Wal-Mart, What's Wrong with These Peas?

Dear Wal-Mart,

The subject at hand is a can of peas that was purchased, by someone who was driving that way and volunteered to pick up "the heavy stuff" at a Wal-Mart...I don't know which one, but I'm guessing it was in Kingsport, Tennessee, on Saturday, 10.21.23. 

The label says these are "Sweet Peas." Well, they weren't the black-eyed kind or the split kind. Considering their flavor, "green peas" would have been more appropriate.

The label goes on: "No Salt Added." I should have warned person to beware of "No Salt Added" cans of anything; they're subject to spoilage. "Ingredients: peas, water. Product of Spain. 0 78742 35875 8" (below the bar code), and "070315" (above the bar code). The label also claims that the peas are "Gluten Free," which they certainly ought to be if the cans contian only peas and water.

But who knows. It seems that food manufacturers want to subvert the whole purpose of food labelling. They don't want labels that accurately inform people about what's inside. A solid majority of people who eat food want to know whether they're eating a normal, natural food as opposed to some sort of genetic experiment on food. They might be willing to try GMO food, but they want to know which genetic modification they're eating and why. 

(Well, actually, after years of bleeding ulcers from "Roundup-Ready" vegetables, some people wouldn't want to try any more genetic modifications, and can they be blamed? But clearly identifying different modifications might reduce the losses of sales caused by all that not-so-safe-as-the-manufacturer-claimed glyphosate that was sneaked into our food supply by "Roundup Ready" plants, all produce of which ought by now to have been rounded up and burned.) 

The contents of this can were not natural peas. They were not just natural peas that might have been on the firm side because they were picked green and not cooked enough to be safely canned, although they had that sort of feeling in the mouth. They were not just brackish-tasting from having grown near the ocean. They were not just natural peas that had somehow also failed to become sweet because they didn't get much sunshine, either. Fruits and vegetables that didn't get enough sunshine have a flabby, watery consistency from exposure to too much rain. That's natural, and easily fixed with a sprinkle of salt or sugar. But these pea-like objects were bitter. Not a level of bitterness that salt would cover up, either. Bitter enough that they didn't taste like peas at all, and hard enough that they didn't feel like sweet green peas in the mouth.

What kind of GMO (and/or novel pathogenic contaminant] was in this can of peas, Wal-Mart?

We need tighter food labelling laws, Wal-Mart, but Wal-Mart is big enough to make them policies that would work for a lot of people:

If you plant GMO crops, the labels need clearly to identify the specific name of the GMO as shown on its patent. 

If you spray anything other than water on plants after the edible parts appear, the label needs to include that chemical as an ingredient.

If you pick food crops green and spray chemicals on them as "ripening agents," you need to be forcibly fed a liter of those chemicals. On television. 

From tasting these peas I can feel blisters forming on the roof of my mouth, as I type. I can feel my tongue swelling. 

You need to pull these peas off the shelves, Wal-Mart. You need to dump them back on the farm from whence they came. Call the filthy excuse for a farmer out on his front steps, yell "Eh tu! Con que intentaste matar a la gente norteamericana?" while the driver is backing the truck up to where he is standing, and then start dumping cans of peas, and the more of them hit his feet, the better. Keep him hopping. And then make him sign for receipt of a summons to court where you're suing him for selling this toxic waste as peas. And make sure he can never sell any kind of food crop again, in any market, and has to sell the farm. 

With all we know about how "pesticides" systematically breed bigger, more aggressive nuisance species while also making people ill, any farmer who's not out in the fields, rain or shine as long as lightning is not flashing, hand-picking nuisance species off unsprayed fields, deserves to lose per farm!

The whole world needs to pull a 180 on this whole business of chemical-dependent farming. Instead of letting the chemical companies compete to see how many different chemicals they can sell to farmersd, we need to have people telling farmers that their best course of action is to take the loss from going chemical-free now. Yes, the transition to really organic farming costs money. Yes, Wal-Mart will have to accept smaller amounts of produce from each farmer. The sooner we do it the sooner it's done, and the sooner the farmers take a year or two of losses, the sooner they can hope for profits again.

Wal-Mart is in a position to tell the farmers, "Hello? Smart farmers like Wendell Berry and George Peters were chemical-free in 1970, so what has been your problem? You deserve a couple of years pushing a mop or driving a bus!" 

In any case, even Wal-Mart cannot afford to sell any more toxic waste mislabelled as food. "Roundup Ready" crops can apparently be used as fuel, at least in well filtered indoor furnaces, because burning destroys most of the glyphosate. I've not heard of any safe use for the 2,4-D stuff, but there may be one. But in no case can you risk allowing human beings to eat this stuff. You need to crack down. 

If you can't sell me natural peas that are fit to eat, you can't. Just don't sell me (or anyone else) poisoned peas, which this batch so obviously are. You'd be on safer ground, legally, if you just burned the farm where these peas grew to the ground/ 

You need to recall these peas, and any other alleged food products that can't say it's GLYPHOSATE-FREE and GMO-FREE as well as gluten-free. 

It would be a good idea, unless you have more of the peas I've been eating in previous weeks this year, to leave your shelves completely bare of peas. Fill those shelves with notices "TO ALL PEOPLE WHO MAY HAVE PURCHASED THE RECALLED, POISONED PEAS FROM SPAIN: WAL-MART WILL RESUME SELLING PEAS WHEN WE ARE 100% CERTAIN THAT WE WILL NOT BE INADVERTENTLY SELLING ANY MORE PEAS LIKE THOSE."