H.R. 875 Food Safety Act

I emailed 3 of my senators/congressman(and the White House) 'bout it, but I don't know if it will do any good. There was a town hall meeting last weekend in town, with 3 of our state reps, and in response to a question, they actually admitted that they don't read the bills they vote on. They didn't even say their assistants/interns do for them. Their excuse is that there's too many of them and it would take too long. Well what the hell are we paying them for?! I even usually read the User Terms and Agreement things when I sign up anywhere online, MySpace, Yahoo, Facebook, wherever. And I have a busy schedule too...I have to do just about all the 'grunt' work on our farm and work on the website and make flyers and do all the business paperwork and crap, yet I make sure to find the time I don't agree to anything I don't understand. Here's what I emailed(feel free to adapt it to your circumstances to contact your state reps):

I am a small (organic) farmer and am very concerned about the repercussions if H.R. 875 were to pass. We are lucky to make enough money to get by, but having to pay licensing/inspection fees plus additional taxes would be beyond our means. The wording 'food production facility' needs to be less vague. By that wording, if you have a potted herb in your kitchen windowsill, you could be considered a food production facility. If the government wants safe food, they should A: pay for the farms to be inspected themselves, and B: focus on the fact that the recent contaminated food outbreaks were more often than not the fault of big companies who could have afforded to enact safety measures. I would also like to point out that the recent peanut butter contamination took place in the processing plant, not where the nuts were grown. We grow enough produce not only to sell, but to eat as well, so we make sure it's safe.

Victoria, zone 5a

Reply to
Lilah Morgan
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Monsanto and HR 875, Take Two

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Still impossible to tell who are the crooks and who are the liars, but I'm not counting on the Monsanto shill. And, it may cause just as much suspicion from both sides as it attempts to alleviate it.

Reply to
cat daddy

I wrote my local U.S. Corporate Representative Congresswoman and my U.S. Corporate Representative Senators last week that I personally was against the bill. I doubt my letters will have any impact at all. Google "food safety bill farmers market". Enjoy the read. Since the introduction of this bill, does it seem that all news of the food safety bill is silent on TV and newspapers. All praise the internet!

Enjoy Life ... Dan

Reply to
Dan L.

In article , "Dan L." wrote:

In case you haven't seen it

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Buys Seminis

Maybe you¹ve never heard of Seminis, but if you¹ve ever perused these pages, you¹ve almost undoubtedly tasted Seminis. Celebrity, Big Beef and Sweet Baby Girl tomatoes, North Star, Red Knight and Fat ¹n Sassy peppers, Mars and Candy onions, Yellow Doll and Jade Star watermelons, the Seneca squashes?all are Seminis varieties. Seminis was our largest supplier, selling us 70 items in the 2005 catalog, accounting for more than 11 per cent of our seed business. In addition to offering a superb line, they shipped on time, supplied high quality seed with good germination, and backed their products with excellent variety descriptions and sales materials. In January 2005 Monsanto announced that they were buying Seminis for $1.4 billion in cash and assumed debt. Noted for its aggressive advocacy of genetically modified crops and its dominance in biotechnology, Monsanto will now have a major presence in the vegetable seed business for the first time. No one knows if or when they will incorporate transgenes into their vegetable varieties. The Monsanto buyout presented us with a serious ethical dilemma. In striving to carry the best possible varieties at reasonable prices, we have based our selections largely on the merits of the varieties, rarely on our supplier preferences. Could we be purveyors of Monsanto products and still sleep well at night? Many of our customers have depended upon Seminis¹ good genetics. However much we may think we require these varieties in the short run, they come at a devastating social cost, ultimately the complete alienation of sower from seed. Fedco Drops Monsanto/Seminis We responded to the news by polling our customers. Should we drop the Seminis/Monsanto line, phase it out, keep it but give it its own customer code, or maintain it without change? We received an unprecedented 1,157 responses. 54.8% voted for us to drop the Seminis/Monsanto line immediately, and an additional 17% to phase it out over time. Many included thought-provoking comments such as these: ? Drop the Seminis varieties unless this puts the entire coop in jeopardy. ? Every dollar that goes to Monsanto does not go to a producer who is protective of agriculture, our world, our health. ? You don¹t need to sell your soul for a Sunsugar. ? Let the customers decide! ? Phase out as you find quality replacements. ? Call upon my sense of adventure to try the new varieties you find! ? Unbury the supplier codes and make them more prominent. ? Give your customers a choice on their purchases for a transitional period?tax the b?ds for the public good?and spread the money like manure for our new crop of seed providers?breeders, growers and distributors. ? It¹s a hard thing to fight a Monsanto when we¹re so deeply embedded in a system that produces Monsantos. Sort of like Jefferson hating slavery while owning slaves. ? Buyers¹ choice is real democracy. We, the buyers either keep them in business or put them out of business. ? Double the retail price for Monsanto seed and send the additional receipts to those who suffer from Monsanto like Percy Schmeiser. ? Monsanto should be Rounded Up and composted. ? We¹ll survive on the sweet tastiness of the moral high ground. After our staff expressed a clear preference for taking decisive action, our purchasing team decided not to do business with Monsanto. We chose instead to purchase a one-year supply of the available Seminis items in March before the merger was consummated, and not to replace those varieties when they ran out. We have clearly identified these varieties in the catalog and assigned them their own customer code of . You will notice some gaps in the catalog. Not all the Seminis varieties were available in the spring, so we have had to drop some of them and limit sizes of others. Our trials work last summer and for the next two years is focused on finding replacements. In a few cases we will be able to find other suppliers or to start our own seed production. We preferred, where possible, to give our customers and ourselves a short transition time to find alternatives instead of going cold turkey. Why Drop Monsanto? The current industrial seed system rests upon the unholy trinity of biotechnology, corporate concentration and intellectual property rights. Each is mutually reinforcing and none of the three stands without the support of the other two.

1) Harvard geneticist Richard Lewontin has warned that ³the process of genetic engineering has a unique ability to produce deleterious effects² and argues that varieties produced by recombinant DNA technology ³need to be specially scrutinized and tested.² As yet, almost all documented tests have been conducted by the very biotech industries which stand to profit from the products being tested. The fox guarding the chicken coop indeed! An even more compelling argument against genetic engineering than the safety concerns (which might be alleviated were the biotech industry to embrace mandatory labeling permitting an audit trail of their products) is its structural effects upon the seed industry. The biotech revolution promised much but delivered little. Unanticipated obstacles pushed research and development costs far higher than expected, driving a series of consolidations in which small companies were either swallowed up or forced to make complex licensing agreements with the big guys in order to survive. Monsanto is the leading proponent and practictioner of genetic engineering. Monsanto seeds and biotech traits accounted for 88% of the total acreage of genetically modified seeds planted worldwide in 2004, an area that has multiplied more than forty-fold since 1996 to encompass 167 million acres. 2) We would do well to heed eminent University of Wisconsin plant breeder Dr. William F. Tracy: ³placing the responsibility for the world¹s crop germplasm and plant improvement in the hands of a few companies is bad public policy.?The primary goal of private corporations is to make profit, and?this goal will be at odds with certain public needs.?The future of our food supply requires genetic diversity but also demands a diversity of decision makers.² A hyper-concentrated seed system neglects so-called minor crops, regionally-adapted and specialty niche varieties, and those not suited for long distance shipping or global markets, deeming them to be of little economic importance. We can blame the documented declines in the nutritional content of vegetables grown in the United States since 1950 on the corporatization of our food system. Decades of selecting cultivars for rapid growth, yield and pest resistance (traits valued by corporate breeders wishing to maximize returns) at the expense of taste and nutritional content have taken their toll. By basing our food system primarily on the goal of increased production, we have, according to Wendell Berry, ³achieved stupendous increases? at exorbitant biological and social costs.² The seed industry is concentrating into fewer and fewer corporate hands. Seminis controlled 40% of the United States vegetable seed market and supplied the genetics for 75% of the tomatoes and 85% of the peppers on supermarket shelves. With the absorption of Seminis, Monsanto vaulted ahead of DuPont as the world¹s largest seed company. After the merger, for the first time the world¹s top ten seed companies control half the market. In fact, the four biggest ones have 36%. 3) In 1930, Luther Burbank, testifying before Congress, complained that plant breeders derived no economic benefits from their work and should be rewarded if we wanted to stimulate the development of superior varieties. Of course, he had a point. The debate should be about what are the best mechanisms to reward breeders and encourage research in the public interest. The seed industry has advanced one point of view, lobbying persistently for stronger and stronger patent protection for their ³proprietary intellectual property,² while at the same time gutting and privatizing a once-thriving public research apparatus at our land-grant universities. The catch is that plants, unlike widgets which cannot reproduce themselves (at least not yet!), are living beings which can and do, through their seed. The ³intellectual property² that is protected in a manufacturing patent?the original idea that makes the product novel and useful?translates poorly into the improvement of life forms, which has typically been the work of generations of farmers, observing mutations, selecting for desired traits, sharing and exchanging seeds, and building gradually upon one another¹s efforts. Who can own a mutation, occurring freely in nature? By tradition, our biological heritage was held in common. Sharing, not secrecy, was the dominant paradigm. The industry¹s attempt to impose a proprietary model upon a product bountifully given by nature is a radical departure from our agricultural tradition. The original Plant Variety Protection Act in 1970, the culmination of 40 years¹ lobbying by the seed industry, protected varieties from others¹ use for 17 years, but with important exceptions. Farmers were allowed to save seed, replant it, and even sell it to neighbors, and breeders were permitted to use it for research purposes. Court decisions in 1980, 1985 and 2001, however, have brought all products of plant breeding under the standard utility patent. Unlike PVP, utility patents protect not just finished varieties, but also individual components of those varieties and processes used to create those varieties. There are no exemptions for farmers to save seed and none for research and breeding. These court decisions now allow proteins to be patented, DNA sequences to be patented, individual mutations to be patented, single nucleotide polymorphisms to be patented, genes, cells, tissue cultures and specific plant parts to be patented. The proliferation of patents and overlapping intellectual property rights has privatized what was once a vast commons, stifled free exchange of germplasm, diminished scientists¹ freedom to operate, choked off creativity and escalated development costs exponentially, thereby setting off further rounds of consolidation and concentration. The justification for ³intellectual property² rights?to stimulate research?has been turned on its head. No company has been more aggressive than Monsanto in defending its ³intellectual property.² Monsanto currently holds 647 plant biotech patents, more than any other company. When farmers purchase seed containing Monsanto¹s patented technology, they are required to give up their age-old right to save their own seed, to grant Monsanto broad rights to access their personal records and to come on to their property to inspect their crops. According to Monsanto vs. U.S. Farmers (#9756), a report published by the Center for Food Safety, Monsanto maintains a staff of 75 employees with an annual budget of $10 million for the sole purpose of investigating and prosecuting farmers for patent infringement. It has a toll-free number that allows farmers and businesses to place confidential calls to snitch on alleged patent infringers and it hires private investigation firms such as Pinkerton to spy on suspected farmers. It has investigated hundreds of farmers, sent scores of threatening letters and made out-of-court settlements for alleged patent violations. The 90 lawsuits it has filed represent just the tip of the iceberg. Getting off the Seed Grid* We have chosen to use Monsanto¹s buyout of Seminis as a wake-up call. We do so because Monsanto epitomizes the road down which we no longer choose to go?the road that leads to our complete surrender of control of our seed and therefore of control of our food system. When one-fourth of our seed business is with multinational corporations engaged in genetic engineering research, too many of us have allowed seed to become just another industrial input rather than a life force. In the 1980s many organic farmers in Maine were so dependent on chicken manure from DeCoster, a huge operation with disgraceful labor relations, that Bowdoin College economist David Vail called them ³chickenshit farmers.² Thanks in part to Vail and MOFGA, they broke their addiction and evolved. We have become chicken-seed farmers, similarly addicted to multinational corporations. Today we stand in relation to the seed about where the pioneering organic farmers of forty years ago stood in relation to the land and their communities. We have revitalized our soils with compost and green manures. We have revitalized our markets with local connections through restaurants, CSA¹s and farmers markets. We have revitalized our soils and our markets, but what have we done for the seed? Eleven years ago in our 1995 catalog when we first asked, ³Do you know where your seed comes from?² we carried around 30 small-farm grown varieties. In this 2006 catalog we have 190 such varieties. Seed work is slow work, we build our seed firmament stone by stone, we find and replace varieties one by one, but seed work is the foundation on which all agriculture depends. As keynoter Dennis Kucinich said at the Common Ground Fair, ³If we are what we eat, we should take care how our food is made so that we know what we are to become.² So that we may become truly what we wish to be, we invite you to begin the next step with us on the road to seed diversity. *I am indebted to Laura DeLind of Michigan State University for coining the phrase. Fedco Seeds, PO Box 520, Waterville, ME 04903 (207) 873-7333

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If your eyeballs haven't fallen out yet, you should at least glance at

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Reply to
Billy

What I walked away with. Diversity of decision makers in a world where the images are trivial and uniform. Profit driven not health driven and as the adage reminds if you lose it nothing else matters.

Bill who would like to break bread with Dr. Tracy

Reply to
Bill

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SEC. 405. CIVIL AND CRIMINAL PENALTIES.

(a) Civil Sanctions-

(1) CIVIL PENALTY-

(A) IN GENERAL- Any person that commits an act that violates the food safety law (including a regulation promulgated or order issued under the food safety law) may be assessed a civil penalty by the Administrator of not more than $1,000,000 for each such act.

(B) SEPARATE OFFENSE- Each act described in subparagraph (A) and each day during which that act continues shall be considered a separate offense.

so, by not putting chemicals into your garden, it will be possible to be fined $1,000,000. if you grow an edible plant on your property the argument could easily be made that you are technically under this jurisdiction. THis is what the bill states and you can bet $1,000,001 that Monsato (or whoever else Rosa Delauris is bending over for) will pay for the legal cases against any little person who challenges this.

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506. REGULATIONS.

The Administrator may promulgate such regulations as the Administrator determines are necessary or appropriate to perform the duties of the Administrator.

"We'll take any measure what so ever to ensure that you are putting chemicals into your garden."

what in this bill ISN'T good for Monsanto? The fact that the company with which Stanley Greenburg is paid from Monsanto to represent, will also be paid to sway the opinion of the advisory committee. So if the congress woman's husband is taking kickbacks from Monsato (but not "working" for them) - you can bet that she too is receiving generous benefits too, and America will become a dictatorship giving one guy (or the way the money flows) control over what any American is allowed to grow and eat.

Lilah Morgan wrote: > I emailed 3 of my senators/congressman(and the White House) 'bout it, but I > don't know if it will do any good. There was a town hall meeting last > weekend in town, with 3 of our state reps, and in response to a question, > they actually admitted that they don't read the bills they vote on. They > didn't even say their assistants/interns do for them. Their excuse is that > there's too many of them and it would take too long. Well what the hell are > we paying them for?! I even usually read the User Terms and Agreement things > when I sign up anywhere online, MySpace, Yahoo, Facebook, wherever. And I > have a busy schedule too...I have to do just about all the 'grunt' work on > our farm and work on the website and make flyers and do all the business > paperwork and crap, yet I make sure to find the time I don't agree to > anything I don't understand. Here's what I emailed(feel free to adapt it to > your circumstances to contact your state reps): >

Reply to
Musio

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