This is an excerpt from today’s JVNA e-newsletter:

Nature: A Conclusion
by Nina Moliver, May 10, 1999

First they milled the flour, threw away the germ and the bran, and added a few vitamin extracts.
And I didn’t speak up, because I eat whole grains.
Then they removed babies from the breast and fed them artificial formulas with cow’s milk.
And I didn’t speak up, because I breastfed my baby.
Then they laced the beef with hormones and antibiotics.
And I didn’t speak up, because I don’t eat beef.
Then they fed the chickens artificial pellets and kept them from sunlight.
And I didn’t speak up, because I don’t eat chicken or eggs.
Then they marketed dairy produced by recombinant hormones and laced with dioxin and pesticides, and all the rats got cancer.
And I didn’t speak up, because I don’t eat dairy.
Then they marketed fish contaminated with mercury and dioxin.
And I didn’t speak up, because I don’t eat fish.
Then they poured pesticides over the vegetables and grew them with commercial fertilizer.
And I didn’t speak up, because I eat only organic vegetables.
Then they altered the genes of the vegetables, and the pollen from the altered vegetables blew in and contaminated the organic vegetable gardens.
And I spoke up, because there was nothing left for me to eat.

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Paraphrased from Reverend Martin Niemoeller’s original (see below).

This was published in the Fall, 1999 issue of Tikkun magazine

First They Came For . . .
by Reverend Martin Niemoeller

First they came for the communists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a communist.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a trade unionist.
Then they came for the homosexuals,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a homosexual.
Then they came for the Jews,
And I didn’t speak up because I wasn’t a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
But I didn’t speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
And there was no one left to speak up.

Reverend Niemoeller, a German Lutheran pastor, was arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Dachau in 1938. This was written upon his release by the Allied Forces in 1945.

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