It’s Not About Food Safety, It’s About Money and Control
On February 4th, 2009, HR 875, formally entitled Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, was introduced by Representative Rosa DeLauro of Connecticut. Although the title of the bill would lead one to believe that the bill is constructive and good for the public safety, nothing could be further from the truth.
This bill is undoubtedly funded by agri-business giants including Monsanto, Dow, Bayer, et al. The obvious threat of this legislation is the creation of an entirely new department, The Food Safety Administration, somewhat styled like Homeland Security. The new standards set by this Administration will dictate that only approved seeds, fertilizers, and farming methods could be used. Undoubtedly, this new administration will be populated by people closely associated with the biotech and agribusinesses that have created many food safety problems through their over use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides, hormones, steroids, GMOs and factory farming methods. If Monsanto gets their way, all farms and gardens will be growing their plants and using their products under a mountain of government red tape. All in the interest of food safety, you understand. That is definitely a scary thought.
It should be noted at this point that Representative DeLauro’s husband, Stanley Greenburg, President of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner. This firm provides research and strategic advice to elected leaders, political campaigns, issue groups, and prominently includes Monsanto in their client list. Since Monsanto and others of their ilk will be the chief beneficiaries of this legislation, there is little doubt where it originated and who it targets. This legislation is no longer about food safety; it’s about complete control and surrender of our food supply to multi-national corporations.
HR 875, along with similar bills HR 814, S425 and soon, HR 759 will effectively destroy small farms, roadside produce stands, farmer’s markets and other such local enterprises that provide healthy, organically grown food. Regulatory and punitive measures include: Exhaustive amounts of paperwork, fines, confiscation and possible imprisonment for those who are unable to comply with the new draconian regulations.
According to the act, "Any person that commits an act that violates the food safety law … may be assessed a civil penalty by the Administrator of not more than $1,000,000 for each such act."
Each violation and each separate day the producer is in defiance of the law would be considered a separate offense and assess an additional penalty each day thereafter. The act suggests federal administrators consider the gravity of the violation, the degree of responsibility and the size and type of business when determining penalties.
Criminal sanctions may be imposed if contaminated food causes serious illness or death, and offenders may face fines and imprisonment of up to 10 years.
I find it very interesting that one can be fined and/or jailed for violating the provisions of this law with punitive measures equal to or greater than for dumping toxic waste repeatedly. (http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=20051105&slug=wrecking05m)
Just imagine facing the possibility of equal or greater penalties for growing tomatoes in your own back yard as those assessed for criminals growing marijuana or dumping toxic waste into the water supply. If this legislation is enacted, all that will be left are the giant corporate Agribusinesses who control the regulating agencies and thrive on the use of all sorts of poisons, chemical concoctions, hormones, steroids and genetically modified organisms to bring a substandard, and many times dangerous, product to your table. Is it any wonder that we are already experiencing an epidemic of ailments created by our chemically laced and pre-processed diets?
In the 1970’s Henry Kissinger said:
“If you control the oil you control the country; if you control food, you control the population”
This immense corporate plan to control our food supply and eliminate independent farmers is, at its heart, the most severe threat possible to our freedom. We’ve all experienced the havoc wreaked with uncontrolled oil prices; imagine what our pantries and freezers will look like when food production is a similarly controlled monopoly ruled by the multi-national agribusiness and biotech giants.
Consider for a moment that the USDA, FDA, FD&C and other federal regulatory agencies dealing with food and drug safety are littered with personnel who travel back and forth between government and the giant agribusinesses like Monsanto. There is no reason to think that this new agency will be any different. These industries will provide the “experts” to write the rules that will result in increased sales for them while eliminating the competition. Do you really think that any of these people will make an unfavorable ruling that affects a former employer to whom they might one day return? Is it any wonder that such poisons as Aspartame and rBGH are still on the market shelves and in our food supply?
Evidence of what this legislation will produce can be found in Iraq, Afghanistan, Ecuador, and other countries now under the control of the biotech giants.
Monsanto— with the help of the US government— plundered ancient and rare seed banks in Iraq that held seeds with a genetic heritage going back thousands of years and then made it a crime for Iraqi farmers to collect or use their own normal and non-patented seeds. The same scenario could play out here if this legislation is not stopped.
The Iraqis are now utterly at the mercy of Monsanto and the US Government for their survival. Iraqis have no choice but to pay whatever prices biotech firms dictate for their seed and ultimately their food. They can no longer simply continue their centuries old self-sustaining agriculture and be free people. No matter what form of government they may institute, as long as multi-national biotech/agribusiness’ control their food supply, they are enslaved. Either, they pander to these multi-national industries or starve.
In Afghanistan, people are buying and planting beans from American biotech firms, which at the end of the season have nothing whatsoever inside, the pods are empty. How could this be? According to F. William Engdahl, “The United States Government has been financing research on a genetic engineering technology which, when commercialized, will give its owners the power to control the food seed of entire nations or regions. The Government has been working quietly on this technology since 1983. Now, the little-known company that has been working in this genetic research with the Government’s US Department of Agriculture-- Delta & Pine Land-- is about to become part of the world’s largest supplier of patented genetically-modified seeds (GMO), Monsanto Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri.”
In Ecuador, the seed potatoes made available to farmers do not develop eyes so they can't reproduce for the next season’s harvest. This type of activity is nothing less than a crime against nature and humanity.
The following is taken from the article, Seeds - How To Criminalize Them
By Linn Cohen-Cole:
Here's the bill. Let's use our imaginations and extrapolate from the little bit it reveals and from the reality we know.
SEC. 206. FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES.
(a) Authorities- In carrying out the duties of the Administrator and the purposes of this Act, the Administrator shall have the authority, with respect to food production facilities, to--
(1) visit and inspect food production facilities in the United States and in foreign countries to determine if they are operating in compliance with the requirements of the food safety law;
(2) review food safety records as required to be kept by the Administrator under section 210 and for other food safety purposes;
(3) set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety;
(4) conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products, or the environment, as appropriate;
(5) collect and maintain information relevant to public health and farm practices.
(b) Inspection of Records- A food production facility shall permit the Administrator upon presentation of appropriate credentials and at reasonable times and in a reasonable manner, to have access to and ability to copy all records maintained by or on behalf of such food production establishment in any format (including paper or electronic) and at any location, that are necessary to assist the Administrator--
(1) to determine whether the food is contaminated, adulterated, or otherwise not in compliance with the food safety law; or
(2) to track the food in commerce.
(c) Regulations- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and representatives of State departments of agriculture, shall promulgate regulations to establish science- based minimum standards for the safe production of food by food production facilities. Such regulations shall--
(1) consider all relevant hazards, including those occurring naturally, and those that may be unintentionally or intentionally introduced;
(2) require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;
(3) include with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment... and water;
Ah, such a little paragraph, and so much evil packed in it. Notice they mention harvesting, sorting and storage operations? Notice they never mention seeds but they are precisely what those words cover.
Now, watch how they will be able to easily criminalize seed banking and all holding of seeds. First, 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" and
2. the FDA has now defined "seed" as food,
3. so seeds can now be controlled through "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 includes most seeds. It may even be all seed, given how they are skilled at 'new' definitions.
And what are the "sources of seed contamination" inside the FDA? They include only six little items:
-agricultural water
-manure (but not chemical pesticides or fertilizers)
-harvesting,
- transporting equipment
- seed cleaning (sorting) equipment
-seed storage (storing) facilities
Did you know that seed cleaning equipment is THE single most critical piece of equipment for sustainable agriculture? It is how we collect organic seed. It is the machinery used after the season, when 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 also stays free of patented, genetically engineered, corporately privatized seeds.
This year, 2009, one item on the "sources of seed contamination" list is suddenly illegal in some parts of this country - seed cleaning equipment.
To get the drift, perhaps you need to know that the people who clean seed are being wiped out, as well.
How can they make such vital equipment illegal? Quietly, first of all, so as not to alert organic farmers who have a lot of political ties. And by saying it contaminates food. And by applying their innocent and reasonable sounding "minimum standards."
"Contaminate" is their favorite word since the public fears the deadly contamination that industry itself - not farmers - has caused. That fear is valuable. Scare the public and it is easy to get "food safety standards" set without anyone reading them. 39 progressive co-sponsors leap on, thinking this is about "food safety." But it is only about the use of "food safety," not the reality of it
For to eliminate seed cleaning equipment, the FDA simply sets minimum "food safety" standards for seed cleaning (the simple separation of seed from plant) such that a farmer would need a million to a million and a half dollar building and/or equipment to meet the new requirements ... per line of seed.
On the ground, where reality lives, a farmer in the mid-west who has been seed cleaning flax for 40 years with his hand made seed cleaner now can't sell his flax on the market anymore. Never mind there are NO instances of anyone ever having gotten sick from seed cleaning equipment. And a farmer in another part of the mid-west who has been cleaning wheat, corn and soy for years with one single perfectly fine piece of equipment would now need three to four and half million dollars for three separate pieces of equipment, in order to satisfy the "food safety" standards.
This legislation isn’t about food safety at all. It’s about handing over control of the seeds for mankind’s basic survival—rice, corn, soybeans, wheat, even fruit, vegetables and cotton—to privately owned corporations. Once the seeds and their use are patented and controlled by one or several private agribusiness multinationals, it will be they who can decide whether or not a particular customer—let’s say for argument, China or Brazil or India or Japan—whether they will or won’t get the patented seeds from Monsanto, or from one of its licensee GMO partners like Bayer Crop Sciences, Syngenta or DuPont’s Pioneer Hi-Bred International. In effect, it is using food as the ultimate weapon and the target is us.
In typical Washington DC and mass media style, these bills are flying below the radar while they keep us distracted by the bailouts and banker bonuses. When there is no nutritious food available, these things will make little difference.
With so much publicly subsidized and private research in the organic sciences, we ought to have the best foods we've ever dreamed of, available to everyone for an affordable price: yet what we have are genetically modified and privately-owned seeds that are poisonous to humans beings; yet these are promoted as the only "food" that can be produced; as organic foods are about to be CRIMINALIZED. Jim Kirwan-- The Black Hole Society, Part II
Growing one’s own food from unadulterated seed stock is the most basic of human rights, the right to survival.
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