OrangeClouds115 wrote yesterday:
HR 875, the Food Safety Modernization Act, a bill by Rosa DeLauro with about 40 cosponsors (mostly progressives) and no chance of passing (yet). The bill is flawed. It's not perfect. She's introduced it into previous Congresses without this much fanfare and panic among the blogs. So let's get the facts straight so that I don't have to see any more erroneous and crazy, paranoid diaries on the rec list."
See her story here.
I’d like to ask the dKos community to see that it doesn’t stand a chance to pass.
I don’t like food factories that kill people or animals with contaminated food. So I read this bill.
Why is DeLauro wasting our time with this? I wish I knew. It’s so stupid. But it’s real and it may not stand a chance to pass but let’s not take that chance.
I’ve never had a problem with farm fresh food, ever.
It occurred to me however, that if this passed it would open a venue for harassing minorities. Now, that sounds stupid – and paranoid, you say, it’s a food bill. Yes, but I’m in Oklahoma. I have a reason for that line of thinking.
There are producers who respect all religious slaughter requirements and assist with on-farm slaughter. They would be required to be on the national Food Administrator's list, renew yearly, and be subject to unannounced inspections. Farms like Knight’s Rest in Oklahoma are an example of such a facility. They already have best practices. Imagine a pair of overzealous unannounced badge-wielding inspectors or a team of them coming in upon a religious slaughter at Knight’s Rest and also inspecting for green cards? Oklahoma has a harsh anti-immigrant law. Right wing extremist have badges sometimes. (I did not link to Knight’s Rest because there is a graphic picture of a carcass on the page for religious slaughter assistance.)
It’s actually already hard to find on-farm slaughter. Farmers have lost the "art," don’t have the facilities, are afraid of government agents, afraid of inspectors, worried about a National Animal Identification System, afraid to sell to anyone because they haven’t registered their Premises with an ID number, and now a new Food Administrator will be looking in on them. On top of that they’d have to worry about agents arresting them for "assisting" illegals. (See law in Oklahoma pdf).
My other reason for this diary is that we have a farmer class who has to wake up every morning and wonder, will this be the day I get raided? Forget that H.R. 875 has "no chance of passing (yet)." Other measures have been funded which have made life very hard for small producers across America. In Wisconsin thanks to a federal "voluntary" program producers must register their Premises or face fines. You might not care about that now. But here’s the point, what is the USDA NAIS trace-back system good for if it stops where contamination begins? So why is Wisconsin forcing farmers into the Premise Registration System if the USDA says it’s voluntary? (Yes, Wisconsin made it a law. That’s not the point.)
The feedlot operators who have been the source of contaminations and worries should be the focus any modernization Act. Small producers supply a need and are the real future of farming. They should be exempt from a Food Administrator’s excessive oversight as written in H.R. 875. There is a need for more oversight applied to the Concentrated Animal Feedlot Operations.
I hope H.R. 875 dies today.
This bill will provide this new Food Administrator the job of surveillance of vegetable producers of all sizes, my garden patch falls under this Act.
There’s some spinach growing in my garden. I’m pretty sure no industrial system contamination will reach up this hill and infest it with E. coli 0157:H7. That spinach contamination with the E. coli 0157:H7 was the result of our industrial system.
E. coli 0157:H7 is a mutation of industrial feedlot agriculture; you do not have it in grass-fed cattle.
Guessing at Michael Pollan's take on NAIS and industry's "fake food safety" bills.
I’m using horse manure and I know where it’s been... (Yes, love, I’ll clean that up in a minute... ) A Food Administrator will not prevent another contamination. Not by having the spinach producer sign onto a national list.
To modernize our food system we should take a good, hard look at expanding what is good and eliminating what hasn’t been good at all.
H.R. 875 is not the answer. Yet, I understand the perceived need behind this measure after the melamine contaminations and the peanut butter factory contamination.
Something I think is good about this bill would be that it could put a bigger spotlight on the feedlots and thereby have the effect of possibly pushing them closer to their unsustainable end. I doubt it but I am an optimist. Nonetheless, the bill is just no good overall. The Food Safety Modernization Act is overkill.
What can we ask our Congressmen and women to do to about our food system? I have confidence in the dKos community to know the answers. Don’t skip writing to him or her about this H.R. 875 though. It’s not dead (yet).