Congress Passes HR 2751 and Shafts Our Farmers

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?

OC

source: http://www.naturalnews.com/030808_food_safety_bill_American_farmers.html#ixzz18s01GTbD

The Truth About and History of the So-Called "Food Safety Modernization Act"

LNH NOTE: This article is courtesy of Mike Adams, NaturalNews. We already know that S.510/HR2751 is not about "safety"; now we will learn how it's not "modern", either, as revealed in Mike's compelling report.

••••••••••••••••••••

In arguing for S.510, the "Food Safety Modernization Act," there are all sorts of attorneys, legislators and internet commentators who keep claiming, "The government won't try to control the food production of small farms." They say, "Your backyard garden is safe" and that the feds won't come knocking on your door to control your seeds or foods.

As usual, these pushers of Big Government are utterly ignorant of the history in their own country. Because as you'll learn right here, not only CAN the U.S. government control and dictate to single-family farms what they can grow in their own backyards; the government has already blatantly done so!

In this article, I'll share with you the full and true story of how Big Government has already run rampant over the rights of individuals to grow their own food-- I'll even cite the US Supreme Court decision that "legalized" this tyranny.


Learn more:

http://www.naturalnews.com/030799_food_freedom_Wickard_vs_Filburn.html#ixzz18lgpxVYg

Feds order farmer to destroy his own wheat crops:

The shocking revelations of Wickard vs Filburn

How the tyrants came after a farmer named Roscoe Filburn

It all starts with a farmer named Roscoe Filburn, a modest farmer who grew wheat in his own back yard in order to feed his chickens.

One day, a U.S. government official showed up at his farm. Noting that Filburn was growing a lot of wheat, this government official determined that Filburn was growing too much wheat and ordered Filburn to destroy his wheat crops and pay a large fine to the federal government.

The year was 1940, you see. And through a highly protectionist policy, the federal government had decided to artificially drive up the prices of wheat by limiting the amount of wheat that could be grown on any given acre. This is all part of Big Government's "infinite wisdom" of trying to somehow improve prosperity by destroying food and impairing economic productivity. (Be wary any time the government says it's going to "solve problems" for you.)

The federal government, of course, claims authority over all commerce (even when such claims are blatantly in violation of the limitations placed upon government by the Constitution). But Roscoe Filburn wasn't selling his wheat to anyone. Thus, he was not engaged in interstate commerce. He wasn't growing wheat as something to use for commerce at all, in fact. He was simply growing wheat in his back yard and feeding it to his chickens. That's not commerce. That's just growing your own food.

But get this: The government insisted he pay a fine and destroy his wheat, so Filburn took the government to court, arguing that the federal government had no right to tell a man to destroy his food crops just because they wanted to protect some sort of artificially high prices in the wheat market.

This case eventually went to the US Supreme Court. It's now known as Wickard v. Filburn, and it is one of the most famous US Supreme Court decisions ever rendered because it represents a gross expansion of the tyranny of the federal government.

The US Supreme Court sided with government tyranny

The US Supreme Court, you see, ruled that Roscoe Filburn's wheat could be regulated and destroyed by the federal government simply because Roscoe's wheat production might reduce the amount of wheat he bought from other wheat producers and therefore could impact interstate trade.

Now stay with me on this, because this is a really, really important point to understand.

The federal government claimed authority under the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution (Article 1, Section 8), even though the Commerce Clause was originally written primarily to prevent states from erecting tariffs, not to allow the federal government to control interstate trade. But thanks to the twisted interpretation of the government -- and believe me, the government will twist every interpretation it can in an effort to assert more power over the population -- the feds claimed that Filburn's growing of his own wheat effectively reducedinterstate commerce in wheat. Therefore, they reasoned, they could regulate his backyard wheat production (and order him to destroy his wheat).

Because of this US Supreme Court decision in 1942, it now means the federal government can order you to halt food production in your own back yard by arguing that when you grow your own food, the amount of food you purchase from other food providers is reduced, meaning that your food production impacts interstate trade and therefore can be fully controlled by the federal government.

In other words, the federal government claims the authority right now -- even without the Food Safety Modernization Act -- to knock on your door and order you at gunpoint to destroy all the food in your garden, your greenhouse or your farm. They can order you to destroy all seeds in your possession and all food harvested from your own garden. And they can do all this with the full protection of U.S. law by simply citing the precedent set in Wickard v. Filburn in 1942 as ruled by the US Supreme Court.

Why the naysayers will probably starve
Still think you have the right to grow your own food? I've heard all sorts of naysayers claiming that S.510 -- the Food Safety Modernization Act -- is no threat to small growers and family farms. They say the fears about S.510 are overblown and that the government can't possibly shut down your backyard gardens or small, local vegetable farms. They say this with the kind of smug certainty you might typically hear from a doctor who thinks he knows everything about human health (but who actually knows nothing about nutrition).

These naysayers tend to operate out of an assumption that Big Government will never take away their rights and freedoms and that expanding the reach of agencies such as the TSA, FDA, DEA and FTC with even more power and more armed agents is a good thing because the government always takes care of the people. We need more protection from e.coli, they argue, so let's unleash 4,000 armed FDA agents instead to protect us from bacteria. (But who will protect us from the FDA?)

What these ignorant naysayers don't understand is that government is constantly trying to expand its power to the point of tyranny. As a current example of this, look at what just happened with Chavez in Venezuela. He has now been granted what are essentially dictatorial powers over the country (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/12/18/AR2010121802933.html). Chavez is now the King of Venezuela, and whatever he says is now law. Venezuelan citizens are now slaves to his tyranny, and they must follow his orders or be executed.

The United States is moving in precisely the same direction. First, power gets stripped away from the People little by little. Then it gets concentrated in the hands of a few regulatory agencies who write their own laws and who stay in power year after year because none of their officials are elected. (Think the FDA commissioner is elected by the people? Think again…) And then, over time, a few powerful individuals concentrate power from those agencies into their own hands. Before long, the country is run by a handful of power-crazed tyrants who disregard all freedoms and rights of the People.

This is precisely what the FDA is doing with the Food Safety Modernization Act. Backed by yet more funding and a new army of agents, plus the Supreme Court ruling that says the federal government can order you to destroy the food you're growing in your own back yard, the FDA can now pillage the countryside, going from farm to farm and house to house, burning fields and ordering the citizenry to destroy their plants, seeds and crops. This is exactly what they've been doing to raw milk producers and food coops, by the way (http://www.naturalnews.com/030136_Rawesome_foods_raid.html).

That is no exaggeration. It is a documented "legal" precedent established in Wickard vs Filburn, and it can be used at any moment to destroy the ability of people to grow their own food, thereby making these people totally dependent on dead processed food (which is always FDA approved if it's dead, of course) made in food factories that churn out nutritional deficiencies and death.

What will you eat when the government destroys your local food supply?
You see, under the argument that your backyard garden "impacts interstate commerce," the federal government can order you to simply spray Roundup on your entire garden in order to kill it.

What will you eat then? When the GMO crops suffer a mass catastrophic failure, and the monocultured wheat dies from a global viral infection called ug99 "rust"

(http://theemergencyfoodsupply.com/archives/ug99-will-wheat-rust-cause-a-catastrophic-global-famine), what will you eat?

If the government has its way, you won't eat at all. You'll starve to death under the "protection" of the food safety thugs at the FDA who don't believe any "live" food is safe in the first place (hence their war against raw milk).

Those people who have the foresight to grow their own gardens and protect their food sources from the tyranny of the federal government may actually have a chance at surviving. The rest will simply starve while waiting in government food lines where the feds hand out nutritionally worthless cheese and other depleted processed foods that Sesame Street absurdly thinks are "superfoods" (http://www.naturalnews.com/030626_muppets_Sesame_Street.html).

Big Government declares war on the local food movement

Make no mistake, folks: the government is attempting to destroy the local food movement. They are trying to wipe out small, organic farms that compete with corporate agribiz in the same way the FDA has long plotted to destroy natural health supplement companies who compete with Big Pharma.

It's all about wiping out the little guys and protecting the monopoly markets of the largest and most influential corporations that are poisoning the earth and destroying your health. As Wickard vs Filburn clearly demonstrated, the government does not believe you have any natural right or Constitutional right to grow your own food. In fact, the government believes it has the right to order you to destroy your food at the time of its choosing.

Don't think this could happen to you? Filburn didn't either. The idea that his own government would show up at his door and order him to burn his field of wheat was simply unimaginable. Similarly, the idea that the FDA would tear across the countryside wiping out small family farms is unimaginable to many Americans today. But that's only because they don't know their own history and they put far too much faith in the flimsy idea that the government somehow, in some way, respects the rights and freedoms of the People.

The obvious falsehood of that idea is evident in the way we are all being treated by the TSA. Who would have thought, just two years ago, that we'd be subjected to government-enforced molestation at the hands of airport security screeners? That idea seems unthinkable at the time, much like the idea that the FDA could seize your garden seeds or order you to destroy your greenhouse crops. Yet such actions are already within the claimed power of the federal government… merely waiting to be invoked at the time of their choosing.

Traitors to freedom

All those who voted for S.510 -- which includes the entire U.S. Senate, Republicans and Democrats alike -- are traitors to the freedoms upon which America was founded. They have thrust our food supply into the hands of tyrants who are just waiting to exercise their control and "authority" over as many people as possible.

Five years ago, I joked that people might one day be arrested for smuggling broccoli across state lines. Today, that joke has become a sad reality. The mere act of growing food and selling it to your neighbor without government permission is about to become a criminal act. And no, small farms are not "exempt" from S.510. They must provide financial information and apply to the FDA to be granted exemption status. That sounds a lot like slaves begging for mercy from the king, doesn't it?

Keep the big picture in mind as you consider all this: When teens are poisoned by the aspartame in diet soda, the FDA does nothing. When children are given cancer by the sodium nitrite in hot dogs, the FDA does nothing. When countless thousands of Americans suffer heart attacks and cardiovascular disease each year from the partially-hydrogenated oils used throughout the food supply, the FDA does nothing. But when you grow fresh produce in your own back yard and carry it to your local farmer's market to sell it without government permission, you will be arrested by the FDA as a criminal.

Shame on all those who supported this bill. May history have mercy on their souls for the suffering and injustices they have unleashed upon us all.

S.510 Passed (NOT Good)! URGENT ACTION Needed to Help Stop HR 2751 Food Safety bill (now in the House)

***Bill S.510 is now known as HR 2751***

Stop HR 2751 Food Safety Act

Your help is urgently needed! This petition seeks to halt the passage of HR 2751 which contains the Food Safety bill that would harm small, local farmers by granting the FDA new powers to put small farmers out of business if they don't comply with the burden of new government regulations. Your access to locally grown fresh produce is at risk!

OC

••••••••••••••••••••••••

Email from Mike Adams:

In the dark of night, the US Senate passed S.510 last night with a unanimous consent voice vote (not a single US Senator opposed it).

It's now headed back to the House for a possible vote on Tuesday.

We need your help to oppose this dangerous bill that could destroy small, local organic farmers and reduce the availability of local fresh produce.

If you enjoy farmers' markets or buy food from a CSA, your food supply is now in danger due to HR 2751 in the House of Representatives! (See more talking points below...)

Take Action Now to Protect Small Local Farms

Action item #1) Sign our petition at:
http://org2.democracyinaction.org/o/7025/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=5020

(This will automatically email your appropriate representatives in Washington.)

Action item #2) Read our article (and forward it to others) at:
http://www.naturalnews.com/030789_Food_Safety_small_farmers.html

Action item #3) Read the Natural Solutions Foundation article and petition at:
http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=7824eri

Action item #4) Read the urgent action alert from the Farm-To-Consumer Legal Defense Fund at:
http://www.farmtoconsumer.org/aa/aa-20dec2010-s510-in-hr2751-house.htm

Here are the talking points from FTCLDF on why this fake food safety bill is so dangerous to our future:

The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act is fundamentally flawed and is not in the best interest of small farmers, especially those who produce raw milk. The Act is a major threat to the local food movement.

1. FDA does not respect individuals' rights to obtain healthy, quality foods of their choice. The agency has stated, as a matter of public record that:

"There is no absolute right to consume or feed children any particular food."

"Plaintiffs' assertion of a 'fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families' is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish."

FDA has even participated in armed raids on small-scale co-ops and membership organizations. This agency should not be given any additional power.

2. FDA has adequate powers under existing law to ensure food safety and effectively deal with foodborne illness outbreaks. FDA has power to inspect, power to detain product and can readily obtain court orders to seize adulterated or misbranded food products or enjoin them from being sold. The problem isn't that FDA needs more power; it's that FDA does not effectively use the power it currently has. The agency has power to inspect imported food yet inspects only 1% of food coming into this country from outside our borders.

3. S.510 does nothing to address many significant food safety problems in this country, such as those resulting from confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs), genetically modified organisms (GMOs), and various contaminants (e.g., BPA, pesticides, herbicides, etc.).

4. FDA has used its existing power to benefit the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries at the expense of public health (e.g., allowing the overuse of antibiotics in confined animal feeding operations and refusing to require labeling for genetically-modified foods). This bill does not address the fundamental problems at this agency in order to truly protect public health.

5. S.510 will expand FDA's involvement in regulating food in intra-state commerce, further interfering with local communities. State and local governments are more than capable of handling any problems related to food in intrastate commerce. All the major outbreaks of foodborne illness involve either imported food or food in inter-state commerce.

6. S.510 will hurt our ability as a nation to be self-sufficient in food production because it has more lenient inspection requirements for foreign than domestic producers creating an unfair advantage for food imports. Giving an advantage to foreign producers will only increase the amount of food imported into this country that does not meet our domestic standards. S.510 does not address food security -- the ability of a country to produce enough food to meet its own needs.

Thank you for your action in this urgent item. We will keep you posted on this news at www.NaturalNews.com

- Mike Adams