I had a letter to the editor published in the Kenton Times on Saturday March 3, 2007regarding the crackdown on the sale of Amish food. Please read it below and post your comments!
The recent crack-down on the Amish in Hardin County reveals a fundamental misunderstanding about health. The Hardin County Health Department together with ODA officials are focused rather narrowly on a single aspect of health—the physical health of our bodies, in this particular case, the connection between food storage and potential illness. That there may be other types of health is an assumption that does not seem to be under consideration.
For example, healthy community life and neighborliness are forms of well-being that the officials overlook. The ability to purchase food from local producers builds trust and cooperation between the farmer and the person purchasing food. As one who travels from Ada to buy food from the Amish, I know many of these people and count them as friends. When officials undermine the ability of local farmers to provide food for their neighbors, these relationships deteriorate.
As relationships deteriorate, trust and cooperation and friendliness among different people also erode, yet these are the very ingredients necessary to a vibrant and well-ordered civic life. With a more holistic view of community life, officials would do everything in their power to connect our residents with local sources of food rather than sever those connections. The officials may justify their harassment of the Amish under the banner of health, yet it is precisely the health of our community that is at stake.
The same misunderstanding of health has injured community life here in Ada. A few years back, a women’s group in a local church quit baking bread and pastries for a community festival due to pressure from health officials. The effort to meet the regulators’ requirements didn’t justify the time to produce the food. As a result, a group of ladies didn’t meet, and by not meeting, their relationships suffered, and the community suffered for not being able to socialize with the older generation these ladies represented.
To be sure, there is a legitimate place for health departments in the life of a community, but surely these recent tactics are overzealous. Is it necessary to protect the local community from an Amish matriarch’s pies, pies that give pleasure to thousands of people, pies whose recipes have been handed down through generations with no ill effect? Most of us know that Amish food is no threat to our physical health, but even if it were, our officials should tread with great caution, recognizing that the health of communities, the fabric of relationships between friends and neighbors, is not something easily repaired once lost.
For example, healthy community life and neighborliness are forms of well-being that the officials overlook. The ability to purchase food from local producers builds trust and cooperation between the farmer and the person purchasing food. As one who travels from Ada to buy food from the Amish, I know many of these people and count them as friends. When officials undermine the ability of local farmers to provide food for their neighbors, these relationships deteriorate.
As relationships deteriorate, trust and cooperation and friendliness among different people also erode, yet these are the very ingredients necessary to a vibrant and well-ordered civic life. With a more holistic view of community life, officials would do everything in their power to connect our residents with local sources of food rather than sever those connections. The officials may justify their harassment of the Amish under the banner of health, yet it is precisely the health of our community that is at stake.
The same misunderstanding of health has injured community life here in Ada. A few years back, a women’s group in a local church quit baking bread and pastries for a community festival due to pressure from health officials. The effort to meet the regulators’ requirements didn’t justify the time to produce the food. As a result, a group of ladies didn’t meet, and by not meeting, their relationships suffered, and the community suffered for not being able to socialize with the older generation these ladies represented.
To be sure, there is a legitimate place for health departments in the life of a community, but surely these recent tactics are overzealous. Is it necessary to protect the local community from an Amish matriarch’s pies, pies that give pleasure to thousands of people, pies whose recipes have been handed down through generations with no ill effect? Most of us know that Amish food is no threat to our physical health, but even if it were, our officials should tread with great caution, recognizing that the health of communities, the fabric of relationships between friends and neighbors, is not something easily repaired once lost.
