Eating with Conscience.

• Author: Lyman, Howard

I am a fourth generation cattle rancher and feed lot operator. Now I travel about the country for about 12 months out of the year and I talk to people about eating with conscience. Eating with conscience today begins with the question who produced my food; what did they use on it; and what will it do to me and the environment. It is something that people should ask themselves every time they pick up a fork, because this fork is the most dangerous weapon in the arsenal of homo sapiens. We are digging more graves with our forks than any other tool. Now when I go around talking to people I tell them that the future is not going to be decided by corporations; it's not going to be decided by Congress; it is going to be decided by consumers. Every time you take out your wallet, every time you spend a dollar, you're voting on the future.

Who is going to produce your food? Right now, we probably have the greatest rush in the history of the world. As the corporations look at the control of food, the one thing that you cannot do without, the one thing that they can raise the price of, and you have to pay them, is food.

You know DeBeers went out and ended up with control of the diamond industry. Is there anyone who cannot survive without a diamond? You know that it is a wonderful thing to have a monopoly, but it is a greater thing to have a monopoly on something that is absolutely necessary. The corporations have looked at this and they decided that the future is going to be their control.

At one time I had 7,000 head of cattle, 12,000 acres of crops, and 30 employees. I never forgot the time I wrote a check for a million dollars and it didn't bounce, and I thought that I was farmer of the year. But when I went to Washington DC and worked on Capitol Hill I really learned the importance of something called the golden rule: "Them that's got the gold makes the rules."

After five years of working on Capitol Hill, I said to my friends, "This game is rigged; the deck is closed; we will never win here."

My friends, they all looked at me and laughed. They said, "What are you going to do, go talk to the people?"

And I said, "You know, there is only one word that strikes fear in the heart of the elected politicians and that one word is 'unemployment,' and where does it come from, it comes from the people."

How many of you realize that in 1945, there were 2,500,000 family farmers in the United States of America and today there are less than 200,000 family farmers in America, and they...