From Ken Adachi
http://educate-yourself.org/cn/HR875andS425organicfarmingban13mar09.shtml
March 13, 2009
 

Banning Organic Farming & Regulating Home Gardening, HR 875 & S 425 (Mar. 13, 2009)

These bills need to be examined closely and scrutinized by the public. The public must act quickly, as they are attempting to ram these bills through without debate or discussion. The wording in too many provisions of these bills are simply too VAGUE and open the door WIDE for some government bureaucrat on the state of federal level to decide what farmers can or cannot use to grow food, and how that food will be handled--all under the benign guise of "protecting" the public. Where have we heard that before?

The government has NO BUSINESS interfering or attempting to control farming methodologies, or what choices farmers make for seed or fertilizer or any other aspect of farming or distribution. Period.

This bill was introduced in the House last year by Connecticut democrat Rosa L. DeLauro, but it was stalled in committee and went no further. This year, her pals in Big Agriculture got her to front the bill again, but this time they got an additional 29 NWO sell-outs to join her in sponsorship (curiously, the House sponsorship adds up to exactly 30 sell-outs, the same number of silver coins collected by Judas Iscariot when he betrayed Christ to the Romans)

Rosa is big on the government taking control of everything in your life. She worked tirelessly to stump for illegal alien Barry Soetoro to be fraudulently elected president and then jumped right in with both feet to vote for the "stimulus" taxpayer rip-off "package". She now hopes to get universal health care passed this time around as well, since Rockefeller's Chosen Son is now there to front the socialist/communist propaganda party line for him, right along with Billary.

Rosa has a long history of "helping" people. She has worked for and with Illuminated sell-out Christopher Dodd for many years and essentially learned that to snooker the pulbic into accepting communism dressed up as government sponsored legislation, you have to repeatedly drive home the Tavistock-selling buzz words of the "need" for "protection" and "caring" and "concern" for the "disadvantaged" and the "underprivledged" who have been "disenfranchised" from the American Dream and similar stock sound-byte propaganda phrases.

She learned well from Dodd, who you may remember was very passionate on television in selling the 850 billion Wall Street Bailout "package" to the American public with his ardent "concern" that AIG or Fannie May or Freddie MAC, etc. etc., are TOO BIG and TOO IMPORTANT to the 'credit markets' and the " health" of the American economy to be allowed to go under, blah, blah, blah.

Having lived in Connecticut for a time, I know how much of a haven it is for special money interests like the insurance or banking industires, but also for communist ideology which thrive in Illuminated watering holes like Yale University, the home of Skull & Bones, located in Rosa's hometown of New Haven, Connecticut.

Rosa, like her colleagues who sponsored this outrage and affront to the liberty of the American people, sorely needs to face a new challenge in her life; a Recall. Perhaps some interested patriots reading this missive might want to see what's involved in getting one off the ground.

Ken Adachi

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HR 875: SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the "Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009"

Full text version pdf of HR 875: http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=111_cong_bills&docid=f:h875ih.txt.pdf

http://www.agreenerindiana.com/forum/topics/bill-to-ban-organic-farming

Pay special attention to

* Section 3 which is the definitions portion of the bill-read in it’s entirety.
* section 103, 206 and 207- read in its entirety.
 

What it Does:

* Legally binds state agriculture departments to enforce federal guidelines effectively taking away the states power to do anything other than being food police for the federal government.
* Effectively criminalizes organic farming, but doesn’t actually use the word 'organic.'
* Affects anyone growing food, even if they are not selling it but consuming it.
* Affects anyone producing meat of any kind including wild game.
* Legislation is so broad based that every aspect of growing or producing food can be made illegal. There are no specifics, which is bizarre considering how long the legislation is.
* Section 103 is almost entirely about the administrative aspect of the legislation. It will allow the appointing of officials from the factory farming corporations and lobbyists and classify them as experts and allow them to determine and interpret the legislation. Who do you think they are going to side with?
* Section 206 defines what will be considered a 'food production facility' and what will be enforced upon all food production facilities. The wording is so broad based that a backyard gardener could be fined and more.
* Section 207 requires that the state’s Agriculture department act as the food police and enforce the federal requirements. This takes away the states power and is in violation of the 10th amendment.

(Note from Ken Adachi: The woman announcer in this video mentions the group "Democracy in Action", but I can't any such group except for a parking web site and referal to a Salsa dance site. There is a satellite dish-based TV outlet called Free Speech TV, but I don't know if this woman is part of that or not. The video may be a fake, but I don't really know. Update Mar 15, 2009: See letter below confirming authenticity of this reporter as Mizan Nunes)

Posted as a reader comment at: http://republicbroadcasting.org/?p=450

Ken Says:
March 10th, 2009 at 2:54 pm

"Every bill has it’s sponsors. We must first identify them. Now we know who is against the people with strong corporate interests (or worse). Inundate them with email, snail mail, or phone calls. Let them know the people are watching their stealthy tactics. WE MUST not let them succeed. No prisoners here. They win because of the passivity of the American People. We must wake up now or the country we so love will become a shadow of what we knew."

 

HR 875 House of Representatives sponsors:

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES
FEBRUARY 4, 2009

1. Ms. DELAURO (for herself,
2. Ms. ESHOO,
3. Ms. DEGETTE,
4. Ms. SCHAKOWSKY,
5. Mr. ENGEL,
6. Ms. CASTOR of Florida,
7. Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut,
8. Ms. SUTTON,
9. Mrs. LOWEY,
10. Ms. SLAUGHTER,
11. Mr. HINCHEY,
12. Mr. MCGOVERN,
13. Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ,
14. Ms. HIRONO,
15. Mr. GRIJALVA,
16. Mr. SCHAUER,
17. Mr. NADLER of New York,
18. Mr. BISHOP of New York,
19. Ms. LINDA T.SANCHEZ of California,
20. Mr. MCDERMOTT,
21. Mr. RYAN of Ohio,
22. Ms. GIFFORDS,
23. Mr. FILNER,
24. Mr. HALL of New York,
25. Ms. LEE of California,
26. Ms. PINGREE of Maine,
27. Ms. KAPTUR,
28. Mr. BISHOP of Georgia,
29. Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin, and
30. Mr. DEFAZIO)

introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce, and in addition to the Committee on Agriculture, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

A BILL

SHORT TITLE.—This Act may be cited as the 5 "Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009".

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Senate S 425: Food Safety and Tracking Improvement Act

Full Text of S 425: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-425

A bill to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to provide for the establishment of a traceability system for food, to amend the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the Poultry Products Inspections Act, the Egg Products Inspection Act, and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to provide for improved public health and food safety through enhanced enforcement, and for other purposes.

Sponsor: Sen. Sherrod Brown [D-OH] (no cosponsors)

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Related

Forward by Liam Buell <hokouri@gmail.com>

Bills Could Reorganize Farming and Criminalize Organic Farming
Written by Megan Prusynski
Published on March 10th, 2009
11 Comments

http://planetsave.com/blog/2009/03/10/bills-could-reorganizing-farming-and-criminalize-gardening-organic-farming/
 

In two vague bills introduced both in the House and Senate of the US Congress, a vast reorganization of America’s agriculture system aimed at tracking and regulating foods for public safety could endanger organic farms and gardens.

The bills, S.425 and H.R.875, attempt to modernize food safety and regulate and standardize agriculture by creating an agency called the Food Safety Administration, but in the process they could threaten organic farming.

Provisions include mandatory registration and inspection for “any food establishment or foreign food establishment engaged in manufacturing, processing, packing, or holding food for consumption in the United States,” and sets standard practices such as minimums for fertilizer use.

Any food that the agency deems “unsafe, adulterated or misbranded” can be seized and the food establishment or farm fined. It’s not clear how these foods will be deemed unsafe. The bills aim to industrialize farms, standardize farming practices, require registration and inspection for any one producing food, and make practices key to organic farming illegal.

While we certainly need to improve our food safety, the problem with these bills is that they are so vague and open-ended, they could be used to justify banning organic practices such as composting and seed saving, or to put into law standard practices such as the required use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides.

The bills are speculated to have been funded by agri-business giants including Monsanto. The threat of the new standards is that only approveed seeds, fertilizers, and farming methods could be used, and if Monsanto gets their way, all farms and gardens be growing their plants and using their products. That is definitely a scary thought.

Organic farming is certainly already revolutionary, but it could be an illegal act if these bills are passed without reworking to protect organic farmers and backyard gardeners. Please contact your senators and representatives today and urge them to protect public health and safety without criminalizing organic farming. There isn’t much time to comment on this bill, so act now!

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Comments

[Note from Ken Adachi: Most of the reader comments posted at this article attempt to pour water on the alarm this woman is attempting to raise, but I find those disparaging comments largely flacid and unconvincing. You can read the comments yourself at the originating link, but I find the author, Megan, to offer the most cogent response herself in this comment:]
 

#8. Megan said on March 11th, 2009 at 8:00 pm

The quote in the article from one of the bills doesn’t seem to exclude places where food is manufactured, i.e. grown: “any food establishment or foreign food establishment engaged in manufacturing, processing, packing, or holding food for consumption in the United States.”

Farmer’s markets would definitely be affected. There is mention of standardized practices that would be required of every registered food producer (and that’s everyone, from what I understand anyone producing food for public consumption would have to be registered and inspected), and fertilizers are mentioned there - I don’t know about you, but I highly doubt that these required fertilzers would be organic.

Monsanto is the company that has been tied to this bill - they would definitely benefit directly because if everything having to do with food production is controlled and regulated, Monsanto’s seeds, fertilizers, and pesticides would provide an easy solution to standardizing farm practices. The fear that I have heard about this bill is that the regulations put in place will require all food producers to be standardized by using only “approved” (Monsanto) fertilizers and other products. So that is why there’s a bit of a scare about this.

The language of these bills is very difficult to read and very vague - so while it does not come right out and say “this bill bans organic gardening” - the danger is in how the law will be applied. There’s certainly a lot of room in the language to force certain practices and products on food producers since they’ll be required to be registered and regulated by the agency the law creates. I just see a lot of room for abuse in this bill, though you do have to read between the lines to see this.

My main concern is that with such vague language, these bills could potentially spell doom for organic food producers and sellers since they’re using “non-industry standard” practices already. While the intention is good on the surface, these bills need a lot of work before they go into law - and the window of time for debate and public comment on this bill is very narrow, so our representatives need to know that these bills are not ready to be laws until all the details are hammered out and organic farming is protected and addressed in them.

Thanks for the discussion, everyone.
# 9 Megan said on March 11th, 2009 at 9:03 pm

I found another article on these bills, and why they could threaten organic farming, if anyone is interested: http://www.appomattoxnews.com/2009/my-problems-with-h-r-875-the-food-safety-modernization-act-of-2009.html

# 10 Spencer said on March 11th, 2009 at 9:55 pm

Here is another one Megan, and thanks for bringing this up for discussion.
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/03/law-farmers-market-vendor-million-fine.php?dcitc=daily_nl

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Forward courtesy of Elissa

From: The Pen <activist.thepen@gmail.com>
Date: March 15, 2009
To: littlestar1956@woh.rr.com
Subject: Urgent: Stop Corporate Fascists From Taking Over Our Food Supply

Please note: We told you about this issue last week and many of you responded. But we still need your comments with the USDA by the end of the day, Monday, March 16, to stop the incredibly destructive corporate scheme described below. Congress is already trying to stack the deck so only lobbyists have a meaningful voice in this debate. We can stop them if you speak out now.

Radio Chip Animal Identification Would Do ALL Harm To Our Real Food Safety, And No Good

It would be too easy to blame the recent peanut panic on one criminal corporation owner, who KNOWINGLY shipped Salmonella contaminated product. But before that it was millions of pounds of ground beef, and before that tomatoes all over the country, and on and on. And when you ask where is all this horrible filth coming from, with a over a million cases of Salmonella in the U.S. alone every year, the answer is self-evident. It's the huge factory farms that overflow with seas of untreated animal waste, that then spill into our food supply, including through our agricultural plant crop fields.

We have a lot of work to do to clean up this giant mess, but the first thing we have to do is STOP a lunatic boondoggle being pushed by these same corporate interests, to force radio computer chip implanting of literally every farm animal in the country, EXCEPT on their own factory farms. It is absolutely nothing but a further attempt to drive small family farms out of business, who in fact are our safest source of reliably clean food now.

The proposed National Animal Identification System (NAIS) would force even the smallest healthy farms to buy expensive new computer tracking equipment, and potentially would subject them to gestapo-like tactics by the USDA if they are in even slight technical non-compliance. And all this just to fatten the pockets of the RFID chip manufacturers, and to make it LOOK like something is being done to make our food safer.

The special one click action page below will send your personal message to all your members Congress and also directly to the U.S. Department of Agriculture who is trying to rush this thing through without adequate scrutiny.

Stop NAIS Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum942.php

This action is especially urgent because the U.S. House Agriculture Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry is holding a hearing on NAIS implementation on March 11, and many farm activists fear the plan is to push it out for a full vote in Congress faster than a greased pig, before we the people have a meaningful chance to speak out.

You may not have a House member on that particular subcommittee, but you can pressure your own House member to tell they colleagues on it that there is massive constituent pressure against NAIS. For the especially mobilized on the action page above there is a link to the phone numbers for those on the subcommittee, because they are in fact your representative as an American citizen if they sit on it.

Below are some more extensive truth points you can select from in drafting your comments or on the phone, again linked to from the action page above.

NAIS was designed by NIAA (the National Institute of Animal Agriculture), a corporate consortium consisting of Monsanto, industrial meat producers such as Cargill and Tyson, and surveillance companies such Viatrace, AgInfoLink, and Digital Angel. The NAIS scheme fits agribusiness, biotech, and surveillance companies to a T:

1) They are already computerized, and they engineered a corporate loophole: If an entity owns a vertically integrated, birth-to-death factory system with thousands of animals (as the Cargills and Tysons do), it does not have to tag and track each one but instead a herd is given a single lot number.

2). NAIS will only be burdensome and costly (fees, tags, computer equipment, time) to small farmers which helps push them out of business, thus leaving more market to giant agribusiness.

3) Agribusiness wants to reassure export customers that the US meat industry is finally cleaning up its widespread contamination. NAIS would give that appearance ... without incurring the cost of a real cleanup.

4) NAIS will allow total control over the competition: Owners of even a single chicken would be required to register private information, the Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates of their 'premise' and if any animal leaves its 'premise', the owner will be required to obtain an ID number for it and have the animal microchipped. All information, including 24 hour GPS surveillance would be fed into a vast corporate data bank, allowing for ease of false slaughter to hide true problems or to substitute biotech's genetically engineered animals.

5) NAIS may allow plundering of farmers through required DNA samples: DNA samples would be invaluable to Monsanto and biotech corporations genetically engineering animals. Farmers who raise heritage breeds would have no say in how their distinct DNA would be used and to the sole profit of biotech companies.

6) The advantage for the surveillance companies is obvious: Compulsory tagging of 6 million sheep, 7 million horses, 63 million hogs, 97 million cows, 260 million turkeys, 300 million laying hens, 9 billion chickens, and untold numbers of bison, alpaca, quail, and other animals -- and new animals being born, means a massive self-perpetuating market.

Please take action now to stop this insanity. Our health and our lives depend on it.

Stop NAIS Action Page: http://www.peaceteam.net/action/pnum942.php

The health claims for NAIS are a sham though fear of disease is used - to advance it. NAIS does not touch the contaminated source of E.coli, salmonella, listeria, mad cow, and common meat-borne diseases - the inherently unhealthy practices (mass crowding, growth stimulants, feeding regimens, rushed assembly lines, poor sanitation, etc.) of industrial-scale meat operations. Upton Sinclair's "Jungle" all over again. NAIS will do nothing to stop these practices. Moreover, tracking ends at the time of slaughter, yet it's from slaughter onward that most spoilage occurs. But NAIS does not trace any contamination after slaughter.

The self-serving Agribusiness NAIS plan distracts from their contaminatory practices, while targeting hundreds of thousands of small farms, homesteaders, organic producers, hobbyists ... and maybe even you. NAIS's purpose is to advance corporate monopoly over all food in the US. And with it, they have laid the ground work. Kissinger said if you control food, you can control people. This immense corporate plan to control of our food supply and eliminate our independent farmers is, at it heart, the most severe threat possible to our democracy itself.

Please take action NOW, so we can win all victories that are supposed to be ours, and forward this alert as widely as possible.

If you would like to get alerts like these, you can do so at http://www.peaceteam.net/in.htm

Or if you want to cease receiving our messages, just use the function at http://www.peaceteam.net/out.htm