http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4014
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
The Voice of Global Health Freedom™
Farmers, Food and Freedom Under Attack…
Permalink: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=4014
The U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee (HELP Committee) will “mark-up” S.510, the Senate version of the (sic) “Food Safety” bill on Tuesday, November 18, 2009. This is the last step before a full Senate vote, which could happen in the next few days.
The Senate bill can be read at: http://www.thomas.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.510:
This bill has an even weaker Family Farm and Ranch, Community and Home Garden exemption than the bill (HR.2749) which passed the House at the end of July. See our blog entry at:
ACTION ITEM:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714
NOTE: Even if you have already taken this Action Item, we encourage you, and every member of your family and circle of contacts to do so again since it has been amended to reflect the passage of HR 2749 on July 30, 2009 after two failed attempts on the previous days and recent action in the Senate. Now it is the Senate’s turn: if passed by the Senate, this Food Fascism Bill will guarantee the loss of clean, healthy food and independent farming in the US and the complete industrialization of the US food supply. Now the question is what will the Senate do?
You can email the HELP Committee here:
help_comments@help.senate.gov
(the Action Item also goes to the Committee email address, in addition to your Senators).
We did manage to get some protective exemptions into the bill for small farmers who sell food directly to consumers or to restaurants, but they are, frankly, weak and will not be enough to protect your food or our farmers. But the Senate bill has much weaker protections, just mentioning minor exemptions for restaurants once and farms twice.
We need to rally people immediately to submit this letter to the Senate and contact their Senators to demand accountable voting on this bill.
The Obama administration is pushing new farm controls which will drive small and independent farmers off the land, literally leaving the field to Agribiz, (implementing all of Codex through complete HARMonization and allowing the FDA to declare Marshal law) through Congress as fast as possible and have coordinated the bills so there will be no debate and committee meetings are closed.
Transparency, change, undoing Bush’s regulations, giving the public time to comment, grassroots anything? None are visible in the current legislative process. Our entire food system, and thus our health, is being given to the last people with any interest in quality or safety: Big Abgribiz. This is going on in the absence of public scrutiny. Those who do know what is happening, of course, have zero access to the process and to the major media. Meanwhile, the media is absent while Congress is moving at warp speed to sew this up.
There will be no direct, frontal assault on organic farming but an insidious process of “infecting” organic farming with regulations, “traceability” requirements, required practices and prohibitions enforced by truly draconian fines and prision terms for even minor offenses running to hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars and 8 years in prison for minor offenses.
Example: imagine Joel Salatin’s wonderful organic farm under the direction of the USDA, with detailed instructions on what he must feed and when, how he must medically “treat” his animals and with what, what he must “spray” and when, … you get the picture. These bills will industrialize all farms and insure the farmers are forced to buy chemicals and drugs. Organic is dead. As well as human control over the food supply. As well as health.
H.R. 2749 includes a weak exemption for farmer to consumer or restaurant sales because of the Push Back we generated. But the bill has now passed the House and it is imperative that it NOT pass the Senate. More Push Back is needed for more protection for farmers, gardeners, community farming, all local food production (including yours!) and food processing.
We’ve set up an Action Item for you to send an unmistakable message to your Senators. We must educate the Senate that you value organic farmers and small farming and do not do not want independent farmers regulated out of existence. You do not want “Big Agra” regulations applied to organic and small family farms and ranches or to natural/organic food products, including Dietary Supplements.
Our previous postings on this issue include: http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=2287
We have prepared the below Petition to Congress for you to send to your Senators via the Action Item.
For Health and Freedom,
