Have people lost their minds?Seriously.
Whatever shred of that "faith-of-a-child" part of me which would like to believe our government is well-meaning, died this week with the passing of S.510 and HR 2751. That bill is now on it's way to the President to be signed into law.
Here's what it will mean to you:
The US government now will expand it's control over
the entire food industry.
• US farmers will be driven out of business, displacing generations-old business owners and families.
• It is expected that those wanting to enter into the farming business, as well as small local farmers who will grow for local co-ops and farmer's markets will meet with new criteria, making it more difficult to conduct business, resulting in market failures, loss of local food production jobs and a reduced supply of fresh seasonal, locally-grown organic produce. You can expect an increase in locally-grown produce prices.
• The bill may look well-intended, as it's titled the "Food Modernization Safety Act" (it sounds 'safe', right?), but it's not really about protecting us from food-born illness from salmonella and e.coli. And there are other shortcomings associated with it's coming into law.
• This law does not impact growers outside of the US, who are not required to meet S.510 food safety regulations. The US does not inspect international growers and farms.
• There will be an increase of importing produce.
• While farming opportunities will increase in other countries, they will decrease in the US, displacing farmers and their families.
• Many toxic pesticides which have been banned in the US are still legal to use in other countries, and these crops will be imported into the US for our consumption (as if the stuff that's still used here for conventionally grown crops isn't toxic enough!)
Some political candidates have recently lost elections in part due to the fact they outsourced jobs in their past careers. Now our own government is going to outsource our farming?
This will result in a lowered safe food supply.
With their vote, our Congress has taken jobs away from our farmers, and increased production in other countries who still use toxic pesticides which have been banned in the US due to toxicity. This will have an obvious deleterious impact on the food safety and sustainability by driving our small, local organic farmers out of business.
In his recent newsletter, Mike Adams said, "The knowledge of our local farmers who know how to grow, harvest and distribute food is far more valuable to the security of our nation than preventing a relatively small number of people from getting sick from e.coli each year (even if such a trade-off were a simplistic equation, which it isn't). Because if we lose food security, then we become slaves to the big corporate food producers who are attempting to centralize food production and place food, seeds and crops under their absolute control."
Mike also went on to say, "A cynic might even suggest that was the shole purpose of the food safety bill in the first place: To destroy small farmers and centralize food production power in the hands of a few wealthy coporations. Whether that was the intent or not, it is certainly going to be the effect.
What Congress has done with this food safety bill, in effect, is to cripple America's food production know-how and poison the population with far more dangerous pesticide-ridden produce that will now be imported from other countries instead. This bill should have been called the "Mexico Farming Jobs Act" because it's going to shift countless jobs south of the border as farms in the USA realize they simply can't operate under the immense burden of FDA regulatory tyranny."
What's in our future?
Look for the California Cruciferous Cartel. New Jersey will have their 'Mater Mafia. Nebraska will become known as the Nib-Nabbers.
Sheesh...who would ever would have thought there'd be a day when we'd be smuggling broccoli?
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