Food safety scam from Big Ag
The “food safety” bills in Congress were written by Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM, etc. All are associated with the opposite of food safety. What is this all about then?
In the simplest terms, organic food and a rebirth of farming were winning. Not in absolute numbers but in a deep and growing shift by the public toward understanding the connection between their food and their health, between good food and true social pleasures, between their own involvement in food and the improvement in their lives in general, between local food and a burgeoning local economy.
Slow Food was right - limit your food to what comes from your region and from real farmers, and slow down to cook it and linger over it with friends and family, and the world begins to change for the better.
And as we face an unprecedented economic crisis, and it is hard to be sure…
Hat tip to Rainbow Seed.
Disobey! Disobey! Disobey!
VJP:
And what Sec. of Ag has ties to Monsanto?
6 March 2009, 8:26 pmStan:
LINK
7 March 2009, 6:26 amMichael Anderson:
Do you think that there is an agenda on the table for population reduction, or should I say population enclosure, through measures like this, as put forth by Mike Ruppert and others?
7 March 2009, 2:47 pmDeAnander:
I’d like to know the AB numbers of those “food safety” bills and proposed laws. The original article is very scary, but lacking in detail. I don’t doubt the evil agenda — the accelerating (and desperate) Enclosure of Everything is well documented. But what laws are these, what are their legislative numbers, where can we read the original text, when are they due to be voted on, etc? Does anyone have more details?
It is interesting to see the corporate overlords working towards making it illegal for people to grow or share food. I’m reminded of the period when the feudal overlords made it a serious offence to own one’s own grain mill (all grain had to be ground at the overlord’s mill, where a percentage would be extorted), or the more recent instance in which Mugabe forbade urban residents to have vegetable gardens (as the food security thus won made them more uppity and resistant to his dictatorship). Control of the food supply, extirpation of the capacity of the underclasses to grow their own food, is a repetitive strategy of overlords ever since overlords defined themselves into existence…
8 March 2009, 1:02 amDeAnander:
afterthought: this “public safety” rationale is a repeating meme in modern bureaucratised societies. I’m thinking of the way in which “safety” was used as the rationale for e.g. bicycle helmet laws which worked very well to discourage cycling by redefining it as a dangerous activity, and to shift the blame for cyclist injuries away from motorists and onto cyclists. car insurance companies in some states were lobbying behind the scenes for such laws, as they would make it easier to deny culpability/liability in cases where motorists killed “reckless” unhelmeted cyclists. in China, as the love affair with the private auto accelerates, cyclists are now being banned from major urban roadways on the same pretext of “public safety”. the automobile is obviously the source of danger (of many kinds, from climatic to personal injury) and yet the “safety” rationale is used to displace its much safer alternatives.
the industrial food system is obviously the source of danger (contaminated food, non-nutritious pseudo-food, addictive and/or toxic additives, GMO escapes, groundwater pollution, marine eutrophication, salination, antibiotic misuse, avian flu, E Coli leaks, etc) — yet the “safety” rationale is used to displace its much safer and saner alternatives.
8 March 2009, 1:09 amStan:
HR 857 - The Food Safety Modernizaton Act of 2009
Hey, that sounds okay, doesn’t it?
8 March 2009, 7:02 amMichael Anderson:
Sec. 409, “Citizen and Civil Actions”
(a) Civil Actions- A person may commence a civil action against–
(1) a person that violates a regulation (including a regulation establishing a performance standard), order, or other action of the Administrator to ensure the safety of food; or..”
“A person”…corporate personhood. Bi Ag got more lawyers, guns, and money.
The bill definitely provides for FUTURE further regulatory provisions and expansions. Couldn’t find anything on a quick perusal specifically on outlawing seed banks, but the regulatory structure is definitely there to tighten the screws, one-sixteenth of a turn at a time.
What I can see it doing soon is putting the squeeze on firms that have a REGIONAL market—some of those “local firms done good”, of which there are quite a few in this area (Western Oregon–Willamette Valley) that make food “products” that are actually nutritious…I’d name some here if I wasn’t afraid for them…add your own from wherever you are.
Quite benign, Stan, quite benign….S.I.C.
9 March 2009, 1:23 pmMichael Anderson:
To reference my previous post—One more thing to think about in this Food Modernization BS—corporate ownership of [previously] independent forms.
http://www.alternet.org/module/printversion/131910
I’m upset about the cereals part of this article, since I do buy those, but I guess I shoulda known, eh? It seems even organic, conscientious people can be bought, and while, in the short run, it may have no effect on products & practices, it’s what things evolve into that matters.
“The easier it looks, the hotter it hooks” —-Rikki Lee Jones—
STAN: I, too, am an RLJ fan.
17 March 2009, 3:14 pmStan:
Here’s OB on the issue:
LINK
30 March 2009, 4:37 pm