Food slavery, the end of organic farming and gardening.

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQvGBljwnSE

111th Congress, U.S. Senate S425
The Food Safety and Tracking Improvement Act
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:S.425:

This is the beginning of food slavery in the USA!

How is having safe food a form of slavery?

It is slavery for those who don't give a damn about what they put on the crops and feed them. Anyways all this crap about Obama is just that crap people are using to justify to no help Obama and be unpatriotic.

I attempt to keep an open mind and a certain degree of Socialism may be useful, remember the idea of Socialism is the good of SOCIETY not the CORPORATIONS. But what has been seen from this new president so far is acting like the puppet lap-dog of the commercial Plutocracy. I guess the unspecified promise of 'change' is being fulfilled but change to what? How is a world where we are paying a license fee to Monsoto, ADM, etc. for every bite of nutritionally denuded food freedom?

I am encouraged by the number of states reasserting the 10 amendment formalizing the rights of the States and limits of the Federals. Also, if the Russians and other Republics succeeded when the central government of the USSR when too far, being as used as they are to taking it in the shorts from tyrants, would the States do any less? I am not proposing anything that would result in civil war or anything but the autonomy of the States is a buffer against a corrupt central government. The States have every legal right to shut down what they created in the first place.

Umm... how can this be a good idea to anyone but Corporate Agribusiness?



That alone would make it ILLEGAL for me to give my gardan vegetables to my neighbor without a Government Permit...

Not even the Soviets went THAT far...

How can it be good? Do you want to know if the food you are eating contains contaminated gluten from China? Do you want to know if the box of frozen hamburgers in your freezer contains cows later diagnosed as having mad cow disease or some other nasty? Right now, there is essentially no way to know.

Yes, this is an information-intensive idea. It wouldn't be possible without computers. But it is not as onerous as some suggest. In some areas, all farm animal births are registered, the animals are tatooed or chipped, and their lives are tracked. This allows animal diseases to be brought under control or eliminated. Regulations to require animal tracking have not meant an end to the small farmer anymore than requiring licenses for pets has led people to give up keeping dogs and cats.

For vegetable farmers, things would be much simpler. I suspect that small farmers will still be able to sell their produce as before. They might have to make a few declarations about the process, but I don't think it will be much. The key is tracking the flow. The big burden goes to the large processors ... It irritates me that they won't even tell us what ingredients they use ("Contains vegetable oil; may contain canola or soy or corn or cottonseed oil"). Tell us what is in the food, dammit!!

I would be there is also an exemption for many small enterprises - no one cares if you grow veggies in your garden and share them with a neighbor. You live with the risk of your garden, and your neighbor knows where to find you. But when E. coli in spinach or salmonella in peanuts makes thousands of people across the country sick, and no one has any clue as to what the source of contamination is, there is a problem.

State's Rights? That would make sense if people ate locally, but this is part of a national/international food chain. I don't care if some state wants to have zero safety laws and withdraw from the program ... just don't let them sell food across state lines.

If you don't like Big Agribusiness, don't buy their products.

I haven't eatern commercial meat in years.

I don't buy processed foods in general.

This is not because I'm rich... I'm decidedly not, but because I choose to eat locally.

It is "greener" - as there is much less transportation involves, it is healthier, and it doesn't mean that MORE money is stolen from me at government gunpoint.

I should not be required to get government permission to give my apples to my mother. This bill makes NO provisions for such things.

You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered, but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered. - Lyndon B. Johnson

This WILL be "improperly administered". It WILL be used to squash local, small cap/home food production. It WILL be used by the One Party State to control the population.

I think we should stop importing food from other countries (except for random exotic things we don't grow here).
Then instead of making more government surveillance, just hold farmers and food companies responsible if their food is tainted. If you make the punishments severe enough, they'll make the food safe on their own.

They can have my carrots when they pry them from my cold dead hands.