Proposed Legislation to Ban Organic Farming

Are you an organic grower? Like to eat organic food? Well, maybe not for much longer.

According to recent proposed legislation, a "food grower" essentially is a farmer - no matter big or small - and this also means you or your neighbor.

If you grow a few radishes in your yard every year, then you are a food grower. If you grow a few radishes without using man-made pesticides and fertilizers, then you are an organic farmer. Whether you are an organic farmer or not, given that this legislation will pass, you could be fined and prosecuted under federal law for illegally growing a handful of radishes.

How ridiculous is that?

How They Softened Us Up

Years ago big business sold the farmers and us on the idea that using fertilizer to augment the growth of our food was somehow good for us. By now we all know how bad those fertilizers are for our bodies. But we still use them, and that seems to be a battle that fell to the wayside.

And then they got us to accept the fact that would be feeding our children with food laced with pesticides...

It seems we now look upon these yesteryear skirmishes as lost causes of little to no significance in our lives now.

But get ready...

Evil Has a Pleasant New Face

As if all this brainwashing hasn't been enough, something new and more overtly dangerous has recently appeared on the horizon:

US House Resolution 875, the so-called "Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009".

This proposed legislation sounds like it only wants to protect you. Read here:

"To establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes."

HR 875 sounds friendly, right?

If you read between the lines of this seemingly innocuous liturgy, you will find that the closing words "for other purposes" leave a lot of room for a lot of undefined interpretation.

Absolute Power

This proposed legislation would seek (among many other things) to:

• Establish a new "Food Safety Administration" (FSA) under an already bloated and knowingly ineffectual Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).
• Establish the FSA as the definitive author and enforcer of food safety laws - a power that up until now would have rested with the individual states.
• Institute the FSA as the absolute agency for food law enforcement.
• Allow the FSA to assess fines and penalties up to $1 million for each violation.
• Use collected fines in whatever FSA deems fit in order to "carry out enforcement activities under the food safety law".

What This Means To You

So what does this mean to the back yard gardener on his or her knees this afternoon?

The FSA would:

• Have power to make a "regular unannounced inspection of food establishments" (read: your home or small growing business) as it sees fit.
• Reclassify your gardens as "food production facilities" so that they will be subject to FSA's regulations.
• Require food grower gardens to comply with FSA-established "minimum standards" for farming practices, including requiring them to jump through ridiculous bureaucratic documentation hoops such as "Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point" (HACCP) plans, as well as observe whatever other protocols the FSA determines.
• Have the power to promulgate and enforce "preventative process controls to reduce adulteration of food" as it deems fit.

Organic Farming To Become Illegal

From the sound of it, it looks like the FSA wants you to grow things in whatever undefined manner it sees fit, force you to document the hell out of it, and perhaps do a host of other as yet undefined things. And if you budge one inch from whatever they decided was right or wrong, you could be paying $1 million.

And whatever happened to the friendly idea of having "your very own garden"?

Who's Behind All This? Big Business.

In light of the large errors of a relative few who irresponsibly sold us a load of disease-laden peanuts (in recent months), tainted onions (last year), or spinach (a year or two back) - you are the one to blame for it. After all, your backyard garden produces tons of food every day while not keeping them free from the filth and neglect they were warned of over and over again.

To ensure all food growers produce food in an "unadulterated" fashion, what HR 875 does not say is you will have to grow your radishes with the "approved" pesticides and fertilizers.

Whaddya know? We have a hero standing conveniently in our midst already!

Say hello to the multinational agri-business giant, Monsanto.

Monsanto has brought you friendly products such as genetically altered food stock seeds, recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) in cows, "Round-Up Ready" sugar and soy filler products hidden in many of the foods you might commonly eat (can you say, "Taco Bell"?).

So what?

Well, the representative (Rosa DeLauro) proposing the HR 875 ban on organic farming is married to a guy named Stanley Greenburg who just so happens to work for Monsanto.

Big money? Personal interest? Wow, what a coincidence!

Are You Angry Now? What Can You Do?

Write your representative and tell them: No to HR 875!

Otherwise, read up or do nothing:

HR 875 - The Federal Take-Over of Food Regulation

Stop Federal Takeover of Food Regulation in H.R. 875

Monsanto's dream bill, HR 875

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