ACTION ALERT: BEWARE THE FOOD POLICE!

HR 875/S425 WOULD NATIONALIZE FARMING, DESTROY ORGANICS, ATTACK YOUR PRIVATE GARDEN!

The New Administration is pushing Farm Control that will drive Organic Farms out of Business: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epXNJNjYBvw

Buried in the bills are fine print that will force farmers to buy and use pesticides and to comply with severely onerous red tape (ostensibly to "protect consumers") or be driven out of business by gigantic fines.

It is "claimed" and being presented to establish a "Food Safety Administration" with in the Department of Health and Human Services to "protect" the public from food born illnesses... but as usual, nothing that happens in DC is actually the way it seems on the surface- its all smoke and mirrors- all LIES!!!

Congresswoman Rosa De Lauro (D-CT) deserves burial by phone call, fax, email and irate personal visits for sponsoring the slimiest piece of legislation I've seen in a very long time: HR 875 The (So Called) Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-875

This bill aleady has 31 cosponsors who most likely never read anything more than the PREAMBLE to the bill which seems reasonable enough, but as usual, the DEVIL is in the DETAILS. Peter Defazio (D-OR) is even cosponsoring this. He needs to REMOVE HIS NAME, and I think he will once he realizes whats actually in this bill. He is normally on our side against huge corporate powers like Monsanto, but in this case he's clearly making a mistake.

Whats driving this despicable P.O.S. was the recent contaminated Peanut Plant in Georgia http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,497425,00.html

As usual, Monsanto's lobbyists are up to no good, however, and they've stuck language into this puppy that needs to be yanked outa there PRONTO- and we're all going to have to do some work to make that happen!

If we don't, you can say goodbye to all that nice organic produce that you buy at your health food store, in the organics section of your supermarket, from farmers markets, and you can even expect to have the Fedstapo show up on your DOORSTEP to FINE you for growing a garden in your own YARD- THAT is how overly broad the bill language in this thing is!

Check it out: Full Text: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:h875:

HERE IS WHATS SPECIFICALLY WRONG AND WHAT YOU CAN DO:

This bill is sitting in committee and I am not sure when it is going to hit the floor.  One thing I do know is that very few of the Representatives have read it.  As usual they will vote on this based on what someone else is saying.  Urge your members to read the legislation and ask for opposition to this devastating legislation.  Devastating for everyday folks but great for factory farming ops like Monsanto, ADM, Sodexo and Tyson to name a few.

I have no doubt that this legislation was heavily influenced by lobbyists from huge food producers.  This legislation is so broad based that technically someone with a little backyard garden could get fined and have their property siezed.   It will effect anyone who produces food even if they do not sell but only consume it.  It will literally put all independent farmers and food producers out of business due to the huge amounts of money it will take to conform to factory farming methods. 

If people choose to farm without industry standards such as chemical pesticides and fertilizers they will be subject to a vareity of harassment from this completely new agency that has never before existed.  That's right, a whole new government agency is being created just to police food, for our own protection of course. 

DO NOT TAKE MY WORD FOR IT, READ THIS LEGISLATION FOR YOURSELF.

The more people who read this legislation the more insight we are going to get and be able to share. 

Post your observations and insights below. 

Urge your members to read this legislation and to oppose the passage of this legislation.

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.

Red flags I found and I am sure that there are more:

Legally binds state agriculture depts to enforcing federal guidelines effectively taking away the States’ power to do anything other than being food police for the federal dept.

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 up 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 dept act as the food police and enforce the federal requirements. This takes away the State’s power and is in violation of the 10th amendment.

There are many more but by the time I got this far in the legislation I was so alarmed that I wanted to bring someone's attention to it

http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:s425:

During times of Stalin’s regime, the nationalization of farming methods took place. This enabled his administration to gain control over the food supply. He used food rations to control the population.

Last word. Legislate religion, and enforce gag orders on ministers, controlling what can and can't be said in the pulpit, instituting regulations forcing people to rely fully on the government, control the format of money (cash, plastic or digital), seeds and food.

I haven't read any of the Senate's version of the bill as I have been pouring through the House's version. Here is the link and I hope some of you can take a look and post your observations and insights below.

S 425 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d111:s425: 

Theres also a chance that as this bill moves through Congressman Waxman's Energy and Commerce Committee, he could use it as a vehicle for attacking the Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act of 1994 which defends our access to dietary supplements. Waxman is DSHEA's biggest opponent in Congress and he's never had more power than he has now. IAHF is especially monitoring this aspect of the bill, but the rest is very bad as it is!

Things you can do:

Contact your members at 202-224-3121 (Capital Switchboard) and ask them to oppose HR 875 and S 425. While you are at it ask them if they personally have read the legislation and what their position is? If they have not read the legislation ask them to read it and politely let them know that just because other representitives are not reading the legislation and voting on it does not mean they can do the same  

Get in touch with local farmers and food producers by attending a local farmers market and asking them how you can understand further the implications that this will have on them

Attend a local WAPF meeting, as a good start to learning about what is going on in farming and local & state initiatives .  The website is http://www.westonaprice.org/localchapters/index.html

Check out the Farmers Legal Defense Fund at http://www.ftcldf.org/index.html

Find out who sits on your State’s agriculture and farming committee and contact them with your concerns

Continue to contact your elected officials and let them know your position on legislation and why

Get active at the local and State levels as this is the quickest way to initiate change.

I will be out of my office for a week, leaving Wednesday to work with a client in California, but I sure would appreciate if you forwarded this widely! Anyone can be on the IAHF list by signing up at www.iahf.com

Donations make it possible for me to do this Health Freedom work. If you appreciate this timely heads up, please consider sending a donation to IAHF via paypal at http://www.iahf.com/index1.html or by sending a check or money order to IAHF 556 Boundary Bay Rd., Point Roberts WA 98281 USA

For Health Freedom, John C. Hammell, President International Advocates for Health Freedom 556 Boundary Bay Road Point Roberts, WA 98281-8702 USA http://www.iahf.com jham@iahf.com 800-333-2553 N.America 360-945-0352 World

'Food Safety' Legislation Written by Big Agrico to Take Over Food Suppy

Will outlaw organic farmers markets, CSAs, and roadside produce stands, etc.

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 what has value, one thing that always does is food.  Which is why the corporations are after absolute control over it.  But what obstacles to a complete lock on food do they face?  All the people in this country who are "banking" on organic farming and urban gardens and most of all, everyone's deepening pleasure in and increasing involvement with everything about food.

Farmers markets.  Local farmers.  Real milk.  Fresh eggs.  Vegetable stands.

Those are things we not only all want, but things we are actively getting involved in, and things we very much need.  And where they are truly good, they are growing.

The international financial corporations which have wreaked havoc around the world with astounding nonsensical "solutions" that are destructive of everyone but them, are brothers to the international agribusiness giants (Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM, etc.) which are just as aggressively after their own form of "taking."  Just seeds, animals, water, land.

And freedom. 

Because human beings are by in large good and by in large incredibly resilient and clever, and left to their own devices - that is, free - they would handle this gargantuan financial stupidity the corporations brought us with NAFTA, CAFTA, GATT and all other globalized schemes (which they hope to eventually top off with CODEX).  How?  By being productive in real ways and locally.  And farming is the solid ground under that.  Farmers produce something of real value (something we used to take for granted), and from that base, businesses grow up.  Local markets, local food processors, local seed companies, local tool and supply companies, local stores ... and an economy based on reality and something truly good for us, too, begins to grow.

So, look again at what has been exciting us - Farmers markets.  Local farmers.  Real milk.  Fresh eggs.  Vegetable stands. - and realize that they are not only wonderfully healthy but fun and naturally community building.  And more, they are a real economy and deeply democratic - and just at a time we need something that works economically, that supports our democratic rebirth, and that protects food itself and our easy access to it.

And it is all those things that threaten the corporations ... which is why we now have these massive "fake food safety" bills in Congress.  Everything is going under thanks to these fools, and they wish to be there like vultures to make sure that every drop of blood that can be sucked out of our resources and us, is theirs.  To wit, they must get rid of such good and innocent things and yet truly powerful things as:

Farmers markets.  Local farmers.  Real milk.  Fresh eggs.  Vegetable stands.

And how will those who contaminate our country's food with pesticides, hormones, antibiotics and more, do that?  Why, by setting standards for "food safety" that are so grotesquely and inappropriately and even cruelly applied to a local, independent farmers and ranchers that there is no way they can manage.  Imagine your being faced with a 100 page IRS form and facing a million dollar a day penalty for screwing up.  That would be in the ball park of the impossible complexity mixed with threat facing our farmers.  Imagine having the government and corporations deciding every single thing you can do and must do in your kitchen and backing that up with the threat of 10 years in prison for screwing up - though you have never made anyone sick, and those corporations have.  Imagine being surveilled 24 hours a day by GPS tracking devices that feed into ... a corporate data bank, one they have now moved out of the country so no one here can have legal access to see what is in it.

Imagine the devil himself - or a whole boardrooms of them, dressed in suits - defining the only safe and healthy food in this country as dangerous and burdening hard working farmers with more work then anyone could bear, while his own, their own, food is so dangerous at this point that in the last 10 years alone, diabetes has gone up 90%.

And how did they get this far with such a scheme to apply insane industrial standards to every farm in the country?  Through fear of diseases and of outbreaks of food borne illnesses, both of which they cause themselves. 

How it works:  Tyson helps Bill Clinton get into office.  Bill Clinton immediately and significantly lowers contamination standards for poultry as a thank you.  And it is such contaminated waste from transnational poultry factories which is now implicated as the source of bird flu. Then fortunes on made on that fear.  And then poultry industry uses the crisis they created to push out small farmers and take greater control than ever.  Their mantra?  Biodiversity not only be damned but be eliminated.  And get rid of those damn farmers who protect it while we're at it.

The bills would require such a burdensome complexity of rules, inspections, licensing, fees, and penalties for each farmer who wishes to sell locally - a fruit stand, at a farmers market -  no one could manage it.  And THAT is the point.  The whole dirty tricks point.  The whole "be in tight control of everything needed for survival because it'll be worth a fortune" point.

So, if you like farmers markets, local farmers, fresh milk, fresh eggs, vegetables stands, and freedom, let your friends know that it's all on the line right now with those "fake food safety" bills brought to us with well-planned evil and more of it to come, by Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM, etc.

Slow Food reminds us of just where we need to be (and notice how much would help any local economy):

Forming and sustaining seed banks to preserve heirloom varieties in cooperation with local food systems;

Developing an "Ark of Taste" for each ecoregion, where local culinary traditions and foods are celebrated;

Preserving and promoting local and traditional food products, along with their lore and preparation;

Organizing small-scale processing (including facilities for slaughtering and short run products);

Organizing celebrations of local cuisine within regions (for example, the Feast of Fields held in some cities in Canada);

Promoting "taste education;"

Educating consumers about the risks of fast food;

Educating citizens about the drawbacks of commercial agribusiness and factory farms;

Educating citizens about the risks of monoculture and reliance on too few genomes or varieties;

Developing various political programs to preserve family farms;

Lobbying for the inclusion of organic farming concerns within agricultural policy;

Lobbying against government funding of genetic engineering;

Lobbying against the use of pesticides;

Teaching gardening skills to students and prisoners; and

Encouraging ethical buying in local marketplaces.

But we need to stop these bills first or we are left with no money from the financial bailout and no food from the food stealout.

Send a message to Congress.  

Take action -- click here to contact your local newspaper or congress people:

Stop HR 875, HR 814, SR 425, and soon, HR 759

Click here to see the most recent messages sent to congressional reps and local newspapers

Linn Cohen-Cole is a a mother and grandmother. There is no way I can leave my family or anyone else's children, things as they are now.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Goodbye-farmers-markets-C-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090303-287.html