Here is what Commondreams put out about the intensely controversial "food safety" bills:
http://www.commondreams.org/...
CFA’s Carol Tucker-Foreman Urges Congress to Modernize Food Safety Laws
Testifies Before House Agriculture Committee
WASHINGTON - April 2 - Carol L. Tucker-Foreman, Distinguished Fellow at Consumer Federation of America’s Food Policy Institute, today told the House Agriculture Committee that the lack of adequate food safety systems has become an emergency the Congress must address by enacting new laws that require the FDA to prevent foodborne illness rather than reacting to it and modernizing the FMIA and PPIA so that the Department of Agriculture can effectively enforce its HACCP and sanitation systems. Both agencies need more research to build science based systems.
Tucker-Foreman noted that the continuing string of foodborne illnesses is bad for consumers, food processors and farmers. The public is losing confidence in the safety of the nation’s food supply. States represented by members of the Agriculture Committee are among those hit by the last three outbreaks—contaminated peppers, peanut products and sprouts. ...
Tucker-Foreman urged Congress to change the Food and Drug Act to direct FDA to concentrate on preventing foodborne illness and give it power and funding to do so. She also urged the committee to give FDA a separate organizational entity within HHS as recommended by Representative Rosa DeLauro. ...
[DeLauro introduced the largest of the bills, HR 875, described below in an article by Nicole Johnson.]
Carol Tucker Foreman is Distinguished Fellow at Consumer Federation of America's Food Policy Institute. She was Assistant Secretary of Agriculture for Food and Consumer Services, 1977-81. Her responsibilities included oversight of the nation's meat, poultry and egg inspection and food assistance programs.
Consumer Federation of America is a non-profit association of over 300 organizations, with a combined membership of over 50 million Americans. CFA's Food Policy Institute was created in 1999 and engages in research, education and advocacy on food and agricultural policy, agricultural biotechnology, food safety and nutrition.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE
Here is what Commondreams has missed:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/...
The beginnings of deregulation, and how feces became an approved part of the American diet...well worth reading!
From: The AGRIBUSINESS EXAMINER
Issue # 34 May 19, 1999
Monitoring Corporate Agribusiness From a Public Interest Perspective
A.V. Krebs, Editor\Publisher
DISARMING ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS OR CHECKING ONE'S SOURCES
Carol Tucker Foreman's return to the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) to become director of a new Food Policy Institute for CFA after having been an outspoken lobbyist on behalf of Monsanto's rBGH not only illustrates what can and often does frequently happen to ex-Washington liberals, but also calls into question whether some self-proclaimed consumer organizations now see their constituencies as consumers or corporations. ....
Rod Leonard, executive director of the Community Nutrition Institute, explained how the discovery of drug resistant bacteria in poultry is linked to Tucker Foreman's food safety decision in 1976 that most people never knew about.
"Carol Foreman ... "a newly minted Assistant Secretary of Agriculture, approved that year a change in food safety procedures that would have far reaching consequences. Foreman, one of only a few consumer advocates to reach so high a federal post, decided that poultry visibly smeared with fecal matter could be safely eaten after the feces was washed away.
While it would have been clear to any expert on bacteria that feces carry harmful invisible bacteria which repeated washings would not remove, Foreman's ruling was "a profitable boon to poultry processors who no longer faced the loss of unsafe product."
Foreman sent a strong message to the poultry industry that invisible fecal contamination was not a problem for the government. ... Within only a year, the CDC reported a substantial jump in food poisoning, and it rose each following year.”
In the Commondreams article, Foreman is concerned about "food safety," though it was her decision that led to poultry contaminated today with bacteria resistant to flouroquinolones drugs. "No new antibiotics are available, and health experts now fear a rise in life-threatening infections and food borne illnesses."
"FDA found the sharpest rise in flouoquinolones resistance occurred after 1996 when the drug was authorized as a poultry feed additive."
"Thus, seemingly innocuous public health decisions have far reaching consequences not evident until long after. Easing food safety standards a generation ago [done in the name of increased "food safety" and a "science based" system] began a deterioration in the nation's food safety shield today that is a public scandal. And, bacteria swiftly become resistant to antibiotics when drugs are licensed as feed additives, creating a public health crisis that is just now unfolding."
Leonard says that looking at such mistakes has more than historical interest since (at the time) had become "a newly minted consumer advocate, having recently announced her retirement as a Washington lobbyist for various corporate interests, including Monsanto, a corporation that is building its stock value through manipulating genes to make genetically modified foods as well as public policy on food safety ...
Leonard mentions Foreman's personal connections as part of a politically prominent family in Arkansas, where her brother, Guy Tucker, served as governor (he was convicted of crimes similar to those President Clinton escaped conviction for) and contends that she would have been aware of Tyson Foods, an Arkansas company that processes more poultry than any other company in the U.S. and the world. ..."
Rod Leonard says Foreman's decision "was wrong and the magnitude of its impact in terms of death and illness among Americans is reason enough to ...
... "examine cautiously the next policy action on food safety which Foreman will advocate ..."
What did Foreman advocate next? HACCP - billed as a "science based" program that moved away from inspection.
"There is no mystery here ... Over the past six years, even while representing Monsanto and other corporate clients, Foreman has been one of the most vociferous supporters of Hazardous Analysis Critical Control Program (HACCP), an awkward acronym for a program to deregulate food safety.
She sought to develop policies `that assure food safety in a global economy.'
[These same arguments are being made for the current "food safety" bills ...]
HACCP is the keystone of President Clinton's globalization strategy to restrict the ability of Congress and of citizens at risk of health to make food safety a political, or policy issue."
Under HACCP, governments withdraw from inspection for food safety as a public responsibility in favor of company-based inspection. Food products in global trade would be certified for safety by governments as equivalent, i.e., a government license would be granted pro forma to move products across national borders since food safety is a company decision. Countries that balk would be charged with a violation of their obligation to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and threatened with higher tariffs or financial penalties.
HACCP is in place today, and the history of its controversy sheds light on the bills in Congress.
Leonard spoke of Clinton's globalization strategy to put food safety beyond the reach of citizens ..." and Foreman ended up lobbying "along side her former client Monsanto, to make HACCP the global food safety policy."
Leonard warns that "If Congress changes the law "to turn over the chicken coop to the foxes, so to speak, Foreman will have completed the circle which began 20 years ago with washing feces" and that Foreman's lasting achievement as a consumer advocate would be to make "feces an approved part of the American diet."
That is what happened. And now Foreman is back, with a progressive website not aware of who she is and what she has done to undermine "food safety."
And what is she advocating now? The "food safety" bills. And again with Monsanto involved, as the next article will show.
And for those progressives who have not read the bills and accept it is as mere "conspiracy theory" to say they are dangerous, read a scholarly article on them from Oped News, a progressive site, which takes the bills seriously.
Here is what Commondreams has not yet looked into:
http://www.opednews.com/...
The 2009 Food ‘Safety’ Bills Harmonize Agribusiness Practices in Service of Corporate Global Governance
"I think it's time to de-professionalize the public debate on matters that vitally affect the lives of ordinary people. It's time to snatch our futures back from the "experts." Time to ask, in ordinary language, the public question and to demand, in ordinary language, the public answer."
-- Arundhati Roy, Power Politics
" ... Considerable concern has been voiced about what this bill would mean for small and medium sized farmers, organic farming, the future of conventional and organic seeds, the food localization movement, and even home gardens. HR 875 would give regulators the power to enter private property, which is conveniently redefined as "premises," and impose enormous fines for noncompliance. Though not discussed in the corporate media, numerous articles about it appear on the internet, launching a debate about whether or not Monsanto is behind the bill.
In response to these articles, Brad Mitchell, a member of Monsanto's public relations staff who writes for the company's new blog -- a less-than-stealth effort to counter the public's deep distrust of the predatory corporation -- has gone on record stating that Monsanto has absolutely nothing at all to do with the bill.
Brad's assurances aside, experience dictates that taking Monsanto at its word is patently foolish. But for those who need a bit more proof, like the Organic Consumers Association and Food and Water Watch, let's settle the issue, once and for all: Who crafted the legislation and what do they hope to gain by it? Would it really make our food safer as it claims, or would it make mandatory the industrial agricultural practices that are the root cause of the food-borne illnesses it claims to vanquish? And what else might be at stake?
After a series of well-publicized cases of food contamination – E. coli-tainted meat, melamine-adulterated pet food and baby formula, salmonella-infected peanut butter – the public has been well primed to look toward Congress to fix a poorly funded and insufficiently staffed food safety inspection system. And, right on cue, a crop of "food safety" bills gets dumped our way. ..."
The Trust for America's Health has produced reports that serve as blueprints for a major restructuring of the agencies involved in overseeing food safety policy as well as eye-popping changes to the public health system. Its recommendations also have also made their way into the other food safety bills that have been recently introduced in Congress: SB 425, the "Food Safety and Tracking Improving Act;" HR 814, the "Trace Act of 2009;" and HR 759, the "Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act of 2009."
While the vaguely worded HR 875 gives the appearance of being a reasonable attempt to fix the problems outlined, a close inspection of the blueprints on which they are based --and a bit of knowledge about the industry players who crafted them -- reveals critical clues about how the public health system would be transformed for the benefit of biotech, pharmaceutical and agribusiness giants. ...
READ THE FULL ARTICLE
This began with Foreman speaking of building "science based" system. This last article ends that way.
From Postcarbon.org
Monsanto Planting Seeds In the White House?
Apparently, President Obama is considering appointing Michael Taylor to head the new Food Safety Working Group. Who's Michael Taylor? ...
Mr. Taylor is a lawyer who began his revolving door adventures as counsel to FDA. He then moved to King & Spalding, a private-sector law firm representing Monsanto, a leading agricultural biotechnology company. In 1991 he returned to the FDA as Deputy Commissioner for Policy, where he was part of the team that issued the agency's decidedly industry-friendly policy on food biotechnology and that approved the use of Monsanto's genetically engineered growth hormone in dairy cows. His questionable role in these decisions led to an investigation by the federal General Accounting Office, which eventually exonerated him of all conflict-of-interest charges. In 1994, Mr. Taylor moved to USDA to become administrator of its Food Safety and Inspection Service... After another stint in private legal practice with King & Spalding, Mr. Taylor again joined Monsanto as Vice President for Public Policy in 1998.
The man has moved in and out of roles at the federal government and Monsanto so many times he probably has whiplash.
So what's the big deal? (I'm not going to opine on Monsanto here, other than to say that I know quite a few people who think Monsanto is the most evil corporation in the world, and that's even after this AIG debacle.) Well, two things:
The first is that I find it puzzling, to put it lightly, that Obama would choose this guy to help ensure food safety. Here's what Taylor recently said:
FDA is in "bad shape" and the FSIS meat and poultry inspection system is "obsolete," Taylor said. "We're spending a lot of government money to do inspections that could be done by someone else," he said. "We need to complete the transformation of FSIS as a food safety agency, away from inspection to a science-based public health agency."
Foreman wants a "science based" system as well. The Krebs article said
... "examine cautiously the next policy action on food safety which Foreman will advocate ..."
Make up your own minds.
Learn about the bills - read them, read about them, read about who brought them, investigate on your own - and ignore (or look into) those who holler "conspiracy theory" to discourage you from thinking for yourself and who negatively label anyone bringing you information.