Food Saftey Modernization Act

[dominiquer60]

It appears that the Senate is now serious about voting on this bill. If you are inclined to do so, give you Senators a call and state your opinion, I did.

Here is a little more about it from Food Democracy Now, it is a little extreme in wording, but many of us could feel worse effects if we let the House version pass instead.

Dear friend,
I just called my Senator today to help protect family farmers, farmers markets and the local food movement. I’m writing to ask if you will please join me.

The U.S. Senate is posed to vote on the controversial Food Safety Modernization Bill (S.510) and small-scale and organic farmers urgently need two important amendments attached that will protect them from inappropriate regulations meant to curtail the largest and most likely culprits of food safety outbreaks in the U.S. – giant, consolidated agribusinesses and their massive processing partners.

The first and most important provision is the Tester-Hagan amendment, which provides an exemption for family farmers who gross less than $500,000 and sell direct to farmers markets, restaurants, customers and local stores within 400 miles of their farm/processing facility. As the only organic farmer in the U.S. Senate, John Tester has made sure that this amendment protects the growing local food movement and allows small and beginning farmers the opportunity to grow the most economically vibrant part of agriculture.

In addition, the Manager’s Amendment, which includes 5 vital amendments, would protect small-scale farmers from burdensome paperwork, offer farmers competitive grants for food safety training, allow them to engage in co-mingling of products from multiple farms in processing, reduce paperwork and excessive traceability requirements, and protect wildlife and wildlife habitat

As this new food safety bill goes to a vote in the Senate, it’s vital that we send a strong message to your Senators that they need to protect family farmers from regulations meant to prevent the worst food safety outbreaks from happening again. Remind them that the cause of these outbreaks come from an overly concentrated food system and not family farmers. This could be our last best shot to save the local food movement.

[mitchmaine]

the senate passed that bill today by a vote of 73 to 25. now it goes to the house.
the good news is that although not perfect, there is some strong language protecting the small farm and farmer. thanks to everyone who contacted their senate and congress men and women.

[dominiquer60]

I am disappointed that it passed by so much. I hope that there is a provision for people that refuse to accept petroleum based agriculture as the only form of power.

“Farms will be required to follow Standards for Produce Safety, which FDA will be developing. These regulations will cover growing, harvesting, sorting, packing and storage of food, and will provide minimum standards related to soil amendments, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment and water. “

This was a quote from a farm bureau bulletin today, our state was for making a small farm exemption which passed. While all scary, the animal encroachment part is particularly worrisome. I am on track to have a resolution passed that supports animal power for farm, forest and transportation at the state level. If I am going to pay dues, they may as well support a few things that I can stand behind, and they can’t fight for you if they don’t have a policy supporting your views. So hopefully this policy could potentially be used when making a stand on the new FDA regulations. Yes it is a long shot but you don’t know for sure until you try.

Raw Milk is just the start, wait until we have a raw vegetable movement with a black market for vegetables that have not been exposed to a chlorine bath 🙁

On a happy note I had a customer at the market this weekend who bought a bunch of carrots because it still had a little dirt on it, she thought they would be healthy for her kid to eat raw. He was crunching on one before I had change for her, “mom, you are right, they do taste better with the dirt still on.” It just warmed my heart 🙂

Erika

[OldKat]

@mitchmaine 22400 wrote:

the senate passed that bill today by a vote of 73 to 25. now it goes to the house.
the good news is that although not perfect, there is some strong language protecting the small farm and farmer. thanks to everyone who contacted their senate and congress men and women.

Does anyone know if there are enough nays in the house to send this thing back? If they can stall it long enough until the new representatives are seated it will be tough to cram this nonsense through. With the current mix, all bets are off.

Did anyone catch how the media was playing this up today? Made it sound like it was big “win” for consumers. What a bunch of jerks.

[Andy Carson]

I was sad to see the bill passed too, even with the concessions made for small farms. I would have much prefered nothing… After the passing of this bill, I am left wondering if we (as a constituency) have made ourselves heard in the best way possible. Are there organizations and/or political groups that might help amplify our voices? How can we do better next time?

[dominiquer60]

Andy,

There were many groups with a voice on this one. Consumers groups like Food Democracy Now and the Organic Consumers group were all for regulating Big Ag but supported provisions for small farmers. My state farm bureau could not take a stand on the actual bill due to “lack of policy”, but was able to speak in favor of the Tester and Managers amendment. MOFGA has been pushing support for the amendments as well. It seems as though the spirit of some of these pro farm organizations admitted defeat early and opted to support exempting small farms instead of fighting the big battle. There were quite a few consumer and big Ag groups that fought for no exemptions, an even playing field is what they wanted. I heard that big Ag was against the total bill, but I find it hard to stomach some of the anti Big Ag propaganda, just as I have a hard time believing Big Ag’s propaganda, both are guilty of exaggerating and being untruthful.

There are groups out there if you can find them. I was hoping the Small Farms Conservancy would do a little advocacy work, we shall see what happens.

I read tonight that the house is poised to pass s.510 ASAP, so call your congressperson if you can. It is a hard bill to say no to, after all who doesn’t want safe food? I feel that the problem is, what will the FDA consider safe food? Chances are it is not what I/we consider to be safe food.

Hope for the best,

Erika

[dominiquer60]

http://truefoodnow.org/2010/11/30/federal-court-orders-first-ever-destruction-of-a-gmo-crop-orders-removal-of-genetically-engineered-sugar-beet-seed-crop/

[dominiquer60]

Here is an article that brings up a few good points about food safety and how this bill will not keep our food safe.

http://www.naturalnews.com/030587_Senate_Bill_510_Food_Safety.html#ixzz16pkYVMPX

[blue80]

Erika, thanks for yesterdays “good news.”
Kevin

[mitchmaine]

sounds like the senate blew it and voted on the food safety bill with language about money involved. only the house can appropriate money, so the senate passed a bill it couldn’t or should not have voted on. so now the house has no alternative but to defeat the bill, so it can go back to the senate that, after new years, will be mostly republican. so we can expect a different outcome, maybe……………………………yahoo!!!!!!!!

[near horse]

Here’s a link (got it from RH) that tries to sum up the amended SB510 –
http://farmandranchfreedom.org/Tester-Hagan-explanation

It really ticks me off that the “fears” of bioterrorism are being used to make many small farmers/producers “register” w/ FDA . The primary change that has made our food supply “more susceptible to bioterrorism” is the consolidation of that system by large agribusinesses – now it’s potentially easier to taint massive amounts of food with one contamination. So the answer is to make the small producers subject to increased regulation.

Step back and think about this. The most basic act of producing/providing/consuming food that obviously has been taking place since early ag (5,000+ yrs) has now been made more complicated than a negotiated peace deal between Israel and Palestine. As a friend of mine used to say “they could screw up a rock fight.”

[OldKat]

@mitchmaine 22489 wrote:

sounds like the senate blew it and voted on the food safety bill with language about money involved. only the house can appropriate money, so the senate passed a bill it couldn’t or should not have voted on. so now the house has no alternative but to defeat the bill, so it can go back to the senate that, after new years, will be mostly republican. so we can expect a different outcome, maybe……………………………yahoo!!!!!!!!

Did anyone notice that there was an attempt to sneak this crap through by including it in total in the so called Omnibus Spending Bill? My thinking is that this is how they planned to get around the restrictions that appropriations originate in the House. I never did see who sponsored this thing. Was there ever even a unique House version? I never saw mention of one; only the Senate version and NO NAMES attached to it. Somewhat unusual. I guess no one wanted to be identified as being behind it.

I also noticed that when it was voted on in the Senate there was a grand total of 1.5 hours of debate on it. Of course they passed the “health care reform” bill not having so much as one person that had actually read it, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. Based on the votes when it came out of the House which I think was 212 to 206 in favor of passage, with zero Republicans voting to pass it and 8 abstaining … that it should be DOA (Dead On Arrival) after the new members are seated in January. Should help that the (R)’s also picked up more seats in the Senate, too, as they mostly voted against it anyway.

I am not sure who is behind this deal, but somebody wanted it rammed down our throats pretty badly. Hopefully we can drive a stake through the heart of it once and for all after January 1st.

[dominiquer60]

The houses version, from what I have heard, was much worse than the Senate version, high fees and not leniency for small farmers, very one sized fits all. I have met a lot of people that were not really for the Senate version, and the only thing that they all had to say was “It is inevitable that we have a food safety legislation, at least it has small farm exemptions and it is better than the House Bill.” A lame excuse to support the Senate Bill if you ask me, very lame.

Just so you don’t think that I am in favor of everything NY Farm Bureau does here is a good one. The NY FB could not take stand on this bill because it “didn’t have policy addressing it.” Again lame, they must have been pushed from the top. In our Food Safety policy it clearly state that we oppose additional regulation and fees imposed on farmers having to do with food safety. I am sure they were pressured from the national side which is greatly influenced by the food giants that want this to look good and have traceability to quickly point a finger at someone else.

[near horse]

Sorry OldKat but the food “uhhm” safety bill isn’t a party line thing – it’s a who’s your daddy thing – here in ID it’s fully supported by both our senators and reps. (and our state animal is the GOP elephant). So show me the money!

As far as I can tell this smells as bad as the original HACCP proposal 10+ yrs ago (and approved). The original bill was going to allow/require outside inspections and accountability got revamped into a “self-monitoring and reporting program”. So how come we’re still getting tainted eggs, meat recalls etc?

[mitchmaine]

squeeze a little high fructose corn syrup into the raw milk and we are home free

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