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A(nother) Bill too Far-Food!

May 2nd, 2010

Today I’m flying the First Navy Union Jack, the flag I fly when legislation is being processed that threaten Liberty and Freedom. The passage of HR 2749 (passed House 7.29.09 and is in the Senate as S 501). So the bill to watch now is S-510 … “The Food Safety and Modernization Act”. You can track S-510 at GovTrack.US. For those few remaining “out there” that think the talk about this Administration being the founding of Socialism in America is a “right wing conspiracy theory,” here’s the proof it is actually happening. It is the proof you need that this country far off track from its foundations of Liberty and Freedom …and is heading swiftly and “progressively” toward the train wreck of Socialism.

Summary from GovTrack.US

FDA Food Safety Modernization Act – Amends the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA) to expand the authority of the Secretary of Health and Human Services (the Secretary) to regulate food, including by authorizing the Secretary to suspend the registration of a food facility. Requires each food facility to evaluate hazards and implement preventive controls. Directs the Secretary to assess and collect fees related to:

food facility reinspection;

food recalls; and

the voluntary qualified importer program.

Requires the Secretary and the Secretary of Agriculture to prepare the National Agriculture and Food Defense Strategy. Requires the Secretary to:

identify preventive programs and practices to promote the safety and security of food;

promulgate regulations on sanitary food transportation practices;

develop a policy to manage the risk of food allergy and anaphylaxis in schools and early childhood education programs;

allocate inspection resources based on the risk profile of food facilities or food;

recognize bodies that accredit food testing laboratories; and

improve the capacity of the Secretary to track and trace raw agricultural commodities.

Requires the Secretary, acting through the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to enhance foodborne illness surveillance systems. Authorizes the Secretary to order an immediate cessation of distribution, or a recall, of food. Requires the Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to assist state, local, and tribal governments in preparing for, assessing, decontaminating, and recovering from an agriculture or food emergency. Provides for:

foreign supplier verification activities;

a voluntary qualified importer program; and

the inspection of foreign facilities registered to import food.

So what does it mean? (This summary from FoodFreedom.WordPress.com … by Steve Green)

S 510 fails on moral, social, economic, political, constitutional, and human survival grounds.

1. It puts all US food and all US farms under Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, in the event of contamination or an ill-defined emergency. It resembles the Kissinger Plan.

2. It would end US sovereignty over its own food supply by insisting on compliance with the WTO, thus threatening national security. It would end the Uruguay Round Agreement Act of 1994, which put US sovereignty and US law under perfect protection. Instead, S 510 says:

COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS.

Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the United States is a party.

3. It would allow the government, under Maritime Law, to define the introduction of any food into commerce (even direct sales between individuals) as smuggling into “the United States.” Since under that law, the US is a corporate entity and not a location, “entry of food into the US” covers food produced anywhere within the land mass of this country and “entering into” it by virtue of being produced.

4. It imposes Codex Alimentarius on the US, a global system of control over food. It allows the United Nations (UN), World Health Organization (WHO), UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the WTO to take control of every food on earth and remove access to natural food supplements. Its bizarre history and its expected impact in limiting access to adequate nutrition (while mandating GM food, GM animals, pesticides, hormones, irradiation of food, etc.) threatens all safe and organic food and health itself, since the world knows now it needs vitamins to survive, not just to treat illnesses.

5. It would remove the right to clean, store and thus own seed in the US, putting control of seeds in the hands of Monsanto and other multinationals, threatening US security. See Seeds – How to criminalize them, for more details.

6. It includes NAIS, an animal traceability program that threatens all small farmers and ranchers raising animals. The UN is participating through the WHO, FAO, WTO, and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in allowing mass slaughter of even heritage breeds of animals and without proof of disease. Biodiversity in farm animals is being wiped out to substitute genetically engineered animals on which corporations hold patents. Animal diseases can be falsely declared. S 510 includes the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), despite its corrupt involvement in the H1N1 scandal, which is now said to have been concocted by the corporations.

7. It extends a failed and destructive HACCP to all food, thus threatening to do to all local food production and farming what HACCP did to meat production – put it in corporate hands and worsen food safety.

8. It deconstructs what is left of the American economy. It takes agriculture and food, which are the cornerstone of all economies, out of the hands of the citizenry, and puts them under the total control of multinational corporations influencing the UN, WHO, FAO and WTO, with HHS, and CDC, acting as agents, with Homeland Security as the enforcer. The chance to rebuild the economy based on farming, ranching, gardens, food production, natural health, and all the jobs, tools and connected occupations would be eliminated.

9. It would allow the government to mandate antibiotics, hormones, slaughterhouse waste, pesticides and GMOs. This would industrialize every farm in the US, eliminate local organic farming, greatly increase global warming from increased use of oil-based products and long-distance delivery of foods, and make food even more unsafe. The five items listed — the Five Pillars of Food Safety — are precisely the items in the food supply which are the primary source of its danger.

10. It uses food crimes as the entry into police state power and control. The bill postpones defining all the regulations to be imposed; postpones defining crimes to be punished, postpones defining penalties to be applied. It removes fundamental constitutional protections from all citizens in the country, making them subject to a corporate tribunal with unlimited power and penalties, and without judicial review. It is (similar to C-6 in Canada) the end of Rule of Law in the US.

This summary from Eco Child’s Play:

H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 could end farmers’ markets as we know it by requiring growers to register, be subject to inspections of their gardens by federal agents, and maintain safety records related to food production or face large fines.

The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 reminds of the Consumer Product Safety Information Act (CPSIA) in the sense that is responding to recalls (salmonella in peanut butter/lead in toys) that needs addressing; however, the people responsible for providing consumers with safe products are inadvertently targeted. I feel much safer knowing the people and gardens my food comes from rather than some multinational food corporation providing produce in the supermarket.

[Under this bill], all participants in farmers’ markets will be forced to register, otherwise the market will be shut down as an illegal operation. Failure to comply with the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 would result in a fine of up to $1,000,000 per violation. Specifically, the law would apply to any food establishment, including farmers’ markets, defined as:

(A) IN GENERAL- The term ‘food establishment’ means a slaughterhouse (except those regulated under the Federal Meat Inspection Act or the Poultry Products Inspection Act), factory, warehouse, or facility owned or operated by a person located in any State that processes food or a facility that holds, stores, or transports food or food ingredients.

Where does this stuff come from? In this case, its roots are not only in Democrat-sought power over our lives and freedoms, this one is also rooted in greed. Enter Monsanto.

FoodFreedom: Monsanto says it has no interest in the bill and would not benefit from it, but Monsanto’s Michael Taylor who gave us rBGH and unregulated genetically modified (GM) organisms, appears to have designed it and is waiting as an appointed Food Czar to the FDA (a position unapproved by Congress) to administer the agency it would create — without judicial review — if it passes. S 510 would give Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food supplements, food and farming.

OpEdNews: The bill is monstrous on level after level – the power it would give to Monsanto, the criminalization of seed banking, the prison terms and confiscatory fines for farmers, the 24 hours GPS tracking of their animals, the easements on their property to allow for warrantless government entry, the stripping away of their property rights, the imposition by the filthy, greedy industrial side of anti-farming international “industrial” standards to independent farms – the only part of our food system that still works, the planned elimination of farmers through all these means.

And now Monsanto wants its own employee, Michael Taylor back in government, this time to act with massive police power as a “food safety tsar” from inside the White House. This is the man who forced genetically engineered rBGH on us (unlabeled, and without warning) when the Clintons placed him over “food safety” in the 90s. HR 875 would give him immense power over what is done on every single farm in the country and massive police state power to wield over farmers and punishments to break them at will.

The Bottom Line

Note: HR 875 and HR 2749 and S 510 are all referenced above … different versions of the same bill. 2749 is the version that made it through the house S 510 is the present Senate version. Watch for: The Food Safety and Modernization Act.

The bill, in itself, is outrageous in is insidious grasp of Liberty and Freedom They now control Health Care, and we thought that couldn’t happen, now they will control the food supply?

EDUCATE YOURSELF, THEN OTHERS! There is only one defense against this kind of tyranny and that is an educated public. The information is in the public domain, but all of us continually need to bring this information to the “dumb masses” that still don’t quite understand the Socialist take-over that has happened. The first reaction is denial … we have to get the American Public past that stumbling block.

Credits: My thanks to Jennifer Lance (Eco Child’s Play), Steve Green (FoodFreedom.WordPress.com) and Linn Cohen-Cole (OpEdNews). These folks “rang the bell” … The Patriot’s Flag is just an echo of their fine work.

GovTrack.com Also, if you haven’t done it already, you should sign up for the alerts at GovTrack.US. You can use their email service to be kept up to date on special legislation or the activities (antics?) of your representatives in Congress. This is an excellent resource site. Use their search window (top right and type in S510 to get the latest on this “Bill too Far.”