Natural Solutions Foundation
www.HealthFreedomUSA.org
www.HealthFreedomPortal.org
The Voice of Health and Food Freedom™
September 18, 2010 — Our friends at Campaign for Liberty report today that Tom Coburn, MD, US Senator from Oklahoma, is holding up “unanimous consent” approval of the fake “food safety” bill S.510. *
Dr. Coburn has released a white paper on the Bill, outlining some of the reasons for opposing it, commenting, “The way the bill is written the authority is extremely broad and could be used by FDA to issue very specific and onerous regulations on food facilities, without even the normal rule-making and guidance process FDA food regulations normally go through.” **
The Trustees of Natural Solutions Foundation want to thank Senator Coburn for his strong public opposition to S. 510, which would force the industrialization of our local, organic, safe food supplies, turning them over to the very factory-farm system that has failed to protect the safety and wholesomeness of the factory “food” which has been the cause of recent food-poisoning incidents.
Through www.HealthFreedomUSA.org the Foundation seeks to educate decision makers on the dangers of what over-regulation will do to our family farms and ranches, community and home gardens and farmers’ markets. Senator Coburn correctly observes, “overlapping and duplicative inspections of 1,451 domestic food-processing facilities that produce foods regulated by both agencies… This overlap was evident in the egg salmonella scare. …U.S. Department of Agriculture experts knew about sanitary problems at one of the two Iowa farms at the center of a massive nationwide egg recall, but did not notify … the FDA…” thereby putting the Federal bureaucracy at the heart of the problem.
Clearly, this bill is not a “noncontroversial” bill that can be rushed through what is rapidly becoming a “lame-duck” Congress. The recent addition of a companion bill, S.3767, criminalizing food production, makes the situation even more controversial. Senator Coburn and others who see this realize these issues must be debated after full public hearings, in the new Congress about to be elected.
For more than a year, the plan to capture – and kill – clean, local, organic, independent and safe farming has been wending its way through Congress. Last year, the devastating HR 1279 passed although we put up a good battle, delaying it for quite a while. However, at the end of the day, a good battle followed by a loss is still a loss. Then the field of battle shifted to the US Senate, where we’ve held the forces of Big Agra and Big Govt at bay for nearly a year…
The bill as written threatens small farm, home, local/organic and community food production with onerous rules that, while perhaps appropriate for industrialized food production, will create impossible “barriers against entry” that will rapidly destroy such local and natural production. No protective language is included in the Senate bill that satisfies these concerns.
As an example of the type of controls imposed, Section 106 provides in part for the regulations issued to be kept secret from the public, “In the interest of national security, the Secretary … may determine the time and manner in which the guidance documents issued under paragraph (1) are made public…” This provision will allow secret regulations, in violation of centuries of American legal precedence. This provision alone is a clear and present threat to the Republic.
The bill as written, in effect, incorporates the “HARMonization” provisions of the discredited “Dietary Supplement Safety Act” S.3002 and actually calls upon the FDA to recommend harmonization of American nutritional freedoms with Codex Alimentarius’ restrictions [Section 306(c)(5)]. Further, Section 404: states “Nothing in this Act… shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with… any …treaty or international agreement to which the United States is a party.” These provisions set up a “road map” to the rapid, full implementation of Codex restrictions.
Senator Coburn is standing up to the combined forces of Big Agra Biz and several of the largest and most powerful Federal Agencies — government departments which have failed to protect the public and which see the only answer for their failures is to provide them with more money and more power.
We urge Senator Coburn and his colleagues to stand firm. We the People stand behind you!
Action Item to Thank Senator Coburn: http://salsa.democracyinaction.org/o/568/p/dia/action/public/?action_KEY=4856
The Trustees of the Natural Solutions Foundation,
Maj. Gen. Bert Stubblebine (US Army ret) President
Dr. Rima E. Laibow, MD, Medical Director
Ralph Fucetola, JD, Counsel
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* – http://www.campaignforliberty.com/#38408
** – http://coburn.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/rightnow?ContentRecord_id=8df5cb89-91a2-4ae3-b846-7487db0bd4f0
