flavors," according to the FDA, "must be derived entirely from natural sources�from herbs, spices, fruits, vegetables, beef, chicken, yeast, bark, roots, etc." This sounds pretty innocuous except that companies can take extracts from any of these sources, mix them together to form new compounds to produce a purely artificial "flavor." For instance, "natural" almond flavor can be derived from mixing "peach and apricot pits" not using any almonds at all.

Taste and smell is what we use to determine if a substance is edible or not. Taste and smell are our first defense against being poisoned. Therefore, the "merchants of death" have devised a "scientific" way to get around this small difficulty by tricking the tongue and mouth into eating poisons anyway.

Mr. Schlosser writes, "The Food and Drug Administration does not require flavor companies to disclose the ingredients of their additives, so long as all the chemicals are considered by the agency to be GRAS (Generally Regarded As Safe)."

Wait a minute. Can�t you produce a poisonous substance from two or more non-poisonous substances? The answer is yes. For instance, when you mix "peach and apricot pits" you produce traces of "hydrogen cyanide, a deadly poison." No wonder people are dying of cancer. They are eating traces of numerous poisons in every processed food from the grocery store or from the "Fast Food to Death" restaurants.

If any of you eat one burger from "McDeath," "Murder King," "Wind Dies," "White Casket" or "Kryst Stalls," don�t ask no Black farmer if his product is "organic." The fast food industry�in cahoots with the FDA and USDA�have managed to drive most small farmers out of business. McDonalds is now the largest buyer of beef in America. She buys her beef from a few beef processing monsters that control the world�s supply of processed meats.

So ask McDonalds or those other fast food restaurants "what�s in the beef?" Mr. Schlosser documents the fast-food industry�s fight against any scientific testing of their beef for "E. coli" bacteria that has proven deadly to hundreds of Americans each year. Of course, there are many "body parts" in the ground up beef that you don�t want to know about, but you should at least know if there is any E. coli.

Mr. Schlosser also points out that the "meat packing system that arose to supply the fast-food chains � has proved to be an extremely efficient system for spreading disease." He further documents that it is easier to recall an automobile or a defective toy than tainted meat.

The profits of the meat industry are more important than public health issues to this government. Who is this government working for anyway? Certainly not its former slaves or the working classes of so-called White people.

Remember when you bite into one of those juicy "murderers," I mean burgers, that you are not only killing yourself ... oh, wait a minute � I didn�t point out that "obesity" has now become the number one health threat in America. Obesity has also been directly related to the rise in fast-food consumption.

According to Mr. Schlosser, "severely obese American children, aged 6 to 10, are now dying from heart attacks caused by their weight." He states, that "between 1984 and 1993, the number of fast-food restaurants in Great Britain roughly doubled�and so did the obesity rate among adults."

Muhammad Farms along with other Black farmers are trying to jump start an agricultural industry that was destroyed by big business and the USDA. When we bring our products to market, the first thing I hear is, "is it organic?" "Organic" means containing carbon. All living things contain carbon. If what you mean is, "will it kill us?" Our answer is, "we use as little chemicals or fertilizer as necessary and never the harsh chemicals. And our products are not genetically engineered."

Visit us at www.MuhammadFarms.com for more information.