H.R.875 Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009

Filed in archive News on March 12, 2009

© Gavin Anderson

I just stumbled on some pretty interesting disturbing legislation coming out of the Congress of the United States. The bill is HR 875 and it's labeled as the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009. At first glance it didn't seem like much. However, there are several web sites, including World View Times exposing some pretty scary legislation enclosed in the bill.

They're finding things in the bill that:

* Effectively criminalizes organic farming but doesn't actually use the word organic.
* Effects anyone growing food even if they are not selling it but 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.

The bill is monstrous on level after level - the power it would give to Monsanto, the criminalization of seed banking, the prison terms and confiscatory fines for farmers, the 24 hours GPS tracking of their animals, the easements on their property to allow for warrantless government entry, the stripping away of their property rights, the imposition by the filthy, greedy industrial side of anti-farming international "industrial" standards to independent farms - the only part of our food system that still works, the planned elimination of farmers through all these means.

What really made me take a second look at this is that this has been done before in other "free" countries. My family is partly Irish, and my sister just got back from Ireland, where it is now illegal for farmers to grow their own food.

The food police will come to your door armed with satellite photos. Although seldom enforced on the west coast of Clare, my Uncle processes his own sheep and goats indoors under the cover of darkness.That law began as a similar sloppy piece of legislation.

Almost sounds like it can't happen, doesn't it?