I just read this on the computer yesterday:
WASHINGTON – The nation's food safety system is a "hazard to public health" and overdue for an overhaul, President Barack Obama said Saturday as he focused on that task by filling the top job at the Food and Drug Administration. Obama used his weekly radio and video address to announce the nomination of former New York City Health Commissioner Margaret Hamburg as agency commissioner and selection of Baltimore's health commissioner, Joshua Sharfstein as her deputy. Consumer groups applauded the picks.
Okay, so what does "food safety" really mean for us? What does "food safety" actually translate into for small and organic farmers? For homesteaders and gardeners who would like to sell their extra produce...and the local farmers markets? For U-Pick farms and orchards?
What does "food safety" really provide for the people of our nation? Once we wade through the stipulations and language of HR 875, who are the big winners and who are the big losers? Because there will be a few very big winners and there will be thousands - if not millions - of big losers....basically our entire country and others around the world who are already following suit. Such is the track record from this type of sweeping government legislation.
Find this following article on Campaign for Liberty
Posted by LydiaScott on 03/06/09 03:36 AM
HR 875 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/F?c111:1:./temp/~c1112RD9bb:e11439:
This bill is sitting in committee and I am not sure when it is going to hit the floor. One thing I do know is that very few of the Representatives have read it. As usual they will vote on this based on what someone else is saying. Urge your members to read the legislation and ask for opposition to this devastating legislation. Devastating for everyday folks but great for factory farming ops like Monsanto, ADM, Sodexo and Tyson to name a few.
I have no doubt that this legislation was heavily influenced by lobbyists from huge food producers. This legislation is so broad based that technically someone with a little backyard garden could get fined and have their property siezed. It will effect anyone who produces food even if they do not sell but only consume it. It will literally put all independent farmers and food producers out of business due to the huge amounts of money it will take to conform to factory farming methods. If people choose to farm without industry standards such as chemical pesticides and fertilizers they will be subject to a variety of harassment from this completely new agency that has never before existed. That's right, a whole new government agency is being created just to police food, for our own protection of course.
DO NOT TAKE MY WORD FOR IT, READ THIS LEGISLATION FOR YOURSELF. The more people who read this legislation the more insight we are going to get and be able to share. Post your observations and insights below. Urge your members to read this legislation and to oppose the passage of this legislation.
Pay special attention to
Section 3 which is the definitions portion of the bill-read in it's entirety.
section 103, 206 and 207- read in it's entirety.
Red flags I found and I am sure there are more...........
Legally binds state agriculture depts to enforcing federal guidelines effectively taking away the states power to do anything other than being food police for the federal dept.
Effectively criminalizes organic farming but doesn't actually use the word organic.
Effects anyone growing food even if they are not selling it but consuming it.
Effects anyone producing meat of any kind including wild game.
Legislation is so broad based that every aspect of growing or producing food can be made illegal. There are no specifics which is bizarre considering how long the legislation is.
Section 103 is almost entirely about the administrative aspect of the legislation. It will allow the appointing of officials from the factory farming corporations and lobbyists and classify them as experts and allow them to determine and interpret the legislation. Who do you think they are going to side with?
Section 206 defines what will be considered a food production facility and what will be enforced up all food production facilities. The wording is so broad based that a backyard gardener could be fined and more.
Section 207 requires that the state's agriculture dept act as the food police and enforce the federal requirements. This takes away the states power and is in violation of the 10th amendment.
There are many more but by the time I got this far in the legislation I was so alarmed that I wanted to bring someone's attention to it. (to the one person who reads my blog)
Didn't Stalin nationalize farming methods that enabled his administration to gain control over the food supply? Didn't Stalin use the food to control the people?
S 425 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:s425:
A solemn walk through HR 875.
by Linn Cohen-Cole
www.opednews.com
People seem to expect the bill to be titled "The Criminalization of Organic Farming and the Take over of the US Food Supply," and when they don't see any words to that effect anywhere in the bill, they declare "this bill is fine" and those seeing dangers are "alarmists." Do they think the industrial side is composed of fools? These are the same people who make cheery cereals with cartoon characters on the box when, inside, high fructose corn syrup is all over the cereal and it comes from Bt-corn associated with diabetes and HFCS is, too, and there is an epidemic of diabetes here even among children. They know how to package. Why do people understand that industrial food inside a box can be a problem and yet are so innocent about looking at the bills, not realizing there is packaging there, too, or how much is at stake that the public and even legislators not see since this is about taking control. The industrial side aren't idiots.
Understanding parts of the bill at times depends on smelling smoke as you read it. Here in the US, we still have only smoke ... an Ohio state ag department SWAT team raid on an organic coop, Pennsylvania ag department raids on horse and buggy Mennonites, California setting coliform levels so low fresh milk dairy farmers would need cows that produced pasteurized milk right out the udder, arrest and handcuffing of a single mother in front of her children for selling goat milk, the USDA paying its agents bonuses for foreclosing on farms, ... But in the EU where 60% of the Polish farmers are now gone because of identical bills enacted into law there, and 60 UK farmers have committed suicide, there is fire. And in Iraq, where they have been rendered helpless serfs by the theft of their country's seeds and criminalization of farmers' collection of their own seed, it is roaring. And in India where 182,000 farmers have committed suicide since the WTO and IMF got hold of agriculture and our Big Ag firms went in there, and 8 million farmers have left the land, it is out of control.
The WTO, run by the multinational meat packers and genetic engineering corporations, want HR 875, here. The bills are "harmonized" rules for globalization of food and lower food safety standards to allow for it. Those corporations are members of NIAA, a corporate consortium that brought NAIS, created by Anne Veneman, to the USDA to be made into law.
GP: Great intro! They begin describing the myths, facts, and terminology. Now this is an area, for example, that I'd like to draw your attention to most particularly. This is found under Section 206(C):
(3) include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water;
GP: And here are their notes in regard to the above:
They never mention seeds but this is precisely how they will criminalize seed banking and all holding of seeds.
[Notice they mention harvesting, sorting and storage operations, then watch below.
To follow how this will be done, you must understand that:
1. there is a small list inside the FDA called "sources of seed contamination"
2. in which they have now defined "seed" as food,
3. so seeds can be controlled under "food safety." Those seeds (so far) include:
seeds eaten raw such as flax, poppy sesame, etc.;
sprouting seeds such as wheat, beans, alfalfa, most greens, etc.;
seeds pressed into oils such as corn, sunflower, canola, etc.;
seeds used as animal feed such as soy ....
That is most seeds. Seeds are essential to life and thus to freedom.
The "sources of seed contamination" include six little items:
agricultural water
manure (but NOT chemical pesticides or fertilizers)
harvesting, transporting and seed cleaning equipment
seed storage facilities. What you must realize is that seed cleaning equipment is THE single most critical piece of equipment for sustainable agriculture. It is how we save organic seed. It is the machinery used after plants "go to seed" to separate out (sort) the seeds from the plant material so the farmer can collect (harvest) and then save (put in storage) seed for the next year at little cost. With his own seed, the farmer stays free of patented, genetically engineered, corporately privatized seeds.
You must also understand that Monsanto is getting rid of the people who do the seed cleaning and many other means of our having access to seed .
This year, 2009, seed cleaning equipment is now illegal in some parts of the country which tips us off to both the intent to control seeds in this way and to how they could do things under this bill.
How can they make such vital equipment illegal? Quietly, and by saying it contaminates food.
"Contaminate" is their favorite word since the public fears the deadly contamination that industry itself - not farmers - has caused. Scare the public and thus push for "food safety standards" to be set.
And to eliminate seed cleaning equipment, they haven now set the standards so seed cleaning (the simple separation of seed from plant) will now require a million to a million and a half dollar building and/or equipment ... per line of seed.
So, a farmer who has been seed cleaning flax for 40 years with a hand made seed cleaner can't sell flax on the market anymore, though there are NO instances of anyone ever having gotten sick from seed cleaning equipment. A farmer who has been cleaning wheat, corn and soy each year with the same perfectly fine equipment would now need three to four and half million dollars for three pieces of equipment to continue.
(The FDA isn't so bar-setting when it comes to other things like melamine in baby formula, though it is proven to sicken and kill infants), initially denying the melamine was in our baby formula and then quickly inventing a "foods safety" standard to okay it.)
Organic farmers are not aware of this happening, perhaps because the left is being treated with kid gloves until HR 875 and related bills were passed. But meanwhile the FDA and USDA have been tromping on traditional (many of them farming organically, by the way) farmers for years. The organic community is disconnected from them so hasn't been aware of what is happening to them, and they [farmers] have a history of no one listening to them, which is too bad because it is they who are the ones bringing the warning that these bills are deadly. The organic community, measuring against its own seeming safety, hasn't heard or understood.
Notice, though, that because a single "foods safety" bar has been raised, in time no one will be able to get organic seeds in any number because it will be illegal for all farmers to sell them to anyone.
Now, look at the last item on the list - seed storage facilities.
They would be careful not to ban them all outright given the extreme reaction they would get. But now the method is more clear. "Food safety" is the weapon and public fear is the driver and they only need to set the bar at the level that is impossible to meet.
Farmers, gardeners, seed saving exchanges, seed companies, scientific seed projects, and seed banks, all require "seed storage facilities." All are working overtime to protect biodiversity that is rapidly disappearing because of ... genetic engineering.
Set the standard for "food safety" and certification high enough that no one can afford it and punish anyone who tries to save seed in a multitude of ways that have worked fine for thousands of years, and presto, you have just criminalized seed banking.
The penalties, I will assume, will be tremendous, the better to protect us from nothing dangerous whatsoever, but to make monopoly over seed more absolute. One is left with control over farmers, and end to seed exchanges, to organic seed companies, to university programs developing nice normal hybrids.
When you know that Monsanto with the help of the US government plundered ancient and rare seed banks in Iraq that held seeds with a genetic heritage (a biohistory belonging to all of us) going back 1000s of years and then made it a crime for farmers there to collect or use their own normal and non-patented seeds off their own land, you see how extreme the intent to control is.
Now, perhaps it is possible to see how the identical thing is being done here, only it comes in a heavily, heavily disguised way - through "food safety" that isn't at all - and in only one tiny little paragraph within a very large bill.
The Iraqis are now abjectly dependent on Monsanto and the US for survival itself and will have to pay whatever prices are set for food. They cannot just grow their own and be free. So, no matter what form of government they may have, they are now slaves because the control over them is that extreme. Kissinger was right - control food and you control people.
We are inches from this ourselves. The left needs to wake up.
This trick of setting bars above any ability to be in the game, is similar to how blacks had been treated.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Farming--Why-Obama-s-gove-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090125-421.html
This trick of setting bars above any ability to be in the game while imposing fines that destroy people who fail to meet that standard, is sadistic. Then, taking the land as confiscatory payment, is theft by government become totalitarian and colonizing [enslaving] its own people.
There are other items of the list which surely will be controlled as well. In toto, that little list is the deconstruction of farming itself and given the inclusion of manure, especially of organic farming.]
It's worth going through the rest of this article and their accompanying notes to realize the full impact of what's being done here. I'm afraid this is only the tip of the iceberg.
Current submissions to Congress
Note: For more background, please view the astounding documentary The World According To Monsanto and Patent for Pigs which specifically exposes Monsanto's grab for complete control over all breeds of pigs...eventually livestock. The precedent was set with seeds. Find links here. The trailer is below.
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