Natural Solutions Foundation
Health Freedom Action eAlert
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.NaturalSolutionsEurope.org
March 19, 2009 – Welcome! In This Issue:
Immediate Action Item –
“Food Safety” Bills — Threat Response
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714
* Action eAlert Items
* The General’s Communique
* Legal Eagle
* Dr. Rima Recommends
* Kathy’s Corner
See Dr. Laibow’s video on the Green Portal:
http://www.youtube.com/v/A52DcIG4qYI&
You can see we’ve been very busy and will be for the foreseeable future! I urge you to see our new 20 minute video which summarizes how the new Natural Solutions Foundation – Europe will support your health freedoms. This video needs to be shared with everyone!
Here is the video on Blip TV http://blip.tv/file/1887550
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A New WIN-WIN-WIN Way to Support Your Economy and Health Freedom
The New Natural Solutions Green Portal…
See Dr. Laibow’s new video:
http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=2300
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The General’s Communique
Maj. Gen. Bert Stubblebine (USA ret.)
SUMMARY: The time is growing short…
Food is becoming a battle ground like no other: freedom, survival, fascistic take over of a once-free people (more or less, at least), corporate triumph over independent producers – it’s all happening around food. And the mechanism is simple: a set of bills ostensibly devoted to “food safety” and “food security”.
Urgent Action Item: Click here – http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714 – to tell Congress that the Farm Bills MUST be defeated. Time is short and the issue is of immense importance.
In essence, these bills are a sneak attack implementation of Codex Alimentarius. The Natural Solutions Foundation has been warning that organic farming and home growing, clean food and food freedom were under heavy attack. Here is the Mother of All Food Fascism Assaults and we still have some time to defeat it.
Congress often comes up with bad ideas. This is not just a bad idea: it is a catastrophically bad idea for health and freedom. In fact, it is nothing short of food tyranny and will kill not only organic farming, but lots of people as well, along with the entire private farming sector. Your own gardens are at risk as well.
I cannot urge you strongly enough to take action NOW (we have only a few days to create the urgent push-back needed to fend off this disastrous legislation. These are bad, deceptive and extraordinarily dangerous bills which make the eternal link between fascism and food crystal clear. But the bills are written in neutral, even calming tones. Please go to the articles below to read a brilliantly annotated version of the bills and a summary and learn just how dangerous they are. My thanks to Sue Diederich and Linn Cohen-Cole for their tireless work on this vital issue…
Read more at:
http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=2287
We’ve posted Linn Cohen-Cole’s “Solumn Walk Through 875/425” which explains exactly how these bills threaten health and freedom… and farming, ranching… and organic and natural products… and dietary supplements…
Read more at:
http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=2287
And please, please help us to continue our efforts.
http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=189
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Legal Eagle
Ralph Fucetola JD
www.VitaminLawyer.com
SUMMARY: Abolition by Regulation… the end of Food Freedom
I have devoted decades to the study and practice of regulatory law, dealing with the seemingly endless onslaught of United States government agencies like FDA, USDA, EPA, FTC and others to curb and deny our constitutionally and legislatively guaranteed freedoms. I have seen bad regulatory ideas come and (often, with sufficient push-back) go. But I cannot remember any time in my long legal career seeing such rapid, and, if left unchecked, cataclysmic regulation for fascism and loss of rights as in the food regulation proposed under the current bills to industrialize food with the National Animal Identification System, Codex Alimentarius and North American Union.
While the Obamists claim to be agents of “Change”, that change is toward food fascism, not freedom. It is toward regulating food freedom into food crimes. It is toward making criminals of those who would control “their own seed and their own feed.”
HR 875 and S 425 are not just bad bills (Congress comes up with those, usually at the behest of industry) all the time. They are much worse than that.
Tyrants inevitably seek to control food. Fascism and food are always linked.
Sometimes the link is who may have access to food – please the tyrant and you eat. Sometimes the link is more subtle: the tyrant wants you ill so that you cannot resist because you are weak and distracted by illness….
Read more at:
http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=2327
So HR 875 and S 425 will “protect” us out of our birthright to clean, unadulterated food grown by those who would produce such natural bounty. Instead, food will be chipped, irradiated, contaminated, industrialized, genetically modified and demineralized to “protect” us from independence, from health, from autonomy and self-sufficiency.
As you know, the Natural Solutions Foundation has been cautioning against these very developments for years. We have warned that the patterns were being established through the globalists’ toy, Codex Alimentarius, for many decades….
Read more at:
http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=2327
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Action eAlert Items
Immediate Action Item (explanation below):
Tell Congress: NO on HR 875, S 425!
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714
Other Action Items
1. Tell the President and Congress that we want them to protect our right to refuse medical treatments including vaccinations
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26830
2. Tell Congress “No” on the farm control bills!
HR 875 and S.425
We’ve set up an Action Item for you to send an unmistakable message to your representatives in the Senate and the House. We must educate Congress that you do not want organic and small farmers regulated out of existence.
You do not want “Big Agra” regulations, perhaps necessary to protect the public when dealing with large scale agra business, applied to organic and small family farms and ranches or to natural and organic food products including Dietary Supplements.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714
3. Tell the President about Change: Health Freedom is Our First Freedom
You made “Health Freedom Is Our First Freedom” one of the top 10 items on America’s mind with your votes to Change.org. Now we have to make that message resonate through the White House halls.
Will the new President listen? Only if we tell him, in our hundreds of thousands! We need your help in making this campaign “go viral” to “infect” the Internet with health freedom! Please forward to your entire list and ask them to ACT NOW!
Click below to tell President Obama that we want REAL change – which means more freedom and choice in our lives, not more control over needed medical treatments by yet another overblown, impossible to approach Federal bureaucracy!
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26671
Click here to send an Open Letter to the President
http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=2096
4. Right to Use – Right to Choose – Use Nano Silver
Thanks to our Mouse Warriors, the Deadline for Comments was been extended to March 20, 2009 by the EPA. We won that skirmish, but the war is still raging.
Retain the Right to Choose Nano Silver. Tell EPA Not to topical Ban Nano Silver of Any Type. Whether you use Nano Silver or not (and we certainly do!), let’s make sure that we have the right to make that choice!
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26405
Want to know more? Read Defending Nano Silver:
http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=1773
5. Divest FDA/USDA of Food Regulation Authority – and all government agencies of their often misused power to deny us access to wholesome nutrition and natural remedies. Protect Food from FDA/USDA Regulation! We oppose H.R. 875 and S. 425, but do support divesting the FDA!
With those bills, Congress is about to create a new agency for “Food Safety”. Our analysis is that it will be worse than both FDA and USDA combined. We need to get food out of Federal hands, and quickly. Just think what the new farm bills, coupled with a new industry-controlled, agency will do to your food, your health and your freedom. Having contemplated that horrific outcome, take action and ask everyone you know to do the same.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26314
6. Please join the Natural Solutions Foundation’s new Food and Farming Yahoo!Groups forum. Check it out at:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/natural-solutions-food-and-farming/
And here’s an invitation to join our other very active and informative forums:
NO to GMO
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/no-genetically-modified-foods
No Forced Vaccinations
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/no-forced-vaccination
European Health Freedom Forum
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/NSF-EU/join
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Dr. Rima Recommends
Rima E. Laibow MD
Green Portal and Nano Silver…
Introducing the Natural Solutions Green Portal! You know that Natural Solutions Foundation is “More than just words…”
See Dr. Laibow’s video on the Green Portal:
http://www.youtube.com/v/A52DcIG4qYI&
Natural Solutions Green Portal
We look for solutions to social problems that support the natural environment. That’s why we’re pleased to introduce an exciting new way you can SAVE MONEY and get SIGNIFICANT CASH BACK on all your purchases at over 600 of the biggest online stores , including Wal-Mart, Target, Safeway, Best Buy, Home Depot, OfficeMax, eBay … the list goes on and on! We know you make environmentally friendly choices when you buy what you need. Now you can exercise those choices on-line, reducing your impact on the world while showing big retailers, through your choices (your “dollar votes”) that you want them to serve consumer needs.
Additionally, you should also be able to save valuable time and gas (better for the environment) by shopping online at your very own personal savings “Green Portal” AND help support Natural Solutions Foundation in its continuing fight against “Big Agra,” “Big Chema,” and “Big Pharma” to protect the safety and quality of our food supply! Non-profit organizations like Natural Solutions that sponsor green portals receive donations from the retailers based on your savings!
Best of all, this Program is FREE to all our Members and Supporters , and by extension, to all their friends and families … and so on! That’s why we’re offering it to you as a simple “no-brainer” way to help yourself and others you know survive these tough economic times, while also helping NSF continue to raise the funds we so desperately need!
So we invite you to “Go Green” and “Go Viral” with this Program by clicking on the link below, viewing the 3-minute video, and signing up TODAY to start saving:
www.NaturalSolutionsGreenPortal.net
And, of course, DO NOT FORGET your nano silver needs!
www.Nutronix.com/naturalsolutions
(go to Products on the top menu and then to Silver on the lower left menu)
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Kathy’s Corner
SUMMARY: You know what it takes to make change…
YOU ARE VERY MUCH NEEDED!!!!!!!!!!!
Kathy here. I am the lady who answers emails for NSF. Recently, I received an email from a person which surprised me more than most! She apparently thought that we have a big switchboard of operators who answer questions and solicit donations. She must have had us mixed up with some other organization, because we do not have the money for a switchboard of phone lines and we have never solicited monies by phone. She implied that we have a big fancy office where people answer mail and organize events. While I think that would be lovely, the fact is that less than a dozen people are putting in the time necessary to keep this operation running. I am the person answering emails and I do it
from my kitchen table.
NSF is the largest health freedom organization in the world. Hundreds of thousands of health freedom advocates read our emails, alerts and send messages to Congress through these mailings. When we visit the Capitol, our name is recognized. It costs a minimum of about $12,000 per month to maintain this organization. We pay for websites and a webmaster and researchers; we pay the company that maintains our lists; we pay for each of those eblasts that are sent to Washington (and we send many!); we pay the train fare – travel fare to Washington; we pay for informational videos; and most important, we pay for trips to Codex meetings which occur several times a year in different parts of the world. We do this on a shoestring budget, as inexpensively as we can. Because we do this, we are able to keep our readers up to date on health freedom issues and organized to fight the Powers that would destroy your health.
The problem? We are not bringing in enough in donations to cover our costs. You say, “How can that be? With so many people on your list, getting your emails, you should be taking in lots of money, every month!” The fact is, most people (over 98% of our readers) contribute absolutely no money to this effort. Oh they are happy to join in on eblasts (and we are glad that they do!) and they are happy we are here making sure that they can continue to purchase nutrients, and they want us to win this health freedom war– but they want their neighbors to pay for it. We know there are many of you out there who are having severe financial problems. We have people who pledged as little as $5.00 a month, who now cannot afford that amount, given the economy. We understand- and do not expect those in such positions to donate. But there are many out there who can afford to donate the monies necessary to keep this battle going, —and donations to us are tax deductible, another incentive for giving.
Now there are those who would love to see NSF fail. There are FDA/Big Pharma owned Congress-leaches who would be happy if we stopped sending them messages.There are certain big companies who would love it if there were no well organized opposition to their plans. But we intend to keep at this as long as we possibly can – with YOUR help. So make that contribution today- and, if you can, make it monthly! If only 12,000 of you each sent $1.00 a month, we could pay our bills. If more is sent, we can do more! We would love to be able to place advertising to reach more of the general public with the health freedom message! This will cost money!
I am getting letters every day, from Scandinavia, Holland, Germany,– places where parts of Codex are already being adopted and people are having trouble getting the nutrients they want. A woman from Holland informed me that she ordered nutrients from the U.S. but they were promptly seized by Customs. She managed to get a few items from England, but she is not sure how long she will be able to do that. When she complains to politicians, she is told that she should get her nutrients from the foods she eats. Of course, if humanity loses this battle, that food will all be gm and toxic. It is obvious, at Codex meetings, that the U.S. representatives are pushing the hardest to make Codex regulations, standard worldwide. Will you and yours be able to live on a diet of toxic fake food? Will you be able to get by without the supplements necessary for good nutrition??
So do YOUR part. Make that donation now- and help to spread the NSF message so that MILLIONS of emails go to Congress with each blast. Do YOUR part to make certain that we have the people power and backing to push your/our issues– health freedom issues!!
Please donate here:
http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=189
Please remember to have everyone you know join the free Health Freedom eAlert system at:
http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=187
Much love to you all!
Kathy
.
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.NaturalSolutionsEurope.org
Once again, the Natural Solutions Foundation wants to thank the Environmental Working Group for their outstanding work. For 5 years the EWG has published a list of the safest, and most dangerous, types of produce, focusing on pesticide levels.
Here is this year’s list. Numbers in front of the item indicate how bad it is (higher is worse), numbers after the item indicate its pesticide load. So eat from the bottom of the list if you are not buying organic. If you are eating organic, you can enjoy the whole bounty of spring’s harvest.
But think for a moment, before you begin to plan your shopping this season, what it means to have foods like peaches, apples and sweet peppers so contaminated that eating them is, quite literally, taking your life onto your fork and into your hands.
That is what the industrialized food producers have done so far: introduced, with the blessings of our weak and dangerous government regulators who allegedly are keeping our food safe, chemicals and genetic alterations, irradiation and other degredations which have made our food not only unwholesome, but downright dangerous.
But WAIT!! There’s more. HR 875, S 425 and the associated bills working their way rapidly through our clueless (or worse!!!) Congress are fixing to make the current level of contamination look like Grandma’s home grown goodies. Click here to tell Congress in no uncertain terms that this set of bills must not pass and, if pass, MUST be ammended to protect home and organic food production, growing and farming.
HR 875 and S 425 (and their associated bills) provide for a level of industrial control of our food supply that will, not might, may, could or can, but WILL guarantee that you and your family WILL get sick from even more poisoned food. Maybe not this week, maybe not until a few years down the road, but nutritional under supply (from foods grown in soil fertilized with synthetic fertilizers and depleted from de mineralization never really corrected) and toxic overload WILL weaken your immune system, divert you from your life pursuits with chronic and often lethal illness. Freedom? You’ll be too sick to care.
Your food WILL be genetically modified. GMO crops require 4 times more pesticide than conventional ones and a great many of them require huge amounts of herbicides (like glyphosate or Roundup(C), a wildly dangerous chemical which is associated with cancer, infertility, auto immune diseases and more.
Roundup(C) is, of course, just one of a wide variety of horrifically toxic chemicals whose regulation these new laws put into the hands of unelected bureaucrats whose discretion is breathtaking. Their interest is not in food safety. Their interest is in serving the needs of their corporate masters, and their corporate masters’ masters.
If that does not ring right with you, take a look at the lethal mess our food supply is in today. And then consider that it is the US FDA and USDA, again serving their corporate masters, who run the show at Codex Alimentarius, bringing us horrific standards and guidelines which have the potential to degrade the health, and shorten the life, of every man, woman and child on the planet who eats food grown inside the corporate corral. Of course, for you and me, NOT doing so will be a crime. Saving seeds will be a crime. Growing pristine organic food (or better) will, if the laws currently under consideration are implemented, quickly become a criminal act. The SWAT teams who raided the Ohio family organic cooperative a couple of months ago, the raw milk farmer in Pennsylvania who was taken to jail for selling his clean product and a host of other food atrocities will look, I am afraid, like the “Good Old Days” should these laws reach their logical – and lethal – consequences.
Remember, the law is one thing. Contaminated food is quite another.
Government regulatory agencies regulate for the sake of corporate interests. Yours are nowhere to be seen, unless, of course, you are Monsanto. In fact, the Representative who introduced HR 875 is married, as was a previous, and deeply destructive long-time US Codex delegate, to a Monsanto lawyer. No accident.
The proposed new food agency and the new food powers (under these laws) are nothing short of cataclysmic and over the line insane from a health perspective. The Natural Solutions Foundation proposes removing ALL food regulatory power from the federal government which has, for about 80 years now, proven itself to be increasingly unable to push back the demands of industry, whether Big Pharma, Big Agribiz or Big Chema (or Big Medica, for that matter) weighed against the public good. Deadly drugs, deadly food, deadly environmental contamination and an unrelenting, accelerating assault on health aids like supplements and Nano silver are the result.
Click the link below to tell Congress that, while you want the FDA, USDA, EPA and other inept and dangerous government agencies stripped of their food regulatory powers and those powers returned to newly constructed agencies at the State level controlled by consumers, statutorily devoid of corporate impact or connection, with harsh penalties for any breech of the perimeter keeping industry out of food regulation, we oppose the pending bills, HR875 and S425 which do not contain language to protect family farms and ranches; organic and natural products.
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714
More about this at: http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=2287
When an agency or program has failed, the typical political situation is to throw money at it to “reform it”, making it bigger, giving it more powers and then watch it fail worse – followed by more money and more power.
This is precisely what has happened with the latest FDA modernization and revitalization bills. More money, more power, more curruption, less safety of either food or drugs.
Drugs you can avoid voluntarily. Food you cannot.
The Natural Solutions Foundation has been warning for several years that home grown and produced food, and organic food, would be coming under sustained and terminal attack. Unfortunately, we were right and that attack is being mounted now. Therefore, the counter thrust must be mounted now, and it must be swift, effective and decisive.
Food MUST be taken out of the hands of the corrupt federal agencies and given back to the people. And saved seed, a corner stone of liberty, along with clean, unadulterated food, MUST not be taken out of your hands and mine.
If you love fascism, sit back and do nothing. If you want to see farmers forced to leave their land and their livlihoods, unable to produce clean food for you, sit back and do nothing. If you want to be forbidden to grow, can, preserver or share your own good food in the US of farmland from sea to shining sea, sit back and do nothing.
If you want the laws of the US “HARMonized” with the draconian food laws of Europe, where a cucumber cannot be sold unless its curvature is correct and where the hundreds of seed companies that once flourished have been reduced to a rapidly dwindling handful, please, sit back and do nothing.
But if you, like me, are aghast at these options, then stand up and be counted. Start disseminating and rousing support for the following action items as if your very life (and that of your children and grandchildren) deepened upon it. Your life and their does depend upon it.
Click below to read a detailed analysis of HR 875 and S 425 and their frighteningly (and absurdly) vague permissiveness giving industry full reign over your food and therefore, your health.
Alarm Bells Ringing in Europe and the US – http://drrimatruthreports.com/?p=2349
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
The Full List: 47 Fruits & Veggies
RANK Lower numbers are worse
SCORE Higher numbers are worse
1 (worst) Peach 100 (highest pesticide load)
2 Apple 93
3 Sweet Bell Pepper 83
4 Celery 82
5 Nectarine 81
6 Strawberries 80
7 Cherries 73
8 Kale 69
9 Lettuce 67
10 Grapes – Imported 66
11 Carrot 63
12 Pear 63
13 Collard Greens 60
14 Spinach 58
15 Potato 56
16 Green Beans 53
17 Summer Squash 53
18 Pepper 51
19 Cucumber 50
20 Raspberries 46
21 Grapes – Domestic 44
22 Plum 44
23 Orange 44
24 Cauliflower 39
25 Tangerine 37
26 Mushrooms 36
27 Banana 34
28 Winter Squash 34
29 Cantaloupe 33
30 Cranberries 33
31 Honeydew Melon 30
32 Grapefruit 29
33 Sweet Potato 29
34 Tomato 29
35 Broccoli 28
36 Watermelon 26
37 Papaya 20
38 Eggplant 20
39 Cabbage 17
40 Kiwi 13
41 Sweet Peas – Frozen 10
42 Asparagus 10
43 Mango 9
44 Pineapple 7
45 Sweet Corn – Frozen 2
46 Avocado 1
47 (best) Onion 1 (lowest pesticide load)
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.GlobalhealthFreedom.org
We reproduce below, with permission, A Solemn Walk Through “Food Safety”.
Index
Introduction
A Solemn Walk
Natural Solutions White Paper
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Food is becoming a battle ground like no other: freedom, survival, fascistic take over of a once-free people (more or less, at least), corporate triumph over independent producers – it’s all happening around food. And the mechanism is simple: a set of bills ostensibly devoted to “food safety” and “food security”.
Urgent Action Item:
http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714
Tell Congress that the Farm Bills MUST be defeated. Time is short and the issue is of immense importance.
In essence, these bills are a sneak attack implementation of Codex Alimentarius. The Natural Solutions Foundation has been warning that organic farming and home growing, clean food and food freedom were under heavy attack. Here is the Mother of All Food Fascism Assaults and we still have some time to defeat it.
Congress often comes up with bad ideas. This is not just a bad idea: it is a catastrophically bad idea for health and freedom. In fact, it is nothing short of food tyranny and will kill not only organic farming, but lots of people as well, along with the entire private farming sector. Your own gardens are at risk as well.
I cannot urge you strongly enough to take action NOW (we have only a few days to create the urgent push-back needed to fend off this disastrous legislation. These are bad, deceptive and extraordinarily dangerous bills which make the eternal link between fascism and food crystal clear. But the bills are written in neutral, even calming tones. Please go to the articles below to read a brilliantly annotated version of the bills and a summary and learn just how dangerous they are. My thanks to Sue Diederich and Linn Cohen-Cole for their tireless work on this vital issue.
Just as –
~ “homeland security” is anything but assured by the Department of Homeland Security’s destruction of our rights,
~ “health” is not served by a healthcare system devoted to propagating illness for profit,
~ “democracy” is not served by corrupt voting machines and “man in the middle programs”
so food security and safety are not served by agencies and laws which –
~ drive independent farmers out of business,
~ forbid seed saving,
~ destroy safe food production and organic farming,
~ propagate dangerous and destructive industrial farming practices,
~ guarantee the total control of the food system by industrial forces known for unsafe food production while destroying the capacity of independent farmers to survive a regulatory onslaught created specifically to destroy them,
~ put home food production in jeopardy,
~ “HARMonize food production with pro-industry, pro-WTO controlled, lowest common denominator practices of Codex Alimentarius.
These are tragically solemn times calling for solemn re-dedication of each of us to the fight to retain and restore freedom. Food is just about the best place possible to start. Killing HR 875, S 425 and all related bills is the best place to start.
Click here (http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/t/1128/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=26714) to tell Congress in no uncertain terms how imperative killing these dastardly bills is to you. Then tell everyone you know how important this push-back is.
Now think for a moment how important this information is to your life, your liberty and your society. Would you have had it without the Natural Solutions Foundation? We work very hard at being your health freedom advocates and we need your help. Please make regular donations, small or large, to the Natural Solutions Foundation – an astounding 100% of your donations goes directly to our work. People write to us to tell us that you need us and we certainly need you. Click here (http://drrimatruthreports.com/?page_id=189) to make your tax deductible donation to the Natural Solutions Foundation.
This action, and this issue, cannot wait.
Yours in health and freedom,
Dr. Rima
Rima E. Laibow, MD
Medical Director
Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.GlobalHealthFreedom.org
www.NaturalSolutionsFoundation.org
www.ValleyoftheMoonCoffee.org
www.Organics4U.org
www.NaturalSolutionsMarketPlace.org
Index ——————————————-
Solemn Walk Through HR 875
By Sue Diederich and Linn Cohen-Cole
Walk Index
First Walk: Myths and Misinformation
Second Walk: End of Organics
Third Walk: Meaning of the Bills
Fourth Walk: Conclusion
The Pennsylvania Sustainable Agriculture Association, PASA, sent out information about HR 875 which lists ‘facts’ to counter ‘myths’ and ‘rumors’ on the internet. It gives no specifics to back up its ‘facts,’ so the following close up view of the bill and accompanying commentary offers readers a chance to decide for themselves what is myth and what is fact. Neither of us are lawyers, but we both can read. Sue Diederich heads the Illinois Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, an organization formed to protect the rights of farmers and consumers to deal directly with each other without government interference.
PASA’s assertions are in regular lower case font, as are the inserted portions of the bill which have all been provided by Sue Diederich who also provides her own comments in italics usually. My comments are in bold face. [Note: these type faces have been altered from the original to permit publication in the program used to publish this blog which lacks color font options – Dr. Rima]
Occasionally, we feel something is essential for people to see and those comments are in CAPITAL LETTERS. (It should all be in CAPITAL LETTERS [font changed to allow publication in this program – Dr. Rima], really, since so few organizations appear to have read the bill or seem to know how to read the bill or have thought through its massive cumulative impact or been concerned at its endlessly broad reach and over incredibly vague things.)
People seem to expect the bill to be titled “The Criminalization of Organic Farming and the Take over of the US Food Supply,” and when they don’t see any words to that effect anywhere in the bill, they declare “this bill is fine” and those seeing dangers are “alarmists.” Do they think the industrial side is composed of fools? These are the same people who make cheery cereals with cartoon characters on the box when, inside, high fructose corn syrup is all over the cereal which comes from Bt-corn associated with diabetes. HFCS is, too, and there is an epidemic of diabetes here even among children. They know how to package. Why do people understand that industrial food inside a box can be a problem and yet are so innocent about looking at the bills, not realizing there is packaging there, too, or how much is at stake that the public and even legislators not see since this is about taking control. The industrial side isn’t stupid.
Understanding parts of the bill at times depends on smelling smoke as you read it. Here in the US, we still have only smoke … an Ohio state ag department SWAT team raid on an organic coop, Pennsylvania ag department raids on horse and buggy Mennonites, California setting coliform levels so low fresh milk dairy farmers would need cows that produced pasteurized milk right out the udder, arrest and handcuffing of a single mother in front of her children for selling goat milk, the USDA paying its agents bonuses for foreclosing on farms, … But in the EU where 60% of the Polish farmers are now gone because of identical bills enacted into law there, and 60 UK farmers have committed suicide, there is fire. And in Iraq, where they have been rendered helpless serfs by the theft of their country’s seeds and criminalization of farmers’ collection of their own seed, it is roaring. And in India where 182,000 farmers have committed suicide since the WTO and IMF got hold of agriculture and our Big Ag firms went in there, and 8 million farmers have left the land, it is out of control.
The WTO, run by the multinational meat packers and genetic engineering corporations, want HR 875, here. The bills are “harmonized” rules for globalization of food and lower food safety standards to allow for it. Those corporations are members of NIAA, a corporate consortium that brought NAIS, created by Anne Veneman, to the USDA to be made into law.
Walk Index
First Walk… Myths and Misinformation
We begin with PASA offering FWW’s take on the bills to its members:
Myths and Facts? H.R. 875 – The Food Safety Modernization Act
PASA members: The following information about a bill now before Congress, HR 875, was developed by our friends at Food and Water Watch, and forwarded to us by the National Sustainable Ag Coalition (NSAC), of which PASA is a member.
This Myth/Fact sheet was developed to help answer some of the rumors that are fairly rampant on the Internet right now. We will keep a close eye on the situation, and share further updates from NSAC as they become available. ?
MYTH: H.R. 875 “makes it illegal to grow your own garden” and would result in the “criminalization of the backyard gardner.”
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would regulate, penalize, or shut down backyard gardens. This bill is focused on ensuring the safety of foods sold in supermarkets.
Though private residences are not specifically included, nor are they specifically excluded. While this does not immediately affect home owners growing tomatoes in the backyard, entered testimony leaves the door open for just that in the future. Referring back to the Bio-Terrorism Act, in a discussion on this very topic and entered in the official record of debate on the interim rule, (bold/underline = mine), the same argument exists here and no new definitions or exclusions have been provided in HR 875 – and “reasonable” is a subjective term in theory as well as practice…
(13) FOOD ESTABLISHMENT-
(A) IN GENERAL- The term ‘food establishment’ means a
Slaughterhouse (except those regulated under the Federal Meat
Inspection Act or the Poultry Products Inspection Act), factory,
Warehouse, or facility owned or operated by a person located in
Any State that processes food or a facility that holds, stores,
Or transports food or food ingredients.
Now, every home in the country holds food after buying it from the
Grocery store. Will they be included too?
Hell, no. They’re going to be magnanimous and say that, while they could,
They won’t right now.
Excerpted from the same Interim Rule:
“(Response) FDA has concluded that private individual residences are
Not ”facilities” for purposes of the registration provision of the
Bioterrorism Act. Under the Bioterrorism Act, the term ”facility”
Includes ”any factory, warehouse, or establishment.” Congress did not Specify any definition for these terms.
Under their common meanings,
The terms can include private residences. For example, according to Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary (1994), the most
Relevant definition of ”establishment” is ”a business firm, club,
Institution, or residence, including its possessions and employees.”
However, ”[I]n determining whether Congress has specifically addressed
The question at issue, the court should not confine itself to examining
A particular statutory provision in isolation * * *.
It is a fundamental canon of statutory construction that the words of a
Statute must be read in their context and with a view to their place in
The overall statutory scheme.”’ FDA v. Brown & Williamson Tobacco
Corp., 529 U.S. 120, 121 (2000).
Other parts of the registration Provisions in section 415 of the FD&C Act indicate that Congress only Intended businesses to register, and raise a question as to whether Congress intended that private individual residences, even though food Is manufactured/processed, packed, or held at such residences, be Considered facilities.
For instance, a registrant is required to submit”the name and address of each facility at which, and all trade names Under which, the registrant conducts business * * * ” (21 U.S.C.
350d(a)(2)).
Thus it is unclear whether Congress intended all Individual private residences at which food is manufactured/processed, Packed, or held to be included in the term ”facility.” Furthermore, The requirement that a facility submit its ”name” as well as its ”trade names” raises a question as to whether Congress intended ”facility” to include private individual residences since it is Unlikely that a home would have a name or a trade name.
Where the words Of the statute are ambiguous, an agency may make a reasonable Interpretation of the statute. Chevron, USA, Inc. V. NRDC, Inc., 467 U.S. 837, 842-843 (1984); Brown & Williamson, supra, at 132.
Consistent with the language of section 415(a)(2) discussed
Previously, the agency concludes that interpreting the term
”facility” to exclude private individual residences is a reasonable
Construction for purposes of registration.
This interpretation, However, does not necessarily preclude a reasonable construction of Other provisions of the FD&C Act to include such residences.”
[I do get that residences are easily included.]
MYTH: H.R. 875 would mean a “goodbye to farmers markets” because the bill 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.” ?
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would result in farmers markets being regulated, penalized any fines, or shut down. Farmers markets would be able to continue to flourish under the bill. In fact, the bill would insist that imported foods meet strict safety standards to ensure that unsafe imported foods are not competing with locally-grown foods.
SECTION 406 CLEARLY STATES ALL FOOD OFFERED FOR SALE WILL BE VIEWED AS BEING IN INTERSTATE COMMERCE AND SUBJECT TOT HE PROVISIONS OF THIS BILL.
C. 406. PRESUMPTION.
In any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction shall be presumed to exist
8) CATEGORY 4 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term ‘category 4 food establishment’ means a food establishment that processes all other categories of food products not described in paragraphs (5) through (7).
(9) CATEGORY 5 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term ‘category 5 food establishment’ means a food establishment that stores, holds, or transports food products prior to delivery for retail sale.
14) FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITY- The term ‘food production facility’ means any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.
[SUE, say it again and again, “this applies to farms and can apply to homes.” It certainly looks to me that families baking cookies for bake sales could easily be included.]
SEC. 206. FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES.
(a) Authorities- In carrying out the duties of the Administrator and the purposes of this Act, the Administrator shall have the authority, with respect to food production facilities, to–
(1) visit and inspect food production facilities in the United States and in foreign countries to determine if they are operating in compliance with the requirements of the food safety law;
(2) review food safety records as required to be kept by the Administrator under section 210 and for other food safety purposes;
(3) set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety;
(4) conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products, or the environment, as appropriate; and
(5) collect and maintain information relevant to public health and farm practices.
(b) Inspection of Records- A food production facility shall permit the Administrator upon presentation of appropriate credentials and at reasonable times and in a reasonable manner, to have access to and ability to copy all records maintained by or on behalf of such food production establishment in any format (including paper or electronic) and at any location, that are necessary to assist the Administrator–
(1) to determine whether the food is contaminated, adulterated, or otherwise not in compliance with the food safety law; or
(2) to track the food in commerce.
(c) Regulations- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and representatives of State departments of agriculture, shall promulgate regulations to establish science-based minimum standards for the safe production of food by food production facilities. Such regulations shall–
(1) consider all relevant hazards, including those occurring naturally, and those that may be unintentionally or intentionally introduced;
(2) require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;
(3) include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water;
THEY NEVER MENTION SEEDS BUT THIS IS PRECISELY HOW THEY WILL CRIMINALIZE SEED BANKING AND ALL HOLDINGS OF SEEDS.
[Notice they mention harvesting, sorting and storage operations, then watch below.
To follow how this will be done, you must understand that:
1. there is a small list inside the FDA called “sources of seed contamination”
2. in which they have now defined “seed” as food,
3. so seeds can be controlled under “food safety.”
Those seeds (so far) include:
seeds eaten raw such as flax, poppy sesame, etc.;
sprouting seeds such as wheat, beans, alfalfa, most greens, etc.;
seeds pressed into oils such as corn, sunflower, canola, etc.;
seeds used as animal feed such as soy ….
That is most seeds. Seeds are essential to life and thus to freedom.
The “sources of seed contamination” include six little items:
agricultural water
manure (but NOT chemical pesticides or fertilizers)
harvesting, transporting and seed cleaning equipment
seed storage facilities
What you must realize is that seed cleaning equipment is THE single most critical piece of equipment for sustainable agriculture. It is how we save organic seed. It is the machinery used after plants “go to seed” to separate out (sort) the seeds from the plant material so the farmer can collect (harvest) and then save (put in storage) seed for the next year at little cost. With his own seed, the farmer stays free of patented, genetically engineered, corporately privatized seeds.
You must also understand that Monsanto is getting rid of the people who do the seed cleaning and many other means of our having access to seed .
This year, 2009, seed cleaning equipment is now illegal in some parts of the country which tips us off to both the intent to control seeds in this way and to how they could do things under this bill.
How can they make such vital equipment illegal? Quietly, and by saying it contaminates food.
“Contaminate” is their favorite word since the public fears the deadly contamination that industry itself – not farmers – has caused. Scare the public and thus push for “food safety standards” to be set.
And to eliminate seed cleaning equipment, they haven now set the standards so seed cleaning (the simple separation of seed from plant) will now require a million to a million and a half dollar building and/or equipment … per line of seed.
So, a farmer who has been seed cleaning flax for 40 years with a hand made seed cleaner can’t sell flax on the market anymore, though there are NO instances of anyone ever having gotten sick from seed cleaning equipment. A farmer who has been cleaning wheat, corn and soy each year with the same perfectly fine equipment would now need three to four and half million dollars for three pieces of equipment to continue.
(The FDA isn’t so bar-setting when it comes to other things like melamine in baby formula, though it is proven to sicken and kill infants), initially denying the melamine was in our baby formula and then quickly inventing a “foods safety” standard to okay it.)
Organic farmers are not aware of this happening, perhaps because the left is being treated with kid gloves until HR 875 and related bills are/were passed. Meanwhile, the FDA and USDA have been tromping on traditional (many of them farming organically, by the way) farmers for years. The organic community is disconnected from them so hasn’t been aware of what is happening to them. Indie farmers have a history of no one listening to them, which is too bad because it is they who are the ones bringing the warning that these bills are deadly. The organic community, measuring against its own seeming safety, hasn’t heard or understood.
NOTICE, THOUGH, THAT BECAUSE A SINGLE “FOODS SAFETY” BAR HAS BEEN RAISED, IN TIME ON ONE WILL BE ABLE TO GET ORGANIC SEEDS IN ANY NUMBER BECAUSE IT WILL BE ILLEGAL FOR ALL FARMERS TO SELL THEM TO ANYONE.
Now, look at the last item on the list – seed storage facilities.
They would be careful not to ban them all outright given the extreme reaction they would get. But now the method is more clear. “Food safety” is the weapon and public fear is the driver and they only need to set the bar at the level that is impossible to meet.
Farmers, gardeners, seed saving exchanges, seed companies, scientific seed projects, and seed banks, all require “seed storage facilities.” All are working overtime to protect biodiversity that is rapidly disappearing because of … genetic engineering.
Set the standard for “food safety” and certification high enough that no one can afford it and punish anyone who tries to save seed in a multitude of ways that have worked fine for thousands of years, and PRESTO, YOU HAVE JUST CRIMINALIZED SEED BANKING.
The penalties, I will assume, will be tremendous, the better to protect us from nothing dangerous whatever, but to make monopoly over seed more absolute. One is left with control over farmers, and end to seed exchanges, to organic seed companies, to university programs developing nice normal hybrids.
When you know that Monsanto with the help of the US government plundered ancient and rare seed banks in Iraq that held seeds with a genetic heritage (a biohistory belonging to all of us) going back 1000s of years and then made it a crime for farmers there to collect or use their own normal and non-patented seeds off their own land, you see how extreme the intent to control is.
Now, perhaps it is possible to see how the identical thing is being done here, only it comes in a heavily, heavily disguised way – through “food safety” that isn’t at all – and in only one tiny little paragraph within a very large bill.
The Iraqis are now abjectly dependent on Monsanto and the US for survival itself and will have to pay whatever prices are set for food. They cannot just grow their own and be free. So, no matter what form of government they may have, they are now slaves because the control over them is that extreme. Kissinger was right – control food and you control people.
This trick of setting bars above any ability to be in the game, is similar to how blacks had been treated. Click here. This trick of setting bars above any ability to be in the game while imposing fines that destroy people who fail to meet that standard, is sadistic. Then, taking the land as confiscatory payment, is theft by government become totalitarian and colonizing its own people.
There are other items of the list which surely will be controlled as well. In toto, that little list is the deconstruction of farming itself and given the inclusion of manure, especially of organic farming.]
(4) include, with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal’s health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;
(5) provide a reasonable period of time for compliance, taking into account the needs of small businesses for additional time to comply;
(6) provide for coordination of education and enforcement activities by State and local officials, as designated by the Governors of the respective States; and
(7) include a description of the variance process under subsection (d) and the types of permissible variances which the Administrator may grant under such process.
(d) Variances- States and foreign countries that export produce intended for consumption in the United States may request from the Administrator variances from the requirements of the regulations under subsection (c). A request shall–
(1) be in writing;
(2) describe the reasons the variance is necessary;
(3) describe the procedures, processes, and practices that will be followed under the variance to ensure produce is not adulterated; and
(4) contain any other information required by the Administrator.
(e) Approval or Disapproval of Variances- If the Administrator determines after review of a request under subsection (d) that the requested variance provides equivalent protections to those promulgated under subsection (c), the Administrator may approve the request. The Administrator shall deny a request if it is–
(1) not sufficiently detailed to permit a determination;
(2) fails to cite sufficient grounds for allowing a variance; or
(3) does not provide reasonable assurances that the produce will not be adulterated.
(f) Enforcement- The Administrator may coordinate with the agency or department designated by the Governor of each State to perform activities to ensure compliance with this section.
(g) Imported Produce- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator shall promulgate regulations to ensure that raw agricultural commodities and minimally processed produce imported into the United States can meet standards for food safety, inspection, labeling, and consumer protection that are at least equal to standards applicable to such commodities and produce produced in the United States.
Administrator shall have authority to grant exclusions to foreign producers.
[While it may be obvious to us that this is onerous beyond any capability of coping with it, it needs to be said and described in some detail what it would actually mean for farmers or for us. Here in story form is a taste of it, so anyone could feel the insanity of it:
SEC. 201. ADMINISTRATION OF NATIONAL PROGRAM.
(a) In General- The Administrator shall–
(1) develop, administer, and annually update a national food safety program (referred to in this section as the ‘program’) to protect public health; and
(2) ensure that persons who produce, process, or distribute food meet their responsibility to prevent or minimize food safety hazards related to their products.
[This is where I think it would be very helpful if you explained how astoundingly onerous that long list is and what its impact would be on any farmer who previously only needed to load up his goods and bringing them to a farmers market – though that in itself is a time consuming, physically effortful job that often begins pre-dawn on those mornings and ends late in the day, all of it separate from growing the food and boxing it up to bring.
A small farm is not an industry with staff to fill out paperwork, handle licensing, manage all the industrial bureaucracy that is being loaded on here, but is most often a couple who is also taking care of a family in addition to growing crops and raising animals. These are precisely the people who we need most as part of our food system and how will clearly be crushed by the grossly inappropriate application of such rules to small farms.]
· MYTH: H.R. 875 would result in the “death of organic farming.”
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would stop organic farming. The National Organic Program (NOP) is under the jurisdiction of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA). The Food Safety Modernization Act only addresses food safety issues under the jurisdiction of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
[Of course, they are not going to come straight out and say it. But breaking this down to what is actually involved, you find that:]
The administrator is charged with developing minimum standards, not maximum limits on feed, fertilizers, nutrients etc- right here goes organics.
Secondly, this act creates a new agency, and the FDA becomes the Federal Drug and Device Agency. It combines offices currently under FDA and Commerce Department (National Marine Fisheries).
Third, FSA is to cooperate with the USDA in “promulgating rules and orders” which will have the bearing and impact of law.
To refer back to the previous “Myth”
[The one about foreign food having to meet our standard, right?]
– Alaska, Hawaii, US territories and foreign countries may apply for variances, so… NO… Imported foods do NOT necessarily have to meet the same standards. In fact, many countries have had to lower their standards due to WTO rules and trade agreements, and Australia had to further lower their regulatory standards when they instituted the NLIS program (their version of NAIS). There is no reason to think we would not have to do the same.
Walk Index
Second Walk… The End of Organic Farming
[NOW, COMES THE RESPONSE TO WHETHER THE BILLS WILL MEAN THE END OF ORGANIC FARMING.]
I’m going to format this differently to accentuate your points, Sue. This section should be a major education for people in how things have been working. This is in response to the myth that the bills will not affect organic farming, right?]
Animal health has traditionally meant medication and hormones, petroleum-based fly sprays and all sorts of other goodies.
Feed can be anything (GMO SOY OR CORN, ANYONE?),
environment can mean PESTICIDES, HERBICIDES USED ON PASTURES (IF pasturing is deemed “healthy” – internationally this is NOT so for poultry, in fact in many countries there is NO outdoor poultry anymore – by law).
Nutrients are not necessarily whole food based, many are produced SYNTHETICally, and again, PETROLEUM BASED …
Animal encroachment prevention can be anything from a scarecrow or plastic owl to POISON BATES AND BULLETS. Not one of these things is specified, yet there is no place for real public opinion in the decision making process provided. I will grant that there is usually a public comment period for federal register entries, for whatever that has been worth in the past.
[Meaning, it has been worth little to nothing. And obviously, the public is left having to respond ad infinitum to one issue after another. Someone compared the numbers of things being thrown at us to try to stop, to carpet bombing so you can’t comment on everything, even if it helped which is clearly often doesn’t.]
SEC. 206. FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES.
(a) AUTHORITIES.—In carrying out the duties of the Administrator and the purposes of this Act, the Administrator shall have the authority, with respect to food production facilities, to
(1) visit and inspect food production facilities in the United States and in foreign countries to determine if they are operating in compliance with the requirements of the food safety law;
(2) review food safety records as required to be kept by the Administrator under section 210 and for other food safety purposes;
(3) SET GOOD PRACTICE STANDARDS to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety;
[This is where words that sound so friendly and innocuous and even good are code words for international rules set by the WTO that actually define industrial requirements which do not fit real farming in the least, much less organic farming, would be applied.
[This is where insane, anti-nature, anti-farming rules like “animals and crops can’t exist on the same farm” come into play. Where wild animals aren’t ever supposed to be near crops so the government has been poisoning deer and frogs. The list of such manufacturing rules for farming is long, and each very much “efficiency manager comes and wrecks the farm.”]
(4) conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products, or the environment, as appropriate; and
[Please, those of you who find the idea of NSA-spying intolerable, look carefully at those words. Now, imagine it were your farm, your home on that farm, and realize that the USDA and FDA have been run by and the new agency will be run by Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, ADM. Their interest in helping consumers have safer food is nil The bills are meant to eliminate farmers as is now rapidly occurring in the EU with identical (“harmonized”) bills, now law there.
(5) collect and maintain information relevant to public health and farm practices.
[There needs to be a pause here to consider the implications of each of those on someone’s home – their family’s farm. This is quite different from applying them to industrial sites where no one lives, and beyond that, these powers are so broad and vague, they are dangerous if only in that.
Those things listed open the door to total control, warrantless entry and perpetual surveillance. Notice how innocuous they have made it appear, even beneficial – always about public health. Yet, the insincerity of this is boggling – the USDA and Big Ag have worked to prevent inspections to the point where farmers have had to actully sue to get them done , even after offering to pay for them.]
(b) INSPECTION OF RECORDS.—A food production facility shall permit the Administrator upon presentation of appropriate credentials and at reasonable times and in a reasonable manner
[Who defines “reasonable”? Does a farmer have to go to court each time there is an “unreasonable” manner and time? How wide open do we push the door to Big Ag-corrupted government control over farmers – the people creating the only safe food?
Look carefully and realize the USDA right now is countenancing state ag departments conducting terrorizing raids on non-corporate farms across the country. Imagine it were your home and USDA agents banging on your door to demand paper work and if you don’t have it, facing fines that would bankrupt you in a moment and lose you your land and home.]
, to have access to and ability to copy all records maintained by or on behalf of such food production establishment in any format (including paper or electronic) and at any location, that are necessary to assist the Administrator—
[Imagine again.]
(1) to determine whether the food is contaminated, adulterated, or otherwise not in compliance with the food safety law; or
[Be aware that in Pennsylvania where there has been an aggressive effort to destroy fresh milk dairy farmers, the tests by the states repeatedly do not match those of independent testers but the harm to farmers from such false tests and reporting of them is done and can’t be undone. Be aware that the USDA has a record of creating test results damaging to small farmers while it refuses to inspect even when farmers ask to pay.]
(2) to track the food in commerce.
[This could mean farmers bringing food to markets with USDA agents surveilling.]
(c) REGULATIONS.—Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and representatives of State departments of agriculture, shall promulgate regulations to establish science-based minimum standards for the safe production of food by food production facilities. Such regulations shall—
[Everything in this bill is being left to be filled in however the “Food Safety Tsar” – “the Administrator” decides? Right now, to give people pause and to wake them up a bit to how this is not a wise idea but in fact absurd, it appears that person could be Michael Taylor, a Monsanto lawyer infamous for approving rBGH – the first genetically engineered product ever approved – over the objections of doctors, scientists who said the numbers were being rigged, and the public.
How can anyone leave a bill so utterly vague in the hands of anyone to decide later what it all means? Do we not make laws here with specific meaning anymore? Or do we simply let totalitarian rules be applied by industry against non-industrial entities like farms and homes in any way they wish and with immense police power behind what they, for their own interests, decide?]
(1) consider all relevant hazards, including those occurring naturally, and those that may be unintentionally or intentionally introduced;
[GOODBY RAW MILK.]
(2) require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;
(3) include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, NUTRIENTS, HYGIENE, PACKAGING, TEMPERATURE CONTROLS, ANIMAL ENCROACHMENT, AND WATER;
[GOODBYE ORGANIC FARMING.]
(4) include, with respect to animals raised for food, MINIMUM STANDARDS related to the animal’s HEALTH, FEED AND ENVIRONMENT which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;
[GOODBYE ORGANIC FARMING AND GRASS FED ANIMALS.]
(5) provide a reasonable period of time for compliance, taking into account the needs of small businesses for additional time to comply;
[Oh, heavens, this looks like padding to throw in the word “reasonable” again but it has no explicit meaning whatever and so no safety for a soul.]
(6) provide for coordination of education and enforcement activities by State and local officials, as designated by the Governors of the respective States; and
[This appears to be where Homeland Security works with the USDA for such things as “depopulation of animals” – for which 6 meetings are already scheduled in June and into which livestock owners are not allowed though foreigners are.
These “depopulation” plans look like what is happening in Asia where animal disease caused by industry (and worth a fortune to the pharmaceutical industry ) are then used by industry to wipe out its competition in heritage breeds of animals on small farms and to substitute genetically engineered animals that are patented by industry and thus owned by industry.
(7) include a description of the variance process under subsection (d) and the types of permissible variances which the Administrator may grant under such process.
(d) VARIANCES.—
.
[This is where the “fact” that foreign countries must meet our food safety requirements collapses by simply reading the bill.]
MYTH: The bill would implement a national animal ID system.?
FACT: There is no language in the bill that would implement a national animal ID system. Animal identification issues are under the jurisdiction of the USDA. The Food Safety Modernization Act addresses issues under the jurisdiction of the FDA.
This bill mandates NAIS BY claiming that it is already law,
then contradicts itself by citing COOL, which specifically prohibits mandatory tracking.
It justifies NAIS by claiming that the AHPA gives authority – but this is a bill (and supposedly a program) concerning interstate commerce (though any item of food for sale is “presumed” to be in interstate commerce, whether it is in reality or not.) and AHPA does not regulate interstate commerce.
How many contradictions in a single section do we need before red flags go up?
[YES, AND PUT UP RED FLAGS FOR WHOLE BILLS IF THIS CENTRAL PART IS SO CORRUPTLY BEING PUSHED.]
Below in CAPITALS [fonts altered – Dr. Rima] , Sue answers the absurd claim that NAIS is not mandatory. FWW has gotten this and many other items wrong. That would be fine if the whole organic movement and all our farms and freedom were not riding on our seeing these very real threats and stopping those bills completely – not compromising on them but demanding their complete withdrawal.]
(a) IN GENERAL – THE ADMINISTRATOR, IN ORDER TO PROTECT THE PUBLIC HEALTH, SHALL ESTABLISH A NATIONAL TRACEABILITY SYSTEM THAT ENABLES THE ADMINISTRATOR TO RETRIEVE THE HISTORY, USE AND LOCATION OF AN ARTICLE OF FOOD THROUGH ALL STAGES OF ITSPRODUCTION, PROCESSIN, AND DISTRIBUTION.
(b) APPLICABILITY – TRACEABILITY REQUIREMENTS UNDER THIS SECTION SHALL APPLY TO FOOD FROM FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES, FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS, AND FOREIGN FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS.
(c) REQUIREMENTS-
(1) STANDARDS- THE ADMINISTRATOR SHALL ESTABLISH STANDARDS FOR THE TYPE OF INFORMATION, FORMAT, AND TIMEFRAME FOR FOOD PRODUCTION FACILTITIES AND FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS TO SUBMIT RECORDS TO AID THE ADMINISTRATOR IN EFFECTIVELY RETRIEVING THE HISTORY, USE AND LOCATION OF AN ITEM OF FOOD.
(2) RULE OF CONSTRUCTION- Nothing in this section shall be construed as requiring the Administrator to prescribe a specific technology for the maintenance of records or labeling of food to carry out the requirements of this section.
(3) AVAILABILITY OF RECORDS FOR INSPECTION- Any records that are required by the Administrator under this section shall be available for inspection by the Administrator upon oral or written request.
(4) DEMONSTRATION OF ABILITY- The Administrator, during any inspection, may require a food establishment to demonstrate its ability to trace an item of food and submit the information in the format and time frame required under paragraph (1).
(d) Relationship to Other Requirements-
(1) CONSISTENCY WITH EXISTING STATUTES AND REGULATIONS- To the extent possible, the Administrator should establish the national traceability system under this section to be consistent with existing statutes and regulations that require recordkeeping or labeling for identifying the origin or history of food or food animals.
[Does this mean consistent with international laws under the WTO? Is this a means of locking everything together into Smart Grid or NAFTA or CAFTA or GATT and even, the worst of all,
?]
(2) EXISTING LAWS- For purposes of this subsection, the Administrator should review the following:
(A) Country of origin labeling requirements of subtitle D of the Agricultural Marketing Act of 1946 (7 U.S.C. 1638 et seq.).
(B) The Perishable Agricultural Commodities Act of 1930 (7 U.S.C. 499a-t).
(C) Country of origin labeling requirements of section 304 of the Tariff Act of 1930 (19 U.S.C. 1340).
(D) The National Animal Identification System as authorized by the Animal Health Protection Act of 2002 (7 U.S.C. 8301 et seq.).
EC. 210. TRACEBACK REQUIREMENTS.
MYTH: The bill is supported by the large agribusiness industry.?
FACT: No large agribusiness companies have expressed support for this bill.
This bill is being supported by several Members of Congress who have strong progressive records on issues involving farmers markets, organic farming, and locally-grown foods.
[Who almost certainly have not read the bills or can’t interpret how it will work to destroy farmers, organic food, seed banking, and all of us.]
Also, H.R. 875 is the only food safety legislation that has been supported by all the major consumer and food safety groups, including:
[Perhaps others know details on each organization and why they might be supporting a bill that is so threatening to real food safety and to the survival of our farms and organic farming.]
?– Center for Foodborne Illness Research & Prevention
?– Center for Science in the Public Interest
?– Consumer Federation of America
The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) is a long-standing consumer organization based in Washington, DC. However, it has accepted funding from the ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION to “develop an optimum regulatory regime” for genetically engineered food.
?– Consumers Union?– Food & Water Watch
[Food and Water Watch just put out a description of the bill in which it is apparent they do not understand what is in it and what it will do. With that as their starting point, they support it.]
?– The Pew Charitable Trusts
[They are also connected to the ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION, and involved with them in mandatory vaccinations programs around the world and issues of reducing population.]
?– Safe Tables Our Priority ?– Trust for America’s Health
[There is no list here of groups opposing this bill, which include the people whose lives are most at risk from it and who know its dangers the best and who should have been the first people consulted. Instead, they have been shut out and when they have tried to report extreme dangers, they have ignored, dismissed, marginalized. Perhaps the other organizations listed here are as unfamiliar with the bill’s contents and ramifications as FWW.]
If you consider that not only is Rosa DeLauro married to Stanley Greenberg, who boasts Monsanto as one of his clients, but also that she receives the largest donations from agribusiness PAC’s of just about anyone in Congress, does industry NEED to come out and say they support this particular bill? If cash to the sponsor doesn’t count, and if formal positions supporting various specific aspects of the bill do not count, then what does? Would there not be massive public backlash against it if industry DID take a formal stand on every bill they want to see passed?
By the same token, I’ve not seen a single industrial ag company come out and oppose this bill, either. They have all been conspicuously silent. I seem to remember that they threw up quite a fuss over COOL, and caused enforcement to fall behind by more than 7 years… Not to mention the garbage with loopholes we’ve had to deal with since enforcement began. (What good does a “Canada, US, Mexico” label do for anybody? Especially with BSE in Canada and TB coming in daily from Mexico?) Where’s the hoot and holler over this?
MYTH: The bill will pass the Congress next week without amendments or debate.?
FACT: Food safety legislation has yet to be considered by any Congressional committee.?
I can’t speak to the time frame. [Note from NSF: our sources “on the Hill” told us they believed these bills had been “fast tracked” to be passed during President Obama’s “First 100 Days”]
[It came from those who first discovered the bills were there, inserted only one week after Vilsack had said the USDA wasn’t even considering centralizing the FDA and USDA at this time, so people saw how similar the bills were, knew who fast other things were being shoved through Congress without even reading those bills, and estimated how fast this could happen.
Perhaps with people alerted now, these bogus “food safety” bills can be stopped by the organic community once it realizes they will utterly destroy it.]
However, since I did have the luxury of listening to the farce taking place on the floor of the House of Representatives on March 11 concerning HR1105 (which FUNDS NAIS among its hundreds of other projects) while awaiting the Livestock, Dairy and Poultry subcommittee hearing on NAIS – I have no doubt that this bill will move quickly now that 1105 has passed and since it has so many co-sponsors.
Especially since the Representatives were honest enough to admit that though the Senators claimed everybill in the Omnibus Act had been heard and passed in the previous session, when in actuality, some 100 of the 170 bills in the package had NOT.
But this is my personal opinion.
The “ominous Omnibus Act” as several Representatives called it, went from introduction to the President in less than 13 working days.
I really have to question just who’s side those groups are really on that are in support of this bill…..
And finally,
Walk Index
Third Walk… Meaning of the Bills
WHAT THE NEW “FOOD SAFETY” BILLS MEAN TO YOU
by Gail Combs
Our food safety system was trashed in 1995 by Sec of Ag Ann Veneman (Board member of Monsanto). She appointed Dan Amstutz (VP of Cargill) who wrote the World Trade Organization Agreement on Agriculture (WTO AoA). Unlike GATT, WTO has major clout from trade sanctions and control of 90% of the international trade. http://www.publiceyeonscience.ch/images/the_wto_and_the_politics_of_gmo.doc
“Aims to ensure that governments do not use quarantine and food safety requirements as Unjustified trade barriers.. It provides Member countries with a right to implement traceability {NAIS} as an SPS measure.” WTO
In other words the WTO did away with “quarantine and food safety requirements” that gave us “the safest food in the world” and is graciously going to allow Farmers to track AND COUNT the world’s livestock for them instead. Now HR 875 and an FDA release indicate All food will be tracked and all food producers will have Food inspections and the threat of fines up to $1,000,000 a day will eliminate all the independent farms that have acted as a check on Corporate AG.
The FDA wants
to implement a more effective trace-back process, using technologies to rapidly and precisely track the origin and destination of contaminated foods, feed and ingredients
Nanotech in Food can make it happen “California’s Oxonica makes Nanobarcodes from nano-particles that contain silver and gold stripes varying in width, length and amount, such that billions of combinations can be created to tag individual products. The barcodes have been primarily used to assure brand and authenticity in pharmaceuticals, but applications could be forthcoming in tracing food batches”.
In regard to pets:
HR 875 uses “animals” and then “animals raised for food” and there are no exclusions. The Animal Welfare Act had exclusions for livestock, pets and people raising three or less litters of puppies a year. Therefore pets are not excluded.
“set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety”
“conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products, or the environment, as appropriate”
“with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal’s health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;
In regard to gardens:
The Feds Already have plans for controlling food “FROM FARM TO FORK” including home preparation since September of 1995 (WTO ratified in 1995)
HR 875
“require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;”
“include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water”
“include, with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal’s health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;”
“set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety”
“..facility owned or operated by a person located in any State that processes food or a facility that holds, stores, or transports food or food ingredients.”
Notice it does not say a person SELLING food, it says a person holds, stores, or transports food or food ingredients. The bill specifically states it covers commerce with in state but again there is no exclusion for food raised for home use. The fact you are growing veggies for your and friends and not selling them does not exclude you.
“in any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction SHALL BE PRESUMED TO EXIST.”
Under Ag Sec. Veneman …
in September, 1995, the USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service presented a 600-page document “Farm-To-Table” intended to control of every step in the food chain from production to home preparation.
This is a real life example of what has already occurred and what people may have in store:
Today a state Ag inspector and two county officials show up and scare the bee-jesus out of me. First they accuse me of selling products and milk, then explain that even “giving milk products away” is illegal in California. Now everything is pasteurized, but it is illegal to share milk products in any form! They explained it was even ILLEGAL to give it to my own children if they did not live under my roof! I can’t even take a lasagna dish to my grown sons home without risk of being fined, arrested and or jailed! This is OUTRAGEOUS!!!!…..” Donna Tue Aug 12, 2008 http://finance.groups.yahoo.com/group/Americans_Against_NAIS/message/26452
More stories on Feds raiding farms and co-ops
Walk Index
Last Walk… Conclusion
The related package of “food safety” bills are totalitarian. There are no two ways about it.
They allow government warrantless intrusion into and extreme, detailed, surveilled control over every aspect of farmers’ land and home, straight-jacketing them into a bureaucratic nightmare which precludes their even functioning as farmers. And yet for real food safety and for food security, it is exactly farmers we need.
We need the real food they produce and the farmland they spare and protect from industrialization and the heritage animals and seeds they raise and their knowledge about nature and animals, and we need the way of life they represent. Free. How interesting that to have real and clean and wholesome food, it requires that farmers have freedom.
These bills which claim to be about “food safety” but are proven in the EU already to be about the destruction of farmers, are so frighteningly broad, they allow the government to take over our lives, too. They allow the government to use rules written by multinational corporations within the WTO, to control whether we can garden or how, whether we chip our pets, even what happens inside our homes in our kitchens.
These controls all all for mandating things that make money for corporations just as we are all trying to get off the corporate grid of power, fuel, food, … Now it is easy to appreciate people’ resistance to mandated vaccines (and they keep adding more kinds).
There is point at which we must say stop. Our lives are our own, our property is our own, our decisions on what to eat and how to heal ourselves are our own. We must protect our own freedom and now it is apparent how intimately tied it is those who have been providing for us for ever – our farmers.
HR 875, SR 425, HR 814, HR 759 and all related bills must be withdrawn immediately and then trashed.
http://www.opednews.com/articles/A-solemn-walk-through-HR-8-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090314-67.html
Index ———————————-
Further information linking Codex Alimentarius (the World Food Code) and the (sic) Food (sic) Safety bills, see:
A Natural Solutions Foundation White Paper
Regarding U.S. Codex Office and Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) for
Adoption of Codex Committee Policies by the U.S. Codex Delegation and FSIS
in Harmony with the Dietary Substances Health and Education Act (DSHEA),
19 USC 3512 (the Anti-Harmonization Statute) and other Statutory and Case Law