How Farmers Become Serfs or Bankrupted by the Illegal, Monopolistic Practics of Big Meat, Big Chicken and Big Food companies
You never hear about this method of bankrupting family farms and forcing them to sell out. 2 stories from Investigate Midwest on how Tyson deliberately broke contracts and bankrupted farmers
… The company’s plans came at a human cost. Tyson closed eight meatpacking plants in 2023, six of them chicken processing and two beef processing. It laid off more than 4,200 workers across all of its plants last year.
The company has a lot to gain from its contract growers. In 2023, Tyson Foods had nearly $53 billion in sales — a third of which was from chicken. The company operates 183 chicken facilities across the country, which include processing plants, hatcheries, feed mills and grain elevators. The company’s website states it contracts with more than 3,600 poultry farmers nationwide.
The vertical consolidation (the same company owning hatcheries, feed mills, grain elevators and processing plants) and horizontal consolidation (contracts with over 3600 farmers growing eggs, broiler, chicks, etc.) give Tyson extraordinary power to control all aspects of the chicken business and squeeze the biggest profits from everyone it deals with. It also has extraordinary power in other meat industries.
It did make chickens cheap—but now this monopoly power is also directed at the consumer, who is paying a lot more for less quality. Food in nearly all of Europe and the rest of the world is now cheaper than in the US. But the quality in the US is one of the worst, due to the immense consolidation and use of the cheapest inputs to feed poultry and livestock, and lack of care by agribusinesses to give back to the soil what is taken out using compost and manure, instead pushing chemicals that fail to provide the nutrition we seek.
From the pivotal early morning phone calls to the millions in debt, former Tyson contract growers who spoke to Investigate Midwest said they have had to take out upwards of $2 million loans to become Tyson contract growers. Their contracts canceled, they’re now saddled with massive debt. They said the company pushed them to go into more debt to upgrade their barns to meet company demands. Growers also said the company told them that they would be given chickens to raise for as long as they had loans on their barns.
Now that their contracts have abruptly ended, Tyson contract growers said they aren’t able to pay off the debt. Growers are staring down bankruptcy and foreclosures. Some have sold off land or other property to pay off debt while others have retired or looked for work off the farm….
Here is another story. Why is this happening? Because in large part, the mega-food companies have been able to get away with it. Now farmers are banding together and filing antitrust lawsuits, while the federal government should have stopped these practices already.
DEXTER, Missouri – On an early August morning in 2023, Shawn Hinkle received a call from one of his technicians at Tyson Foods who, through tears, told him the company’s plant in Dexter was shutting down.
Hundreds of jobs at the poultry slaughterhouse would be lost and farmers like Hinkle, who contracted with Tyson to raise egg-laying hens, would be out of business.
A decade earlier, Hinkle borrowed $2.3 million to build two chicken houses on his land. After struggling to keep up with Tyson’s standards and investing in his farm, Hinkle now owed $2.8 million and faced the prospect of losing it all in bankruptcy.
But Tyson’s explanation didn’t make sense to Hinkle and several other farmers who, in December 2023, sued the giant meat company for breaking its contracts.
As the lawsuit moves forward, a Watchdog Writers Group analysis of documents filed in the case, in partnership with Investigate Midwest, reveals Tyson coordinated closely with Cal-Maine Foods, the company that ended up buying the Dexter plant. That coordination prevented farmers from continuing their same operations with another Tyson competitor.
Documents also show Tyson tried to prevent its former contract farmers from seeking legal remedies over the broken contracts, and has possibly attempted to discourage farmers from speaking with federal officials and journalists.
Tyson Foods declined to answer detailed questions about the allegations of the lawsuit.
After purchasing the Dexter plant, Cal-Maine offered contracts to local farmers if they retrofitted their farms to raise table egg-laying hens rather than chickens for meat. [Putting them even more into debt—Nass]. Unlike many area farmers, Hinke raised egg-laying hens to produce more chicks, which were sent to other farmers. Raising hens for Cal-Maine would have required a significant operational overall for Hinkle and other farmers.
But Cal-Maine’s offer came with a catch: The farmers would have to agree not to sue Tyson Foods for any losses because of the plant closure, according to court filings…
This newsletter was created with the goal of helping others, and over time, I’ve received many messages from people with important questions I’d love to answer. However, writing each article takes a considerable amount of time—just as an example, I’ve spent the past month working on the final installment of the DMSO series, and it’s still not quite finished. Because of this, I’m not always able to respond individually to every inquiry I get.
While I truly wish I could, the most practical solution I’ve found is to host monthly open threads. These provide readers with a space to ask any outstanding questions—especially those left over from previous content—and I make it a priority to respond. Having all the questions in one place also makes it easier for others to benefit from those answers as well.
For each of these open threads, I like to tie in a topic I’ve been meaning to discuss—usually something I’ve been thinking about but haven’t felt warrants a full-length article. This time, I want to focus on a topic near and dear to my heart, healthy children.
The Chronic Disease Epidemic
One of RFK’s rallying cries has been that our children are being stricken by an onslaught of chronic diseases and that this is undermining the strength that is our future, and his organization, the Children’s Health Defense frequently references this chart:
Since trends in motion tend to persist unless significant measures are taken to shift them, as a recently published study confirmed, this problem has continued to worsen.
Nearly half of all children receiving care in the PEDSnet multicenter network had a chronic health condition, while one-third of children in the general population experience from 1 to 15 parent-reported chronic conditions. Furthermore, obesity now affects 20% of children, and early puberty is increasingly common among girls, with 1 in 7 beginning menstruation before age 12 years. Temporal trends also showed deterioration in sleep health and increasing limitations in activity, alongside worsening of an extensive range of physical and emotional symptoms.
In turn, the study’s data shows that the rates of these conditions have roughly doubled over the last 12 years.
Likewise, many other things have rapidly gone awry
Note: this study also highlighted a myriad of other issues, such as our children being more likely to die than other developed nations, in large part due to sudden infant death syndrome (a condition strongly linked to vaccination).
The Forgotten Side of Medicine is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. To see how others have benefitted from this newsletter and its community, click here
The Other Half of The Picture
While I agree with the gravity of these findings and the urgency to re-evaluate our vaccination program, I feel they only tell half of the story. That is because:
•There are many other factors besides vaccines that also adversely affect children’s health.
•All illnesses (particularly those which result from being poisoned) tend to distribute on a bell curve, so that the severe, easy to spot reactions are only a minority, whereas less severe (and harder to spot) reactions are much more common.
On the one hand, this is due to the “measurement” problem in science, where scientific studies can generally only be conducted if they have a clear metric by which to measure things, thereby creating clear, reproducible data. This becomes an issue when an agent has so many different symptoms that it can make (many of which are quite subtle), they typically will be written off as anecdotal unless they are deliberately traced, and as a result, many common side effects of vaccines are never formally associated with them. Note: the most recent glaring example of this happened with the COVID vaccines where trial participants were only given a small list of (relatively benign) symptoms they could check off (e.g., fevers or fatigue) so as a result, those were the side-effects that appeared in the published trial reports. Likewise, V-Safe, the CDC program designed to monitor vaccine side effects, did the same; however fortunately, it also included a free text field where participants could enter other symptoms—most of which were never publicly analyzed (and which the government fought in court to avoid disclosing). Because of all of this, the majority of the medical field assumed most of the side effects patients reported from the vaccines (despite many others experiencing the same symptoms) were anecdotal and had nothing to do with the vaccines).
On the other hand, it’s because many of these pathological changes are more subtle and more complex to spot, so since people aren’t trained to notice them, and have gradually become habituated to all of it “being normal” they don’t realize how much things have changed. Note: doctors are virtually never trained to recognize the subtle neurological injuries which follow vaccination (which indicate damage has also occurred within the brain).
The Hidden Chronic Disease Epidemic
For as long as I can remember, many natural healers have told me that they can normally spot the unvaccinated children as they are much healthier and vibrant than their peers. For example, after I explained some of the ways this can be identified, two readers shared:
Thanks to this substack, I am now the unofficial medical godfather of 4 unvaccinated babies across several families. All are incredibly healthy with none of the typical problems associated with the microstrokes. All have been described by strangers and family as, “wow, your baby is really aware and paying attention. It’s like they’re sentient, I don’t know how else to say it”. And I am sad when I see those other people’s babies because I know they were supposed to be more, undergo less suffering when I hear their random high pitched shrieks.
Last year I attended a fundraiser auction to raise money for local Mennonite schools. Many families, many children. I was struck by the fact that there was a light, a brightness, in these children’s eyes that I had not seen for decades in other children. The Mennonites here do not vaccinate. Now I understand. It hurts my heart.
Likewise, I received this email a few weeks ago from a mother who followed all of my suggestions for a healthy child:
Other than a minor rash, my daughter has never had any health issues. She’s been ahead on all her developmental milestones, and from the very beginning, she’s been incredibly alert and engaged with her surroundings. She’s always exploring, and only cries when there’s a clear reason—if she’s hungry, tired, hurt, or not getting the attention she wants.
When we’re out in public, she smiles at everyone and tries to make friends. People constantly stop us to comment on how beautiful and full of life she is—some even ask if they can hold her. It wasn’t until I had her that I realized how unusual that kind of energy is in a baby. So many infants I see seem withdrawn, like they’re in a kind of daze, avoiding eye contact, and often looking genuinely sickly.
I’m incredibly grateful we were spared that, but at the same time, I’ve started to feel increasingly unsettled by what I see around me. I think a lot about what other parents must be going through—especially single mothers trying to raise kids on limited incomes—and I honestly don’t know how they manage.
One of the most challenging things when you “step out of the matrix” is becoming able to see (fairly disturbing) things all around you, and one of the key reasons why I appreciate stories like these three is because they illustrate that’s what’s been hidden right in front of us is at last becoming more and more visible.
Screens and Children
As cell phones and tablets became widely available, I would see more and more parents (who had their children with them) at medical visits using devices to keep their children content. In many cases, if a device was withdrawn, the children would have a fit (at which point the device was returned to them).
This greatly concerned me, as I could see that the way the screens pulled them in was not having a healthy effect on the child’s developing nervous system (which is why I advise parents to use audio-only media, such as small devices that play children’s songs).
Note: quite a few social media executives have said they have tremendous regret about what their products (intentionally designed to be addictive) have neurologically done to our children. Likewise, many articles have been written about how Silicon Valley tech executives send their kids to an alternative school where phones and screens are banned.1,2,3,4,5
In this publication, I’ve written numerous articles on the mass neurological damage being caused by vaccination.
In one, I showed that neurologic damage from vaccination has been a well-known problem for over a century (that previously was widely reported in the medical literature) and that conditions like autism used to be widely referred to as “mentally retarded,” a change I strongly suspect was done to obfuscate the issue (as autism exists on a wide spectrum, so hearing that someone “became autistic” is much easier to push into the back of one’s mind than if a child rapidly “becomes retarded” after a vaccine).
In the other, I highlighted that the original pertussis (DPwT) vaccine was particularly problematic as it would often cause encephalitis (which was often accompanied by piercing screams) and then leave the child with lasting brain damage. One author who studied this extensively made the fascinating observation that after the DPwT vaccine entered the market in the 1940s, a variety of societal changes followed which matched when the initial cohort who received the DPwT vaccine reached each age bracket.
For example, in the 1950s, a condition termed “minimal brain damage” [MBD] was coined (with the defining characteristic of it being hyperactivity), which before long became “perhaps the most common, and certainly one of the most time-consuming problems in current pediatric practice”. The symptoms of MBD (as defined by America’s Public Health Service and the American Psychiatric Association) had a significant overlap with what was seen after encephalitis, DPT injuries, and what was associated with autism.
In the 1960s, Ritalin came into use for treating attention deficit disorder and hyperactivity, and minimal brain damage was gradually phased out and replaced with ADHD (a condition independent studies show a 3-20 fold increase from vaccination).
I mention all of this because I have had a nagging suspicion that something similar is happening with screens, as they both draw in and pacify neurologically injured children. Furthermore, patterns set in childhood are very difficult to shake for life, and as we are now starting to see a variety of signs the first generation raised on technology has a variety of mental health issues linked to their technology exposure, which further argues for avoiding screens at an early age.
Note: the mother I mentioned above said one of their major challenges with her daughter has been keeping her away from screens (as she is drawn to them whenever they are left open), and as a result they are using screens less now.
Raising a Healthy Child
\As I’ve shown throughout this publication, there is significant evidence that vaccines are damaging to a child’s neurological development, particularly as more and more are given closely together. However, while I believe vaccines are the primary issue, there are a lot of things I think merit serious consideration (e.g., avoiding screens) for parents wishing to have healthy children—most of which essentially equate to “do what people did 100 years ago,” and in the mothers I’ve counseled through the child birth process, I found the best results came from doing all of them. As such, over the last year, I’ve worked on compiling a series about all the most critical aspects I believe deserve attention before, during, and after pregnancy.
In the final part of this article (which exists as an open forum for you to ask any questions you may have), I will cover the key points from each of those that you can directly incorporate into raising a healthy child.
Continue reading this post for free, courtesy of A Midwestern Doctor.
Back to the Future came out 40 years ago last week. While the original took us back to 1955, the end of the movie and the sequels imagined 2015 with flying cars and hoverboards. What they missed was the real transformation: how eagerly we’d hand over our most intimate biological data to corporations and governments.
Yesterday, someone sent me a document. I can’t verify its authenticity or origin, but they claimed it was leaked from a government archive dated 2065. Given what we already know about the current surveillance infrastructure—and the economic incentives driving the “Internet of Bodies”—it feels disturbingly plausible.
Sometimes, the best way to understand the present is to imagine how future historians might view our choices.
1985 BASELINE ASSESSMENT
Citizens showed dangerous levels of independence. Key problems:
Made Their Own Choices: 97% decided what to eat without consulting optimization algorithms
No Biometric Monitoring: 0% shared heartbeat, sleep, or activities with approved wellness partners
Relied on Primitive Instincts: Used outdated “gut feelings” to make decisions
Untracked Movement: Moved freely without carbon calculations or behavioral analysis
Suboptimal Decision-Making: Made incorrect choices 73% of the time when left unguided
Research Note: Citizens were obsessed with antiquated concepts like “privacy” and “personal autonomy.” Substantial cultural engineering would be required.
2025 MIDDLE PHASE
After making monitoring trendy and incentivized, citizens began voluntary participation:
Economic Compliance: 89% modified behavior when insurance adjusted rates in real-time
Algorithm Consultation: 45% check apps before making health decisions
Privacy Redefinition: Successfully rebranded “privacy” as “missing out on personalized optimization”
Identity Integration: 34% voluntarily linked biometric data to government systems for “seamless experience”
Social Media Conditioning: Platforms provided crucial behavioral modification infrastructure. Citizens voluntarily documented their lives for algorithmic analysis while competing for validation metrics. Personas replaced personhood with minimal resistance
Security Convenience Celebration (2025): TSA elimination of shoe removal requirements was celebrated by the public, including freedom advocates who failed to recognize the requirement was removed only because comprehensive body scanning infrastructure was now operational
Implementation Note: “Health freedom” extremists were neutralized by recruiting trusted celebrities. The “Make America Healthy Again” campaign proved highly effective, ironically accelerating acceptance of monitoring systems among traditionally skeptical populations.
2029-2037: TOTAL SYSTEM INTEGRATION
Key discovery: Citizens who embraced biometric monitoring were 340% more likely to accept additional systems when marketed as “feature upgrades.”
Integration Milestones:
Climate Fear Acceleration (2025-2027): Increased atmospheric modification programs generated optimal citizen anxiety levels about “climate crisis.” Geoengineering operations, previously denied, rebranded as “emergency planetary cooling” with 94% public acceptance
Conspiracy Theorist Classification (2025): Citizens investigating HAARP and atmospheric programs successfully marginalized as “climate deniers”
Atmospheric Wellness Enhancement (2027): Aluminum and barium particulate distribution normalized citizens to environmental chemical modifications. Transition from “chemtrail conspiracy” to “necessary climate intervention” achieved seamlessly
Medical Compliance Acceleration (2020-2023): Global health emergency provided unprecedented opportunity to test population-wide acceptance of experimental interventions. Citizens initially questioning protocols were successfully re-educated through social pressure
Frictionless Verification (2029): Biometric data auto-populates all government interactions
Movement Optimization Zones (2031): 15-minute wellness districts eliminate suboptimal route planning
Carbon-Biometric Fusion (2032): Personal carbon allowances calibrated to real-time health metrics
Social Compatibility Scoring (2033): Employment, housing, and dating filtered by wellness compliance
Public-Private Wellness Partnership (2034): Meta, Google, Amazon, and Palantir integrated seamless citizen engagement across all life domains. Alexa wellness coaching achieved 87% compliance with daily optimization directives
Universal Wellness Grid (2035): All systems merged. Citizens compete for monitoring privileges
Breakthrough: Each system enhanced perceived value of previous adoptions. The transition from “posting for likes” to “living for optimization scores” required minimal cultural adjustment. Citizens never recognized they were constructing their own containment infrastructure.
2038-2050: VOLUNTARY SUBMISSION
Revolutionary discovery: Citizens who chose optimization voluntarily showed 3500% higher compliance than those subjected to mandates. They became enthusiastic evangelists, shaming non-participants as “selfish.”
Resistance Elimination:
Non-participants excluded from financial services and employment
Social ostracism as monitored citizens avoided “optimization resisters”
Citizens who refused experimental medical interventions during 2020-2023 compliance testing pre-classified as “wellness non-compliant” and systematically excluded from society
Montana Privacy Commune Incident (2043): Final holdouts surrendered after their children were classified as “educationally at-risk.” Exit interviews showed 94% satisfaction with transition to monitored living
Critical Learning: Children proved optimal leverage points for behavioral modification of non-compliant adults.
2051-2065: PERFECT HARMONY
Consciousness Integration (2051): Direct neural interfaces eliminated the inefficiency of manual device checking. Thoughts now require pre-approval through the Wellness Grid.
Current Success Metrics (99.7% voluntary participation):
Complete Monitoring: 98.9% connected to behavioral prediction systems 24/7
Cognitive Pre-approval: Protocols automatically accepted before conscious processing
Thought Optimization: 87% reduction in “counter-wellness ideation”
Identity Dissolution: Citizens cannot distinguish personal desires from system recommendations
Decision Elimination: Zero unauthorized movements, purchases, or social connections
Recent Citizen Testimonial: “I wake up knowing exactly what to think, feel, eat, and believe. My carbon allowance perfectly matches my health goals. I am grateful the burden of choice has been eliminated. There is no confusion about what it means to be human—the system tells me.”
(Administrative Note: This citizen was processed 11 hours later for expressing individual gratitude, indicating dangerous residual self-awareness.)
ADDITIONAL OBSERVATIONS
Language Optimization: Terms like “freedom,” “gut instinct,” and “individual” reclassified as “wellness-negative vocabulary”
Generational Success: Citizens born post-2040 cannot differentiate between self and monitoring systems; personal identity successfully converted to subscription service
Economic Optimization: Wellness Grid generates $4.7 trillion annually through behavioral data monetization
NEXT PHASE OBJECTIVES
Neural infrastructure completion in remaining rural zones (Montana, Wyoming, Northern Idaho)
Deploy genetic optimization ensuring future generations born pre-compliant
Phase out museums containing pre-optimization historical materials (citizens request removal of “depressing old human content”)
If this document seems impossible, remember: 40 years ago, no one imagined we’d voluntarily carry tracking devices everywhere, share our private thoughts on corporate platforms, or ask machines what to think, feel, eat, and believe.
The future isn’t inevitable. But it is predictable—if we refuse to change course.
The first act of resistance is remembering: You don’t need a machine to tell you how you feel.
How far away is your phone right now? When did you last look at it? For many of us, these digital devices are almost constantly in our hands, and a new study highlights the effects on brain activity that can happen when we cut back on using them.
The research involved 25 young adults aged between 18 and 30, who were asked to restrict their smartphone use as much as possible for 72 hours: Only essential communications and work-related activities were allowed.
Researchers from Heidelberg University and the University of Cologne in Germany used magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI) scans and psychological tests before and after the phone diet to determine what kind of effect this had on neural patterns and activity.
“We used a longitudinal approach to investigate effects of smartphone restriction in smartphone users,” write the researchers in their published paper.
“Associations between changes of brain activation over time and addiction-related neurotransmitter systems were found.”
During the scans run after the 72-hour period, the participants were shown a variety of image prompts – including pictures of smartphones turned on and turned off, as well as more ‘neutral’ images showing subjects such as boats and flowers.
Images of phones and other objects were used to spark brain activity. (Schmitgen et al., Computers in Human Behavior, 2025)
When phone image prompts were used, changes were observed in parts of the brain linked to reward processing and cravings, similar in some ways to brain signals connected to substance addictions – suggesting our phones can be addictive like nicotine or alcohol.
That the changes seen in the brain were associated with dopamine and serotonin systems backs up this idea of phone addiction. These two neurotransmitters are linked to multiple brain functions, including compulsive behavior and mood control.
Based on the psychological tests, however, there were no changes in the mood of the participants or any feelings of craving, despite the limited phone access. Some volunteers did report improvements in mood, but this didn’t show up in the test data as significant.
The study didn’t delve into any detail about why the smartphone behaviors prompted the brain activity changes, but there are likely to be several factors at play. It’s possible that not all phone-based activities are as addictive as others.
“Our data does not disentangle craving for smartphone use and craving for social interaction, nowadays two tightly intertwined processes,” write the researchers.
“Although our data shows relatively robust findings without unraveling these processes, future studies should clearly aim to address this aspect.”
Scientists are still figuring out how phones are changing our lives, and our brains – it’s less than 20 years ago since the first iPhone appeared – but now we know a little more about some of the subtle withdrawal symptoms that happen when we aren’t picking up our mobiles every few minutes.
“The identified neural mechanisms may substantially promote addictive behavior in people at risk for excessive smartphone use,” write the researchers.
Our smartphones enable—and encourage—constant connection to information, entertainment, and each other. They put the world at our fingertips, and rarely leave our sides. Although these devices have immense potential to improve welfare, their persistent presence may come at a cognitive cost. In this research, we test the “brain drain” hypothesis that the mere presence of one’s own smartphone may occupy limited-capacity cognitive resources, thereby leaving fewer resources available for other tasks and undercutting cognitive performance. Results from two experiments indicate that even when people are successful at maintaining sustained attention—as when avoiding the temptation to check their phones—the mere presence of these devices reduces available cognitive capacity. Moreover, these cognitive costs are highest for those highest in smartphone dependence. We conclude by discussing the practical implications of this smartphone-induced brain drain for consumer decision-making and consumer welfare.
We all understand the joys of our always-wired world—the connections, the validations, the laughs … the info. … But we are only beginning to get our minds around the costs.
With the recent focus on Making America Healthy Again (MAHA) with food, knowing a bit about the USDA and food labeling has never been more important.
The US Department of Agriculture (USDA) is a huge executive division within the US government. It is subdivided into 15 agencies with oversight by 15 administrative offices. The USDA employs nearly 100,000 people, working at more than 4,500 locations nationwide and abroad. For 2024, the USDA was given an operating budget of $24.46 billion, an increase of 11.5% over the previous year. The bureaucratic behemoth has oversight regarding food, agriculture, natural resources, rural development, nutrition, and issues related to public policy.
One agency is the Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS). The AMS creates and administers domestic and international marketing opportunities for producers of “food, fiber, and specialty crops.” This includes commodity procurement and contract management for cotton, tobacco, livestock, poultry, specialty crops, and all types of food labeled organic.
As it turns out, the National Organic Program (NOP) is the federal regulatory program within the AMS that develops then enforces national standards for organically produced agricultural products sold within the United States. Run by only 34 employees and the Office of the Deputy Administrator, the NOP was allocated $24 million within the 2024 operating budget to oversee and regulate all elements of the organic food industry. For comparison, the budget for the Packers and Stockyards program, which regulates and monitors the activities of livestock, meat, and poultry, was allocated $35 million.
NOP oversees the work of 84 certifiers who perform audits, write audit report reviews, send out notices of noncompliance, issue corrective action reviews, and respond to consumers and producers seeking information and assistance regarding all food categories of organic food and labeling, including meat. The expanded availability of organic products in retail stores, supermarkets, and online platforms has made it easier for consumers to access organic meat and has contributed to its market’s growth. In 2021, just over 16,000 certified organic farms were in operation in the US, with California having the most certified farms by far (3,061) while nearly 7,000 farms were certified as organic pastureland and rangeland.
Want to become an organic farmer? There’s a lot to know…
The organic food market’s overall growth has impacted the organic meat sector in many positive ways. As consumers become more aware and critical of the quality of food they eat and prepare for their families, their concerns are driving the availability of organic products in retail stores, supermarkets, and online platforms, including the search for organic meat.
The size of the Global Organic Meat Market was valued at USD $18.78 Billion in 2022 and is poised to grow to USD $37.39 Billion by 2031. The concern for animal welfare is a significant driver for the organic markets. North America is expected to lead the global demand for organic meat. This is, at least in part, due to NOP and USDA programs that support the production of organic meat and meat-related goods.
There is also a growing emphasis on regenerative organic practices for the organic meat industry. Organic meat production typically adheres to stricter animal welfare standards than conventional meat production.
Regenerative farming has been used since the late 1970s, but the terms Regenerative Agriculture and Regenerative Farming came into wider circulation in the early 1980s and is becoming a very popular buzzword now. The technology focuses on restoring soil health via holistic land management, rotational grazing, and enhancing crop biodiversity. While organic farms also prioritize soil health, regenerative practices often go beyond organic standards.
Under NOP regulations, each certified organic farm must have an organic systems plan (OSP), a detailed outline that explains how the farm operations will satisfy the requirements of the NOP regulations. Just understanding all the rules used to monitor and market the organic food market is onerous. This includes (in part) keeping track of updates to each of these regulations:
Organic is a labeling term that indicates that the food or other agricultural products have been produced through approved methods. These methods integrate cultural, biological, and mechanical practices that foster the recycling of resources, promote ecological balance, and conserve biodiversity. Synthetic fertilizers, sewage sludge, irradiation, and genetic engineering may not be used.
Many consumers want to eat as “clean” as possible, meaning they want real food that is not contaminated with chemicals, antibiotics, pesticides, GMOs, and toxic vaccines.
Livestock and poultry farmers have caught on to this. Many farmers believe in the organic certification concept but are unwilling to go through the long, and often very expensive, certification program process. After the certification, farmers have to pay an annual, often pricey, fee to maintain the certification.
When consumers see the word “organic” on a package or a label, they have expectations about the product they are purchasing. USDA-certified organic foods must be grown and processed according to federal guidelines that take into consideration soil quality, animal raising practices, pest and weed control, and the use of antibiotics and hormones.
USDA organic regulations prohibit the use of GMO ingredients, listing them as “excluded methods.” Foods labeled organic are also not allowed to contain bioengineered ingredients (BE), which means ingredients made using recombinant DNA technology such as gene deletion, gene doubling, introducing a foreign gene, and changing the positions of genes. (NOTE: These ingredients ARE in foods that are NOT organic).
Organic products are labeled according to the percentage of organic ingredients they contain. There are four distinct labeling categories for organic products:
100 Percent Organic – Products with this label contain only certified organic ingredients, including any processing aids.
Organic – For products in the “organic” category, at least 95% of the ingredients must be certified organic. The remaining five percent of ingredients must be organically produced, unless commercially unavailable or allowed on the National List.
Made With Organic ***– For multi-ingredient agricultural products, the “Made with organic ***” label means the product must contain at least 70 percent certified organic ingredients. These products may contain up to 30% of allowed non-organic ingredients. All ingredients – including the 30% non-organic ingredients – must be produced without GMOs.
If a product states, “Made with organic grains,” all ingredients derived from grains— including enriched wheat flour, corn oil, or oats—must be certified organic. If a product contains both organic and non-organic forms of the same ingredient, they must be identified separately in the ingredient statement.
Specific Organic Ingredients – This label is a mixture of non-organic and certified organic ingredients. The ingredient statement of the products identifies that the product contains less than 70% organic content.
These labeling differences help educated consumers to distinguish between products that are either labeled as “made with organic ingredients” or products that are made with a mix of ingredients.
The USDA and NOP organic regulations prohibit organically labeled food from being contaminated with residuesfrom pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, and genetically modified (GMO) or bioengineered (BE) ingredients. Products undergo required residue testing. If foods are found to be even minimally contaminated (there is no minimum level that is tolerated), penalties and warning letters are issued. (In other words, organic food appears to have a zero tolerance level for these residues. That’s good!)
Labels for Meat
Chicken
To be designated as organic, the birds must be raised organically, starting no later than two days after they hatch. The USDA requires the chicken’s feed to be grown without pesticides or synthetic fertilizers and certified.
Being free-range is not the same as being organic. Free-range and cage-free refers to where/how the chickens lived, not what they were fed, and gives no indication about the quality of the air or hygiene levels where they lived. According to the New Roots Institute,
“Outside space provided to free-range chickens is loosely defined and often just a formality: it’s likely too small, barren, and otherwise inadequate for the thousands of chickens being raised in a farm for slaughter.’
Free-range. “Free-range” is a marketing term used by the food industry. It means the bird was provided shelter, unlimited access to food, fresh water, and outdoor access during their production or life cycle for at least 51% of their lives (making it “the majority” of their lives).
Cage-free. This label indicates that the bird could roam within a building, a room, or an enclosed area with unlimited access to food and fresh water. Cage-free hens generally have no access to the outdoors.
Don’t be fooled by food labels that sound like the living conditions are better for chickens. The ASPC (American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals®) has a table to help make informed choices about chicken meat. The guide helps consumers make choices based on chicken welfare. These three are the best choices:
Source: ASPC table
Eggs
With labels like “organic,” “free-range,” “cage-free,” and “vegetarian fed” it’s hard to know which eggs are the best to buy. While food labeling should be simple and transparent, unfortunately, is mostly about marketing.
Conventional Eggs
Conventional eggs are not the most ethical or nutritious eggs. These birds are generally fed poor quality feed that often contains antibiotics and hormones. Hens live in stacked rows of cages and live in a space approximately the size of a sheet of paper. The vast majority of egg-laying hens are confined in battery cages. Unable to spread their wings, caged laying hens are among agribusiness’s most intensively confined animals. The poor living conditions increase the risk of bacterial contamination.
Globally, non-typhoidal Salmonella is the most frequently documented cause of foodborne disease. In the US, it is the second most common cause of foodborne outbreaks, and around 20% of the illnesses caused by Salmonella are related to poultry, poultry products, and eggs.
In a study from 2023, Salmonella contamination varies widely among egg-producing countries. Contamination in US is low, and reported to be 0.005%. In Europe, Salmonella contamination has been found to be about 0.37%, and in China, the world’s largest egg producer eggs, between 0.5% and 5.6% of eggs were found to be contaminated with the bacteria.
Free-Range Eggs
Lines can get blurred when it comes to the free-range egg label. This is because organic eggs must be from free-range hens, but free-range eggs aren’t necessarily organic, because the birds do not need to be fed organic feed. The USDA only requires free-range eggs come from “free-range” chickens but most really only have limited access to a small, fenced in outdoor area.
Likewise, eggs labeled as “vegetarian,” “antibiotic-free,” or “all-natural” don’t have to meet the strict standards required for certified organic eggs. There’s little oversight, so it’s often up to individual farms or companies to define what those labels mean
Organic Eggs
Under the USDA Organic Certification Requirements, organic eggs must come from chickens that are fed only organic feed that is free of animal by-products, synthetic fertilizers, pesticides, or chemical additives. These chickens must not be given any antibiotics or additional hormones.
Organic eggs must be laid by 100% free-range, cage-free chickens with access to an outdoor area, even if it’s small. Overall, organically raised hens offer the highest standard of animal welfare, making them the most ethical egg option available.
Organic eggs are more nutritional sound, even though the industry says there is no difference between organic and non-organic eggs. Since the hens are fed high-quality feed, have more movement, and are drug-free, they produce fresher eggs with more nutrients. The yolks of organic eggs have a richer orange color; they certainly taste richer and healthier. After eating organic eggs, I find the non-organic eggs served in most restaurants taste like styrofoam in comparison.
While organic eggs are often more expensive, sometimes double the cost of commercial eggs, they’re worth it. Look for the USDA Certified Organic label on the egg carton or buy from local farmers who follow the strict standard s for raising organic birds.
Beef
NOTE: Grass-fed describes WHAT the animal was eating, whereas pasture-fed describes WHERE the animal was being fed.
Organic means the cows ate only organic feed and were not given antibiotics or hormones.
Grass-fed
Animals receive most of their nutrients from grass and forages (such as hay) throughout their life. However, the animal’s diet has nothing to do with whether or not it received hormones or antibiotics, or was exposed to toxic pesticides, including glyphosate. In other words, just because it the meat is labeled grass-fed, doesn’t necessarily mean it is organic.
The American Grassfed Association (AGA), a non-governmental organization, developed an approval label to clear this concern. If the meat has an AGA label , it means the animal was raised in a pasture, only fed grass or hay, and was never treated with hormones or antibiotics. American Grassfed Association (AGA) is a producer-founded and run non-profit organization that supports American Family Farms and Ranchers through certification, advocacy, and education programs.
A list of AGA-approved providers can be found here.
Pasture-raised
A pastured-raised animal must have had access to the outdoors for at least 120 days per year. According to USDA regulations, this label includes terminology that refers to only a particular animal. For example, the animal may have lived in a field or on a wide-open ranch, or it may have lived outside in a small pen. The USDA has not developed a labeling policy regarding hormones and antibiotics for pasture-raised products.
Pork
Pigs intended for meat products must be raised organically from the last third of gestation and, like beef, without the use of antibiotics and growth hormone stimulants. To be labeled USDA certified organic, the pork must not only come from pigs raised on organically certified farms but also be processed by a USDA certified organic processing plant.
There are four major aspects of USDA-certified organic regulations relating to pig production—source of animals, feed, healthcare, and living conditions. The only piglets that can be sold as organic are those who whose mother (the sow) has been managed organically from the last third of gestation to birth (gestation ranges from 111 to 120 days.) Federal organic regulations require that organic pigs have access to the outdoors, shade, shelter, exercise areas, fresh air, clean drinking water, and direct sunlight. Organic pigs must have access to clean, dry bedding. If the bedding has crop residue, it must be from organic crops. (Pigs are treated more humanely than chickens).
Pork labeled as organic must come from pigs that have only been fed a diet consisting of organic grains and protein sources, including organic soybean meal. The animal feed must be 100% organically produced and without animal byproducts or daily drugs. GMOs, or hormones. While antibiotics are strictly prohibited, vaccines are allowed….andthey get many.
Sheep
As of Jan. 31, 2024, there were 5.03 million head of sheep in the United States, with the largest numbers being located in Texas, California, and Colorado. Even though sheep are produced in all 50 states, most large sheep ranches are located west of the Mississippi River. When it comes to the countries with the most sheep, the US isn’t even inthe top 10.
Lamb is meat from a young sheep, under one year of age. Lamb is said to have a very delicate, even slightly sweet, grass-fed flavor; the meat is very tender. Lamb is usually 60-70% more costly than mutton. Mutton is the meat of mature sheep, harvested between 2 to 3 years of age. Mutton is said to have a robust, greasy, even gamey taste compared to true cuts of lamb. Because the animal is older, the meat tends to be tougher and more “chewy.” Most lamb meat sold in the US comes from older sheep.
The USDA does not have clear labeling rules that differentiate between lamb and mutton. Classifying and labeling the meat lamb, yearling, or mutton is left to producers. Therefore, any sheep meat under 24 months at the time of harvest can be labelled as lamb when it is actually mutton.
An astonishingly large and diverse number of products are made from sheep and their byproducts, from food to cosmetics and shaving cream to surgical sutures. Check out this American Sheep Industry Association flier to seethe full list.
What about produce labels?
Produce can be labeled organic if it was grown in soil that has not had any prohibited substances applied to it for at least three years before harvest. Products that are clearing not organic have no misleading labeling, except for products that now bear the label coated with Apeel, which I’ve written about previously.
Another chemical used on produce since 1996 is called 1-MCP, which stands for methyl-cyclopropane, marketed under the name Smart Fresh. When sprayed on apples and oranges, the shelf life can be extended for up to three years by blocking the replication of bacteria on the surface of the fruit, but it can also disrupts human and animal gut microbiome.
Other labels found on produce are the PLU labels, standing for Price-LookUp codes. They allow retailers to manage inventory, process customer checkout faster, and help manage the produce industry supply chain. Assigned by the International Federation for Produce Standards (IFPS), more than 1,400 PLU codes have been assigned to various types of fruits and vegetables. The labels also identify if the produce is organic or conventionally grown.
A four-digit code starting with the number 3 or 4 (3000 or 4000 series) is used for conventionally grown produce. This means synthetic fertilizers, chemicals, and/or pesticides might have been used during the growth of the produce.
A five-digit code starting with the number 3 identifies fruits and vegetables that have been irradiated or electronically pasteurized.
A five-digit code starting with the number 6 identifies pre-cut fruits and vegetables.
A five-digit code starting with the number 8 is designated for fruits and vegetables that have been genetically modified or bioengineered.
A five-digit code starting with the number 9 is designated for organic fruits and vegetables.
If the code contains more than five digits, it is not part of the IFPS standardized system.
Summary
the next time you go to the grocery store, spend a little more time reading food labels. Now that you know a little more how they are categorized, you can be an even better consumer for yourself and your family. You’ll want to chose organic eggs, Certified Humane chicken, and AGA labeled beef. You may want to shop using the ASPC food shopping list. They say on their website, but it’s a place to start.
“Where to buy” information is kept up-to-date by individual companies; please contact the store or seller directly to confirm product availability.
*The ASPCA does not audit farms or ranches and instead relies on independent animal welfare certifications as the basis for evaluating different food brands in the marketplace.
•A long history exists of a wave of severe injuries following new vaccinations being introduced to the market. In most cases, those injuries were swept under the rug to protect the business.
•In many cases, the severe “mysterious” injuries we see now are remarkably similar to those that were observed over a century ago. Unfortunately, a widespread embargo exists on ever allowing this data to come to light (as that would instantly destroy the vaccine program).
•A variety of independent studies (summarized below) have shown that vaccines cause a wide range of chronic illnesses.
•A 1990 book made a strong case that widespread vaccination was also causing an epidemic of widespread brain damage which was both lowering America’s IQ and causing a massive rise in violent crime.
•In this article, we will also review exactly what in that 1990 book and the classic signs that can be used to determine if someone has a vaccine injury (along with the subtle more spiritual ones).
Note: due to the recent ACIP changes (the committee which decides which vaccines you take) and past interest in this article, I revised and updated it.
My mind often overlaps the past present and future onto themselves. Because of this, I will frequently recall events that happened in the past which perfectly mirror what is unfolding before us, and in turn, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve witnessed humanity repeat its same mistakes or can see a slow motion train-wreck ahead on the horizon. During COVID, I realized we were again reenacting the same tragedy humanity had ever experienced since the smallpox vaccine was brought to the market and I had a thought. If people became aware of what had happened before and ended our collective amnesia, perhaps this could at last stop.
As fate would have it, my wish came true, and without knowing me, Steve Kirsch gave me the opportunity to begin introducing that forgotten history to the world. This happened after he chose to publish an article I wrote illustrating how the trucker protests were identical to smallpox protests that had happened more than a century before and then for reasons I still do not understand, encouraged his readers to subscribe to me so I would start writing here. Note: At the time I chose the username “A Midwestern Doctor” (for the smallpox article), I did not put much thought into it as I was never expecting to use it again.
Over the years, I’ve noticed again and again that a vaccine disaster happens which injuries many in a very similar way, it gets swept under the rug (often by officials who are quite conflicted in their decision to do so), and then the same thing happens again a few decades later.
Given that we give dozens of vaccines to each member of society, this raises an obvious question—what is that doing to society?
A Brief History of Vaccine Disasters
In 1798, the smallpox vaccine hit the market. Once it hit the market, it was observed to frequently cause smallpox outbreaks (rather than prevent them) and to cause a wide range of debilitating and complex injuries that many of the doctors had never seen before (and many of which I believe were examples of “blood stasis”). Curiously, rather than recognizing this was a mistake, most of the medical profession endorsed the smallpox vaccine, and governments around the world mandated it as cases kept on increasing, leading to a downward spiral that was eventually broken by mass public protest against those mandates. Having looked at it extensively, I am of the opinion the smallpox vaccine reshaped the trajectory of humanity’s health and was an inflection point in the era of chronic illness.
In the 1800s and early 1900s, a variety of early vaccines (e.g., rabies, typhoid, diphtheria, tuberculosis) and horse-generated antiserums (for most of the common infections at the time) entered the market. Since many of these vaccines were produced in small independent labs, there were a variety of quality control issues with these products, which frequently led to hot lots being released that severely injured or killing a group of people. Additionally, many of those vaccines had a high degree of toxicity. Because of this, a variety of new and severe medical conditions emerged, many of which were deemed to be due to brain inflammation (encephalitis) or brain damage (encephalopathy) and observed to occur in conjunction with cranial nerve damage. Most of these conditions (which I discussed in detail here) in turn mirrored the myriad of injuries we now too see from modern vaccinations. In addition to the injuries, two major issues stood out during this period:
•First, in addition to sometimes being directly contaminated with the disease causing organism (e.g., yellow fever or tuberculosis) and causing the illness, vaccines would often cause a temporary immune suppression which lead to disease outbreaks in those vaccinated (discussed here). However, each time this happened, rather than it being seen as a sign we needed to dial back vaccination, it was interpreted as not enough people being vaccinated and harsher and harsher vaccine mandates being instituted to enact that policy or new vaccines being created to address the existing damage of vaccination (e.g., the DPT vaccine frequently caused polio outbreaks).
•Second, public health officials and vaccine designers were well aware of the injuries vaccines were causing, but since no other treatments existed for the disease, regrettably deemed this to be a necessary sacrifice for the greater good and hence covered the injuries up so the public would continue to vaccinate. However, while I understand their perspective, it rested on a faulty premise—effective treatments did exist for the illnesses (e.g., in 1920 it was known IV hydrogen peroxide could treat severe infections and in 1928 it was known that ultraviolet blood irradiation could treat many otherwise incurable infections). Note: as you might have noticed, everything I just described also applies to the COVID-19 vaccines, hence illustrating how these dysfunctional cycles frequently perpetuate indefinitely.
In the 1940s-1950s, the original pertussis vaccine (DPT) entered the market. This vaccine excelled at causing brain inflammation and a variety of concerning differences were seen in the generations born after its mass adoption in America. Note: The rabies vaccine also excelled at causing encephalitis (around 1 in 750 injections, of which 20% were fatal), but it did not have as large an impact on society because far fewer people received it.
Between the 1950s to 1970s, numerous instances happened where a rushed and poorly produced experimental vaccine (e.g., polio or the swine flu) was brought to market to address a non-existent “emergency,” and the government chose to ignore warnings from its scientists that it was not safe to give to America. Since the press was honest at this time, they reported the disaster, it became a national scandal and the government provided compensation to the victims. Note: I compiled those media reports here, the last of which happened in 2002 with Bush’s smallpox vaccine.
In 1986, enough public awareness existed of the dangers of the DPT vaccine that lawsuits were regularly being filed for the brain damage and sudden infant deaths it caused (discussed here). This in turn led to the 1986 vaccine injury act being passed (discussed further here), an act that both shielded vaccine manufacturers from product liability and was intended to help parents of vaccine injured children (even though it didn’t due to selective enforcement of its provisions and the Supreme Court exempting manufacturers from injuries caused by defective vaccines). This act being passed led to an industry gold rush to bring experimental and liability free vaccines to the market, and before long the childhood vaccination schedule ballooned in parallel to chronic illnesses increasing as well.
Note: since this time other vaccines (e.g., RSV and annual COVID vaccinations) were also added to the childhood schedule (but fortunately MAHA managed to recently do the impossible and remove COVID from it).
In 1990, an experimental anthrax vaccine was deployed upon the military to prepare them for invading Iraq. While the war was non-eventful (Saddam did not use anthrax and it was likely the most one-sided conflict in history), the anthrax vaccine severely injured over 100,000 servicemen (leading to what was known as Gulf War Syndrome). Despite these issues, individuals within the Department of Defense who were committed to funding their bioweapons defense program mandated it—leading to severe injuries throughout the military and widespread rebellion against this edict.
After this, new biotechnologies began emerging which made it possible to genetically engineer a plethora of new vaccines that then began to flood the market as ACIP endorses virtually every vaccine given to them regardless of its merits (in fact, throughout their dozens of endorsements I could only identify one case where ACIP did not [boosters for teachers and healthcare workers], and in that instance the CDC simply overrode ACIP). In tandem, direct to consumer pharmaceutical advertising was legalized by a 1997 FDA decision, making it possible for the pharmaceutical industry to buy the mass media’s silence, and hence end all future coverage of vaccine injury.
In 2010, Merck convinced America’s women they were at a high risk of dying from cervical cancer (which in reality only kills about 1/38,000 American women each year) so that everyone would buy their highly lucrative vaccine (which was never proven to reduce cervical cancer deaths). This vaccine had an extraordinarily high rate of injuries (e.g., severe autoimmune disorders), but nonetheless, despite a deluge of complaints, the CDC and FDA did everything they could to protect it, and to this day it is still mandated for children.
In 2021, the COVID vaccine hit the market and caused an unprecedented amount of injury (e.g., many noticed healthy adults dying “suddenly” and large polls showed 34% of vaccine recipients reported minor side effects while 7% reported major ones severely impacting their quality of life). Fortunately or unfortunately, the rate of injuries from it was so high that unlike the past disasters, the mass media could no longer sweep it under the rug, which eventually culminated in MAHA ascending as a political force and RFK Jr. being put in charge of the agency which has orchestrated the vaccine disaster for decades.
In my eyes, one of the most important points to take from this history is that at the time each of these happened, the medical profession and public were struck by the explosion of these new diseases (and their immense social cost) but before long, became acclimated to them and forgot they had ever emerged in the first place.
The Harms of Vaccination
There is a large body of evidence suggesting vaccines are either solely responsible for, or one of the primary things responsible for the tsunami of chronic illness which has followed their ever-increasing adoption. …
to read the rest go to: https://www.midwesterndoctor.com/p/how-much-damage-has-mass-vaccination?publication_id=748806&post_id=166011036&isFreemail=true&r=19iztd&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Someone our family has known forever recently told my sister that they’ve been reading my Substack and that if they wrote the things I write, people would call them crazy. I got a kick out of that—not because it’s untrue, but because it reveals something darker about where we’ve ended up as a society. Most people are terrified of being themselves in public.
My sister’s response made me laugh: “People do call him crazy. He simply doesn’t care.” The funniest part is that I don’t even write the craziest stuff I research—just the stuff I can back up with sources and/or my own personal observations. I always try to stay rooted in logic, reason and facts though—I’m clear when I’m speculating and when I’m not.
This same guy has sent me dozens of private messages over the last 4 or 5 years challenging me on stuff I share online. I’ll respond with source material or common sense, and then—crickets. He disappears. If I say something he doesn’t want to hear, he vanishes like a child covering his ears. Over the last few years, I’ve been proven right about most of what we’ve argued about, and he’s been wrong. But it doesn’t matter—he’s got the memory of a gnat and the pattern never changes.
But he’d never make that challenge publicly, never risk being seen engaging with my arguments where others might witness the conversation. This kind of private curiosity paired with public silence is everywhere—people will engage with dangerous ideas in private but never risk being associated with them publicly. It’s part of that reflexive “that can’t be true” mindset that shuts down inquiry before it can even begin.
But he’s not alone. We’ve created a culture where wrongthink is policed so aggressively that even successful, powerful people whisper their doubts like they’re confessing crimes.
I was on a hike last year with a very prominent tech VC. He was telling me about his son’s football team—how their practices kept getting disrupted because their usual field on Randall’s Island was now being used to house migrants. He leaned in, almost whispering: “You know, I’m a liberal, but maybe the people complaining about immigration have a point.” Here’s a guy who invests mountains of money into companies that shape the world we live in, and he’s afraid to voice a mild concern about policy in broad daylight. Afraid of his own thoughts.
After I spoke out against vaccine mandates, a coworker told me he totally agreed with my position—but he was angry that I’d said it. When the company didn’t want to take a stand, I told them I would speak as an individual—on my own time, as a private citizen. He was pissed anyway. In fact, he was scolding me about the repercussions to the company. What’s maddening is that this same person had enthusiastically supported the business taking public stands on other, more politically fashionable causes over the years. Apparently, using your corporate voice was noble when it was fashionable. Speaking as a private citizen became dangerous when it wasn’t.
Another person told me they agreed with me but wished they were “more successful like me” so they could afford to speak out. They had “too much to lose.” The preposterousness of this is staggering. Everyone who spoke out during COVID sacrificed—financially, reputationally, socially. I sacrificed plenty myself.
But I’m no victim. Far from it. Since I was a young man, I’ve never measured achievement by finance or status—my benchmark for being a so-called successful person was owning my own time. Ironically, getting myself canceled was actually a springboard to that. For the first time in my life, I felt I’d achieved time ownership. Whatever I’ve achieved came from being raised by loving parents, working hard, and having the spine to follow convictions rationally. Those attributes, coupled with some great fortune, are the reason for whatever success I’ve had—they’re not the reason I can speak now. Maybe this person should do some inward searching about why they’re not more established. Maybe it’s not about status at all. Maybe it’s about integrity.
This is the adult world we’ve built—one where courage is so rare that people mistake it for privilege, where speaking your mind is seen as a luxury only the privileged can afford, rather than a fundamental requirement for actually becoming established.
And this is the world we’re handing to our children.
We Built the Surveillance State for Them
I remember twenty years ago, my best friend’s wife (who’s also a dear friend) was about to hire someone when she decided to check the candidate’s Facebook first. The woman had posted: “Meeting the whores at [company name]”—referring to my friend and her coworkers. My friend immediately withdrew the offer. I remember thinking this was absolutely terrible judgment on the candidate’s part, however it was dangerous territory we were entering: the notion of living completely in public, where every casual comment becomes permanent evidence.
Now that danger has metastasized into something unrecognizable. We’ve created a world where every stupid thing a fifteen-year-old says gets archived forever. Not just on their own phones, but screenshot and saved by peers who don’t understand they’re building permanent files on each other—even on platforms like Snapchat that promise everything disappears. We’ve eliminated the possibility of a private adolescence—and adolescence is supposed to be private, messy, experimental. It’s the laboratory where you figure out who you are by trying on terrible ideas and throwing them away.
But laboratories require the freedom to fail safely. What we’ve built instead is a system where every failed experiment becomes evidence in some future trial.
Think about the dumbest thing you believed at sixteen. The most embarrassing thing you said at thirteen. Now imagine that moment preserved in high definition, timestamped, and searchable. Imagine it surfacing when you’re thirty-five and running for school board, or just trying to move past who you used to be.
If there was a record of everything I did when I was sixteen, I would have been unemployable. Come to think of it, I’m way older than that now and I’m unemployable anyway—but the truth still stands. My generation might have been the last to fully enjoy an analog existence as children. We got to be stupid privately, to experiment with ideas without permanent consequences, to grow up without every mistake being archived for future use against us.
I remember teachers threatening us with our “permanent record.” We laughed—some mysterious file that would follow us forever? Turns out they were just early. Now we’ve built those records and handed the recording devices to children. Companies like Palantir have turned this surveillance into a sophisticated business model.
We’re asking children to have adult judgment about consequences they can’t possibly understand. A thirteen-year-old posting something stupid isn’t thinking about college applications or future careers. They’re thinking about right now, today, this moment—which is exactly how thirteen-year-olds are supposed to think. But we’ve built systems that treat childhood immaturity as a prosecutable offense.
The psychological toll is staggering. Imagine being fourteen and knowing that anything you say might be used against you by people you haven’t met yet, for reasons you can’t anticipate, at some unknown point in the future. That’s not adolescence—that’s a police state built out of smartphones and social media.
The result is a generation that’s either paralyzed by self-consciousness or completely reckless because they figure they’re already screwed. Some retreat into careful blandness, crafting personas so sanitized they might as well be corporate spokespeople for their own lives. Others go scorched earth—if everything’s recorded anyway, why hold back? As my friend Mark likes to say, there’s Andrew Tate and then there’s a bunch of incels—meaning the young men either become performatively brash and ridiculous, or they retreat entirely. The young women seem to either drift toward fearful conformity or embrace monetized exposure on platforms like OnlyFans. We’ve managed to channel an entire generation’s rebellion into the very systems designed to exploit them.
The COVID Conformity Test
This is how totalitarian thinking takes root—not through jackbooted thugs, but through a million small acts of self-censorship. ……
TO read the rest go to: https://stylman.substack.com/p/the-cowards-bargain?publication_id=24667&post_id=166277693&isFreemail=true&r=19iztd&triedRedirect=true&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
Trump Taps Palantir to Create Master Database on Every American
Hafiz Rashid
The Trump administration is collecting data on all Americans, and they are enlisting the data analysis company Palantir to do it.
The New York Timesreports that President Trump has enlisted the firm, founded by far-right billionaire Peter Thiel, to carry out his March executive order instructing government agencies to share data with each other. The order has increased fears that the government is putting together a database to wield surveillance powers over the American public.
Since then, the administration has been very quiet about these efforts, increasing suspicion. Meanwhile, Palantir has taken more than $113 million in government spending since Trump took office, from both existing contracts and new ones with the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security. That number is expected to grow, especially given that the firm just won a new $795 million contract with the DOD last week.
Palantir is speaking with various other agencies across the federal government, including the Social Security Administration and the IRS, about buying its technology, according to the Times. Palantir’s Foundry tool, which analyzes and organizes data, is already being used at the DHS, the Department of Health and Human Services, and at least two other agencies, allowing the White House to compile data from different places.
The administration’s efforts to compile data began under Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency initiative, which sought Americans’ personal data from multiple agencies including the IRS, the SSA, Selective Service, Medicare, and many others. In some cases, court orders hindered these efforts, but not in all of them.
Thiel has multiple ties to DOGE, both through Musk and through many of his former employees working for the effort or taking other jobs in the Trump administration. And this data collection effort could give Thiel, Musk, and Trump unprecedented power over Americans, with the president being better able to punish his critics and target immigrants.
No sane person sets out to write 50,000 words on mind control. And yet, here we are.
I’ve been studying this theme for the last few years with my ‘study group’ – watching patterns emerge across seemingly unrelated domains. But finding the right framework to discuss it proved challenging. How do you talk about something this vast without sounding paranoid or academic to the point of inaccessibility? The four-part allegory—The Laboratory, The Theater, The Network, The Mirror—finally gave me the structure I needed.
This Substack is reader-supported. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
You Don’t Have to Read All of This
I know most people have little time or interest in wading through this much content on such a challenging topic. That’s completely fine. It can be consumed as a traditional essay series, a sprawling research document, a reference point, or simply sections to explore based on what intrigues you. It might even become a springboard for your own research.
Why is it so lengthy? Pattern recognition requires volume—a few instances might be coincidence, but dozens across different domains reveal an architectural signature. The length isn’t verbosity; it’s necessity. But candidly, this was also just me needing to get this off my chest.
If you prefer audio to text, I was honored that the brilliant and courageous Naomi Wolf had me on her podcast to discuss this series. She first invited me last week:
Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf
“Radical Philosopher Josh Stylman: Is Reality Manufactured?”
“In a magisterial four-part series of essays, technologist Josh Stylman shares his deep research into the history and methods of cultural production over the past 120 years. He highlights the founding of the secretive UK institute Tavistock and reveals how cultural and ideological notions, narratives, and even personalities were intentionally produced a…
Listen now
12 days ago · 75 likes · 12 comments · Dr Naomi Wolf
And we just had a follow-up conversation yesterday that went even deeper…
Outspoken with Dr Naomi Wolf
“Josh Stylman: Is Reality Constructed?”
“Josh Stylman returns to discuss Part Three of his series on mind manipulation. From celebrity concert rituals to the Nazi occult to your earbuds—are clues to the manipulation of consciousness all around us? Did the world shift in 2012? Is the Internet of Humans underway…
Listen now
6 days ago · 4 likes · Dr Naomi Wolf
These discussions dive into the implications of cognitive sovereignty in our current technological landscape and explore some of the most compelling patterns from the series.
Throughout this process, I walked several tightropes that can be challenging to balance:
First, presenting an academically credible case while making it accessible to general readers—similar to how Marvel movies work for both comic book enthusiasts and casual viewers. Documentation matters, but so does readability.
Second, discussing ideas that sound improbable without coming across as a complete lunatic. When the documented history involves government mind control programs and patents for neural manipulation, the challenge isn’t finding evidence—it’s presenting it in a way that doesn’t immediately trigger dismissal.
Third, creating content that’s both educational and engaging. Information alone isn’t enough if readers can’t connect with it emotionally or conceptually.
Whether I succeeded at any of these is entirely up to you as readers. My goal wasn’t to convince but to document and connect—to map territories that are typically kept separate.
This project started with questions I couldn’t shake – about why reality feels increasingly curated, why we see the same events so differently, why our attention seems less our own each day. I didn’t begin with conclusions seeking evidence; I started with observations seeking patterns.
What emerged wasn’t one smoking gun but thousands of coordinated sparks across history, media, technology, and culture. The patterns became impossible to ignore. Consider just a few of the most compelling:
Dr. Louis Jolyon West’s recurring presence at pivotal historical moments – from examining Jack Ruby after Kennedy’s assassination to visiting Timothy McVeigh in prison after the Oklahoma City bombing. The statistical probability of the same CIA-funded mind control researcher appearing at so many historically significant events defies pure coincidence.
McLean Hospital serving as both an MKULTRA research site and the institution that “treated” numerous creative figures who emerged with dramatically altered personalities and creative directions – from Sylvia Plath to James Taylor to Ray Charles.
The overwhelming documentation of neural influence technology in patents – not speculation but actual technical specifications showing the evolution from classified research to consumer products. Apple’s recent patent for monitoring brain waves through AirPods represents the culmination of a technological lineage that began in government laboratories.
These examples represent just a fraction of the evidence I’ve gathered. Believe it or not, what I published is actually a condensed version—I could easily have made this five times longer, but the challenge wasn’t finding patterns but deciding which ones to include without overwhelming readers (though I realize I may have done that anyway).
These examples aren’t isolated anomalies—they’re glimpses of a deeper architecture.
Why mind control is the root of everything
I realized that mind control isn’t just another topic—it’s the foundation that makes all other manipulation possible. If consciousness itself can be programmed, everything downstream—culture, politics, economics, identity—becomes malleable. The fights we think we’re having about ideology or values are often surface manifestations of deeper programming. Without control of perception and thought, the other systems lack their power. This is why the battle for cognitive sovereignty is so crucial.
Edward Bernays’ propaganda techniques were just the beginning. When Operation Mockingbird revealed the CIA’s systematic infiltration of media organizations, it demonstrated something far more insidious than mere propaganda—a recognition that humans are mimetic creatures whose thoughts can be directed through controlled information channels. Our rulers understand this fundamental aspect of human psychology and have refined their methods accordingly.
For new readers interested in the foundations of these ideas, my earlier works provide context for this larger exploration. The Information Factory, Engineering Reality,The Technocratic Blueprint, Fiat Everything, Divided We Fall, and The Second Matrix each examine different facets of how perception is constructed and deployed. These essays map how synthetic reality manifests across various domains, but mind control represents the source code behind it all—the most fundamental level of manipulation. In software terms, it’s at the bottom of the stack.
Beyond a Single Essay
I’ve spent the last few years going down these rabbit holes, and yes, I’m the guy derailing dinner conversations with CIA mind control operations while everyone else is discussing the latest Netflix series. I’m fully aware I’ve transformed into the Charlie Day meme—wild-eyed, connecting invisible dots with red string, trying to explain that yes, all of this really does connect. The difference is my evidence actually exists in declassified documents.
The deeper I dug, the more I realized this isn’t just another topic to file alongside “interesting things I’ve researched.” This is the operating system everything else runs on. It’s not a subject—it’s the lens through which all subjects must be viewed. If our perception itself is being engineered, then everything downstream—from politics to culture wars to what brand of toothpaste you prefer—becomes secondary.
Friends asked why I didn’t just write a “normal” essay. But I’d already crossed the event horizon of this research—once you start seeing the connections, it becomes impossible to unsee them or to explain them briefly.
So yes, I wrote what amounts to a small book on mind control. I’m not entirely sure what that says about my mental health or social life, but I do know it wasn’t a choice—it was something I had to get out of my system.
I’ve only scratched the surface here. There’s way more to explore, but this is the story I thought I’d tell for now. And it’s not a topic that you write about once and it goes away. If what I’m suggesting is correct, it’s critical to understanding the war we’re fighting for freedom of our minds.
I wrote this because I needed to make sense of my own experience. Because ignoring patterns doesn’t make them disappear. Because sovereignty starts with recognition.
If you see what I’m seeing—welcome to the conversation. If not, that’s okay too. Just keep looking at the world with fresh eyes. Sovereignty starts with recognition, whether or not you agree with my map.
