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Post by cheeky resurrection on Mar 18, 2009 3:39:08 GMT -5
Stupendous idea....
Okay, so I posted this as a bulletin on the Myspace but thought I'd post it here as well, seeing as how many more of you will probably care than the people on the Myspace. This is an INSANE, I repeat INSANE, move that needs to be met with the utmost force.
(I scrolled back 5 pages to try and insure this hasn't already been threaded but I didn't see anything. If I have happened to have missed it, I apologize, just redirect me to the active discussion.)
_________________________________________________
Whether you care or not, you should still know what's going down.
Ignorance is bliss until that bliss is interrupted by the government shoving chemicals down your precious little throats!
I'd rather have total chaos than be totally controlled.
Take a few minutes, do it, and pass it on.
(if the clickable links don't work for some reason just copy and paste into a separate browser tab or window)
I have reviewed the links below and they check out. The Senate bill's wording is harder to understand since it makes the Act sound like it is helping the public, but the corresponding House bill is very clear in its targeting of the organic food industry. Its phrase "science-based minimum standards for safe production of food by food production facilities" is clearly aimed at killing the organic farming industry by mandating fertilizers and pesticides that must be used on all foods that are sold to the public. If you're like me, anything that is government-mandated as "science-based" really means industry-backed (in other words, sponsored by Monsanto & friends).
If this is important to you, as it is to me, then you need to let your legislators know about it, and SOON.
Here's to continued healthy organic farming in the future! Please let your friends know about this important issue.
Please let your elected officials know how you feel on this...
House and Senate Fast-Track Bills to Ban Organic Farming
House and Senate bills to kill all organic farms (FAST track bills in 2 weeks)
Food Safety Modernization Act (HR 875): Criminalization of Organic Farms
To find your representative: . house. gov/writerep/welcome. shtml
Senate S 425 . govtrack. us/congress/bill. xpd?bill=s111-425
IF YOU LIKE TO HAVE AN ORGANIC GARDEN OR BUY ORGANIC FOOD YOU HAD BETTER GET ON THAT PHONE OR WRITE TO YOUR CONGRESS REPs N-O-W!
There is an enormous rush to get this into law within the next two weeks before people realize what is happening up on Capitol Hill.
The main backer and lobbyist is (guess who?) Monsanto!
Don't know who Monsanto is?
. wikipedia. org/wiki/Monsanto
Need more info??
. cfm
Just Google the company and the news swirling around them.
The few multi-million dollar companies in the farming industry would like nothing better than to eliminate any opposition with the support of the federal government.
The Bills will require organic farms to use specific fertilizers and poisonous sprays. All farms and growers will be instructed and regulated by the newly formed agency to 'make sure there is no danger to the general public and the appending food supply.' The attempt is to 'standardize' the agricultural industry.
At first this may appear as if it is only directed at commercial farms but don't be fooled. This WILL include backyard gardens that grow food for consumption by a single family and not intended for resale. Most prior Bills that started off with such intent are later expanded in their scope and become more restricted in nature.
If this passes then NO more heirloom clean seeds but only Monsanto genetically-altered seeds that are now showing up with unexpected diseases in humans.
The name on this evil food plan is the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009
(Really makes it sound like the feds are trying protect us!)
It's simply ridiculous that in the guise of food safety, we are destroying the family farm, leading to untold environmental damage, shocking levels of animal cruelty, and because of the widespread use of antibiotics in factory farm animal feed, making food significantly less safe!
I work "in the system" and have talked to several lawyers who think this could even be used to outlaw the veggie garden you might have in your backyard.
The government wants to make you as dependant on them as possible. Scary stuff when you look at it with a conspiratorial sense.
I work "in the system" and have talked to several lawyers who think this could even be used to outlaw the veggie garden you might have in your backyard.
The government wants to make you as dependant on them as possible. Scary stuff when you look at it with a conspiratorial sense.
Wait - I though we were supposed to be dependant on the government for everything - isn;t the new government ging to give everyone a share????
Post by cheeky resurrection on Mar 18, 2009 14:53:46 GMT -5
^Haha, Meg.
Brewboss- Karma for the links. The negative side of this is actually getting a lot more publicity than I thought.
John- That's exactly what i'm talking about. My parents own a greenhouse business, have 4 personal gardens alone, and have recently (within the past few years) started growing as much of their product without any inorganic pesticides... In result of these bills they will be forced to use whatever the government wants them to, safe or not, expensive or not, properly tested and approved ...or not. This is an issue, but this is much more an issue that's going to hit closer to home than most people realize.
We give in to depending on the government at this level and it will only get worse from here. Next thing you know they'll be patrolling the streets in their armored vehicles with their big guns and telling kids when they can play in the yard and when they need to go inside and watch the man on the television. I'm not a HUGE conspiracy theorist but this is just downright wrong.
I really like being able to go to the farmer's market to buy from and support local growers. Their product is almost always 100% better than anything I can go to the evil Wal*Mart and buy.
...I want to be able to continue doing this until I'm returned to the Earth. Not until the government decides they don't want me to anymore.
I try to stay away from all the conspiracy stuff, but it gets kind of creepy when one day I hear about this from a paranoid, conspiracy junky and I think it's BS, and then the next day I see official reporting on the same subject.
This reminds me of the draft bill that never even made it to the floor. Stuff like this gets written up all the time. I'm sure there's a lobby out there who made the wording so purposefully vague, but honestly, this is a whole much ado about nothing. It won't pass. It will get worded differently. Too many senators and representatives have too much at stake to not change the wording and the Obama administration doesn't want to piss off its base too much just yet. Plus Walmart's already invested billions into organic, so I doubt it's going away anytime soon.
Meanwhile, there actually WAS a major copyright treaty signed behind closed doors with major corporations present that will basically outlaw peer-to-peer sharing on an international level in case anybody wanted to freak out about something more concrete: www.boingboing.net/2008/06/06/secret-supercopyrigh.html
Last Edit: Mar 19, 2009 15:21:21 GMT -5 by dudezer47 - Back to Top
When Walmart invests billions into organic, it basically means factory farms that follow the letter of the organic methods but not the spirit. What we're bemoaning here is the death of the family farm, something Walmart would prefer to accelerate since that just makes prices even lower for the mass-produced crap it sells.
I hope you're right, though, that the bill never passes, but this sort of thing happens all of the time. The Chinese lead toy scare resulted in all kinds of toy safety regulations, written by interest groups controlled by large manufacturers, that didn't do a lot to address toy safety, but put a lot of independent toymakers out of business. The same thing is happening with food safety. I'm not sure how much of Obama's base realizes the problems with this legislation... they just hear about food safety and think "yeah, we need that after the peanut scare" and that's that.
I just think this is much ado about nothing. There are hundreds of bills drafted every year that never make the vote. This is probably one of them. Get worried if it passes. And even then it'll have to make it through the senate and the house without getting revised. Given the vocal nature of the organic food movement, I seriously doubt it would go through three rounds of voting and a presidential signature before someone pointed out its wording flaws.
Typically, the time to worry about a bill is *before* it passes. Maybe family farms and the organic movement mean nothing to you, but that doesn't mean that those of us who do are making a big deal out of nothing. Regulation is always written by big business... that's basically the reason we are facing the current financial crisis. We didn't realize the danger of that regulation until after the problems started occurring, and we run the same risk with this issue.
Typically, the time to worry about a bill is *before* it passes. Maybe family farms and the organic movement mean nothing to you, but that doesn't mean that those of us who do are making a big deal out of nothing. Regulation is always written by big business... that's basically the reason we are facing the current financial crisis. We didn't realize the danger of that regulation until after the problems started occurring, and we run the same risk with this issue.
Here's the thing...the big bad farming corporations wouldn't be down with nationalized farming either. Corporations aren't generally thrilled with more regulation.
But really beyond that, you really think that if you know about this bill, that people in Washington don't? You think there aren't lobby groups right now snuffing this one out?
I just view stuff like this to be an EXTREME waste of time and usually is used to scare people into a frame of mind that suits the people who start these email chains. It's exactly like the draft bill thing...it's not going to happen. And like I said, if it managed to make it through one round of voting, the press would inevitably pick up on it and there would be shitstorm.
Here's the thing...the big bad farming corporations wouldn't be down with nationalized farming either. Corporations aren't generally thrilled with more regulation.
True, which is why when there is public outcry for more regulation, corporations make sure they are the ones writing it. That's why this stuff is under the guise of food safety, but it's in a manner that is easy for large corporations to implement but doesn't scale for family farms.
I hope you're right about the press making a big deal about it, but I'm not sure how big of a voice small farmers really have. And the country is a bit distracted by the frenzy whipped up about executive pay. But we'll see. I just don't agree with the logic that says that such things are alarmist and unreasonable legislation like this would never pass, when we have tons of abhorrent legislation that has been passed. It's not like we're posting links to conspiracy theorists' websites and the like, we're trying to provide information by providing link's to NYT op-eds.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not trying to hate on having the conversation. i just always have to question who has to gain by leaking a story about a bill that hasn't even hit the floor. Most bills that get publicity like this probably won't make it to the floor and don't as a result of news coverage.
And I actually tend to disagree with you about the important time to discuss these matters. Stuff usually gets stuffed into bills in the second go around through the house because it's last second and people generally aren't paying attention as closely.
