Order by 11:00am central time for same-day shipping!

Federal Food Police Coming Soon To A Farm Near You

I ask you – what is to stop the government from defining a small home garden as a food facility? Because of the vagueness of this bill, it is not only the micro farmers that are affected by this. Anyone who has a garden, or shares their produce with neighbors or even owns a local restaurant that supports local farmers and buys their produce could be affected. We could all be affected and pay the price dearly for not speaking up. . Many say that this bill is unconstitutional in that state rights will be stripped away. If passed, the state cannot go in and take care of the problem. It is a federal issue, thus will have federal repercussions.

In a previous article, Is This The End of Microfarms?, I addressed  my concerns on HR bill 875 or The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act .   This bill would literally change the procedures and ways of our farms as well as our ideals about the American dream as we know it.   

HR bill 875 will:

 “protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from international contamination, and for other purposes.”

If passed, this would give government agencies the power to tell the American public what they should eat, how they should care for produce and care for livestock.  The facility owners will have no say in these matters.  The government has made the decisions for them (as they like to do).  They must adhere to guidelines or else there will be hell to pay.  According to the website Rogue Government,

” The governement even plans to set up a Food Safety Administration to authorize this agency to integrate state and local agencies as fully as possible into national food safety efforts by forcing them to enforce federal food safety regulations.   This section completely ignores the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution.”

At a time when businesses and consumers are already struggling, the price tag for this new agency will be in the billions.  The L.A. Times says that the cost of reforms in the House bill is estimated at $3.7 billion over five years, with $1.4 billion of that to come from a $500-per-facility fee on food makers.

Voter support for this bill was at an overwhelming 90% according to a current voting poll from L.A. Times.  The article states,

“There’s broad public support. It would be a quick win for both parties,” said Erik Olson, director of chemical and food safety programs in Pew’s Health & Human Services Policy program. “This is a rare situation where the industry is shoulder to shoulder with consumers.”

The bill was slated for hearing in Congress today.  It is nice to see that Congress has enough time on their hands to overhaul a health care system and destroy our ways of life as we know it.  Although, I should not be surprised, they passed the “Bail Outs” even though the citizens of this country adamantly opposed it.  Interestingly, L.A. Times made no mention of the actual name of the bill or the effects and implications this bill would have on small farms and ranches as we know it.  That’s the kind of reporting we are used to.  It’s just another half hearted attempt at delivering what they think we should know about.  As far as the media is concerned,  we are on a “need to know” basis.

Do not get me wrong, I agree with finding vulnerabilities in our food sources and combating contaminants to improve the quality of food we eat.  However, it is the “fine print” and vagueness of this bill that is concerning.    According to Campaign For Liberty,

“It will affect 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.”

I ask you – what is to stop the government from defining a small home garden as a food facility?  Because of the vagueness of this bill, it is not only the micro farmers that are affected by this.  Anyone who has a garden, or shares their produce with neighbors or even owns a local restaurant that supports local farmers and buys their produce could be affected.   We could all be affected and pay the price dearly for not speaking up.  . Many say that this bill is unconstitutional in that state rights will be stripped away.  If passed, the state cannot go in and take care of the problem.  It is a federal issue, thus will have federal repercussions.

“This Is a Vehicle For The Large Corporations Of Industrial Agriculture.”

Who is pushing for this bill to be passed?  Some feel this bill is quietly being pushed by big agribusinesses, herbicides and pesticide companies who want to take out the little guy (organic farmers, micro farmers, and ranches) as opponents.  Save those too big to fail.

Does this sound familiar?

If this pattern of accomodating corporate interests at the expense of small famers persists, then we could eventually expect something similar to what happened in Russia with Stalin.  Our right to choose what type of food we put into our bodies is on the voting block.  Our food sources will be controlled by the government.  They will tell us how we should grow our food, when we should harvest our food and if we resist we face massive fines, jail time or possibly our land could be confiscated.  They know that if they control the food source, they control the people.  Welcome to the New America.

 

For more information:

http://www.roguegovernment.com/HR_875:_A_Bill_That_Would_Regulate_The_Small_Family_Farm_Out_Of_Business/14783/0/13/13/Y/M.html

http://www.ftcldf.org/index.html

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-food-safety22-2009oct22,0,514104.story

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-875

This article was originally published at Ready Nutrition™ on October 22nd, 2009