1:15 PM
July 14, 09





RE; #usbill FSEA #HR2749

FDA is Big Ag Oriented
right now.


http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/HR2749-response.htm


Issue 2: the regulation of how farms grow and harvest crops
FTCLDF agrees with Consumers Union that HR 2749 does not call for the elimination of organic practices. However, the bill’s provision directing the agency to set standards for how food is grown and harvested is very troubling. For example, after the E. coli outbreak linked to spinach that was grown in California and then processed and sent all over the country, the agency developed guidelines that were based entirely on the industrial agriculture model: farms growing thousands of acres of monoculture crops situated next door to huge confined animal feeding operations. The guidelines were expensive, burdensome, and wholly unnecessary for small, diversified farms.

After FTCLDF issued its first alert, HR 2749 was amended to direct FDA “to take into consideration, consistent with ensuring enforceable public health protection, the impact on small scale and diversified farms…” While this is an encouraging step, it does not provide sufficient protection. The FDA has yet to demonstrate that it has any understanding whatsoever of the needs of small scale and diversified farms. And the new language does not prevent FDA from developing standards that drive such farms out of business under the guise of developing “enforceable standards.”

No one has demonstrated any need for FDA to regulate growing practices on small and diversified farms. No major outbreaks have been traced to such farms. There is nothing to be gained, and much to be lost, by granting FDA this authority.

RELATED:

PROS and CONS OF #HR2749
http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1455917




ACTION PAGE:

GO SIGN THE PETITION NOW TO
PROTECT SMALL FARMERS and OUR HEALTH FREEDOMS

Ask Congress to Defeat HR 2749
111th U.S. Congress - House Bill
FSEA #HR 2749 (Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009)
http://www.ftcldf.org/petitions/pnum993.php



UPDATE

11:58 AM
July 14, 09

After 40 hours of study,
and then getting some diverse opinion,
I stopped sending this petition.
After five more hours of fact checking,
and studying the issues deeper, I am
back on track convinced that it is important
to sign this petition
as a beginning, and do much more.
We are in a NATIONAL FOOD EMERGENCY.
What needs to emerge is education.
The time for that is now.
This bill, #usbill FSEA #HR2749
is an opportunity to come to grips
with issues of Food Safety once and for all.
We cannot have Food Safety without Healthy
Safe Foods. Most of us need to be educated
about what healhy safe foods are, and why
local, organic foods are the backbone of
healthy Food Safety.

THIS IS WHAT I SENT OUT THE OTHER DAY

FSEA #HR 2749 Hurts Small Farmers

There are some proposed bills being rushed
through congress right now. The Rules and Reg
Makers would like them to go through unnoticed,
but people everywhere are signing petitions,
and reaching out to friends, family, and legislators to make
sure that the forces who would control small farmers
are put harmlessly aside for the good of humanity's
future. SIgn the Petition to help all the Joe the Farmers--
our small local, organic farmers growing therapeutic
quality foods.

MY INITIAL BLOGS ON THIS

http://curezone.com/blogs/fm.asp?i=1452740

2:31 PM

HR 2749's Real Impacts: a Response to Consumers' Union
Consumers Union (CU) recently posted a defense of HR 2749 that casually dismisses concerns the bill would hurt small farms and local food businesses. The CU avoided addressing the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund's detailed analysis, which is posted at http://bit.ly/13Pn6n,
and conflated arguments made by FTCLDF with statements made by anonymous individuals and posted on a blog.

H.R. 2749, the Food Safety Enforcement Act (FSEA), adds over 130 pages to the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act with myriad new requirements and penalties for violations. The FTCLDF agrees that the industrial food safety system has serious flaws and needs to be fixed. The country has seen numerous outbreaks of foodborne illnesses caused by imported foods or domestic foods that were processed in huge facilities and shipped throughout the country. Unfortunately, HR 2749 does not focus FDA's efforts on these very real problems. Instead, it creates a regulatory framework that will heavily burden the small farms and local food processors, the very people who provide a safe, healthy alternative to the industrial food supply.

Food safety is a priority shared by everyone. The FTCLDF calls on Consumers Union and the other groups supporting HR 2749 to explain exactly how the bill would address the industrial food supply problems without harming the local food movement. The fact that massive, industrial food companies, such as Peanut Corporation of America, have killed or sickened people is a strong argument for regulating such companies, and we applaud CU's efforts to improve the industrial food supply. But the wrongs committed by these companies are not a valid basis for harming the hundreds of thousands of safe, healthy small farms and artisan producers who will be burdened, or even driven out of business, by HR 2749.






 

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