Government and Its Corporations Threaten  Farmers Markets, CSAs, Roadside Stands and Your Backyard Garden

In recent years a great noise has been shouted through the Corporate Media about food making people sick. Slowly we find that the cause of the food-borne illnesses is usually Corporate Agriculture violating statutes on the books for many years. Corporate Government has failed to fulfill its mandates based on those old laws.

In 2007 the Peanut Corporation of America shipped Salmonella contaminated peanuts to food processing corporations throughout America. They had been told that the peanuts were contaminated, but the corporate CEO chose to send them to market anyway. Corporations like this create the problem and then the Corporate World uses the perception of that problem to get legislation to establish their solutions. Consistently those solutions do more than solve the problem. Corporate solutions invariably increase Corporate control.

The current "food safety" bills in Congress that were written by the corporations of the Global Food Cartel would lead to greater burdens on small farmers and growers as well as small food processors and retailers. What is needed is more enforcement of the 30 statutes on the books that date back to the early 1900’s, but the new regulations and penalties should be aimed at those who have caused the problems. Based on their past performance, Monsanto, Cargill, Tyson, ADM, and others, are NOT interested in food safety; they want control of food in the years ahead. We must stop HR 875, HR 814, SR 425, and soon, HR 759 because these bills aim unwarranted government regulations, registrations, fees and penalties against ALL growers, not just those who have been the cause of the problem. The result would more likely provide the opposite of food safety because of the burden and cost that would fall upon the innocent as well as the guilty. The small farmers and growers are more likely to be concerned about the health and safety of the food that they and their neighbors consumer. The hidden effect of this seemingly innocent food safety legislation has goals that lead beyond supposed food safety to Government and Corporations controlling its production.

HR 875, was introduced by Rosa DeLauro whose husband Stanley Greenburg works for Monsanto.

Organic food and the rebirth of farming have been winning; if not in absolute numbers, then in basic attitudes. There has been 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 growing and preparing food and the improvement in their lives in general, and between local food production and a productive local economy.

As we face an unprecedented economic crisis it is hard to be sure what has value. One thing that always has value is food. It is one of the most basic of industries in any economy at any time in the past and that principle continues today. This is why the corporations are seeking absolute control over food.  To obtain this complete control they face some homegrown obstacles: small growers, who sell at the farmer’s markets, produce and sell real milk, fresh eggs, and sell them at roadside vegetable stands.

If you are one of the people in this country who are "banking" on organic farming and urban gardens to get us through this Greatest Depression designed by the Banks and other Corporations, you would know the significance of small growers who sell at the farmer’s markets, produce and sell real milk, fresh eggs, and sell them at roadside fruit and vegetable stands. These small businesses are the vital connection to good food and a healthy economy. Not only do many Americans want good food and a healthy economy, but we have been getting actively involved in this natural and organic food and herb marketplace because we see it is a basic need for our survival and well-being. And where these marketplaces are truly good, they are growing.

The global, international financial corporations have wreaked havoc around the world with astounding nonsensical "solutions" that have been destructive of everyone but them. They are corporate brothers to the international agribusiness giants such as Monsanto, Cargill, Tyson, ADM, and others, which are just as aggressively after their own form of bailout, "taking" from We the People – control of seeds, animals, water, land, and…freedom.

Because human beings are generally good, incredibly resilient and clever, and left free to create functional, democratic solutions they would handle this gargantuan financial disaster the corporations have brought upon us., Their schemes such as NAFTA, CAFTA, and GATT are globalized panaceas that they hope to eventually top off with CODEX ALIMENTARIUS controlling everything we put into our mouths. How would We the People handle this human disaster?  We would cope by being productive in real ways and by doing it locally. Farming is the solid ground under that. Farmers produce something of real value, something we once took for granted, and from that base, local businesses grow: local markets, local food processors, local seed companies, local tool and supply companies, local stores ... and an economy begins to grow based on the reality of something truly good for us, too,.  

Farmers markets, local farmers, real milk, fresh eggs, and roadside fruit and vegetable stands are not only wonderfully healthy but fun and build community naturally. These homegrown enterprises grow our economy and support our democratic freedoms. We must protect food and our easy access to it.

All those human rights and freedoms threaten the corporations, which is why these massive "fake food safety" bills are being considered in Congress. Our economy and all it provides is going under, thanks to these corporate fools, and still they are there like vultures to make sure that they get every bit of booty that can be plundered from our resources and us.  To do this they must get rid of such good, valuable, and yet powerful obstacles to corporate wealth and control: farmers markets, local farmers, real milk, fresh eggs, and roadside fruit and vegetable stands 

How will those who contaminate America's food with pesticides, hormones, and antibiotics, do that?  By setting standards for "food safety" that are so grotesquely, inappropriately and even cruelly applied to local, independent farmers and ranchers that there is no way they can manage. Imagine you or your local growers being faced with a 100-page IRS form and facing a million dollar-a-day penalty for screwing up. Try to imagine the impossible complexity mixed with threat facing American 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 spied on 24 hours a day by GPS tracking devices that feed into a corporate data bank that 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 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 than anyone could bear, while the food supply industry created by the corporations has produced food so dangerous that in the last 10 years alone, diabetes has gone up 90% .

What allows the Corporations to impose a scheme that applies insane industrial standards to every farm in the country? Through a manufactured fear of diseases and outbreaks of food-borne illnesses, both of which have been caused by the Corporations themselves. 

Here is how it they did it: Tyson helped Bill Clinton get into office.  Bill Clinton immediately and drastically lowered contamination standards for poultry as a political thank you.  Now we find that it is the contaminated waste from transnational poultry factories that is implicated as the source of bird flu. Fortunes have been made on that fear.  Then the corporate poultry industry uses the crisis they created to push out small farmers and take greater control. They not only plan to eliminate biodiversity but to get rid of those small farmers who protect biodiversity.

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.  That’s the whole dirty tricks point.  It’s the be-in-tight-control-of- everything-needed-for-survival-because-it'll-be-worth-a-fortune point.

What it Does:

• Legally binds state agriculture departments to enforce federal guidelines, effectively taking away the states power to do anything other than being food police for the federal department

• Effectively criminalizes organic farming but doesn’t actually use the word "organic."

• Effects anyone growing food even if they are not selling it but merely consuming it.

• Effects 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 states power and is in violation of the 10th amendment. Source: http://www.prisonplanet.com/bill-to-ban-organic-farming.html

You can read  HR 875 here or read the items that are of special importance to real freedom:

• Section 3 which is the definitions portion of the bill-read in it's entirety.

• section 103, 206 and 207- read in it's entirety.

Very few Representatives have read it.  As usual they will vote on this based on what someone else is saying.  Urge your elected "representatives" to read the legislation and ask for opposition to this devastating legislation.  It would be devastating for everyday folks but great for factory farming corporations like Monsanto, ADM, Cargill and Tyson

Stalin nationalized farming methods that enabled his administration to gain control over the food supply. He used food to control the people.  Nearly 20 million Russian Christians died in Ukraine in the early 1920's in a savage famine created as Stalin's government purged the land of its farmers so that his State Farm Collectivization Plan could start.

So, if you like farmers markets, local farmers, fresh milk, fresh eggs, fruit and 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 the well-planned mischief of Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM, and other Corporations. More mischief will follow...

You can find S 425 here

Things you can do

1. Contact your members at 202-224-3121 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.  

2. Get in touch with local farmers and food producers by attending a local farmers market and asking them how business is.  

3. Attend a local WAPF meeting, this is 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

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

5. Find out who sits on your states agriculture and farming committee and contact them with your concerns.

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

7. Get active at the local and state levels, this is the quickest way to initiate change.

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

• 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. 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

Here is a good resource for finding contact information for any Congressman or Senator:

http://www.visi.com/juan/congress