Posted on 07/31/2009 1:03:55 AM PDT by Jet Jaguar
The House has passed a far-reaching food safety bill requiring more government inspections and imposing new penalties on those who violate the law, reacting strongly to an outbreak of salmonella in peanuts that killed at least nine people.
The legislation would require greater oversight of food manufacturers and give the Food and Drug Administration new authority to order recalls. It also would require the FDA to develop a system for better tracing food-borne illnesses. Food companies would be required to create detailed food safety plans.
President Barack Obama praised the bill soon after it was passed, calling it "a major step forward in modernizing our food safety system."
Democrats scrambled to put the legislation back on the House floor Thursday under a rule that required a simple majority to pass. The vote was 283-142.
Supporters said the legislation would help the FDA change its focus from a reactive to a more preventive approach in keeping the nation's food safe.
"Americans are dying because the Food and Drug Administration doesn't have the authority to protect them," said Michigan Rep. John Dingell, the bill's sponsor and a long-serving Democrat who has been pushing for tougher standards for more than a decade.
A similar bill sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., has not yet seen action in the Senate.
The legislation gained new momentum in the wake of one of the largest product recalls in U.S. history, stemming from salmonella in peanuts that killed nine people, sickened hundreds of others and was linked to shoddy practices at a peanut company in Georgia. Other recent outbreaks include contaminated spinach in 2006 and salmonella in peppers last year. The government estimates that 76 million people each year are sickened by food-borne illness, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized and around 5,000 die.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
All the American people can do at this point is stall. Play stupid and act wisely by preparing for the total government control of our food sources.
Governments have done it time and time again. Control the food, weapons, medical resources and monetary supply...and you control the populace.
-----
Of the Simplicity of Criminal Laws in different Governments
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments:
in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
The Spirit of the Laws - Book VI
By Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute.
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791
....no, no, no, not a PUN, what's that thing what goes the same way backwards as forwards.
A *PALINDROME*!
We are a nation built on the strength of individual initiative. But there are certain things that we can’t do on our own. There are certain things that only a government can do. And one of those things is ensuring that the foods we eat …are safe and don’t cause us harm.
http://www.foodsafetyworkinggroup.gov/FSWG_Key_Findings.pdf
Anyone have any idea what they might be basing these "estimates" on? AFAIK, I have never been "sickened by food-borne illness," and I'm not even especially careful!
It won’t get 60 votes in the senate.
He who controls the food supply...
Oh, they're intended.
I expect this to be widely ignored at the gardener/farm market/fundraiser level. There will be test cases as some people who are affected sue the inspectors.
This is reminiscent of the laws regulating childrens’ items, which began to affect even yard sales. I believe regulatory changes were made after a lot of citizen anger. Please correct me if that is not so.
Personally, I have already begun to give away container vegetable plants to anyone who wants one, with advice on how to grow them, both indoors and out. I do expect this law to increase the prices on all fruits and vegetables. I know farmers who raise beef for people on an individual basis. The consumer buys the beef, the farmer keeps it in pasture until slaughter, the consumer is responsible for the processing. I believe as long as the numbers of beef involved per farmer are quite low, there is no regulatory involvement. We have many small processing plants out here and a new one is being built right now. Whatever the regulations, they did not prevent this business from forming. A lot of folks have chickens and eggs are commonly given away Spring to Fall. I see no way to stop this.
Most of the farmers and ag business folks out here voted for zerO, especially the largest organic co-ops.
Control the food...control the people.
G-dam right it is, this is the Monsanto bill in disguise. We have to stop this in the Senate. If this comes to pass, you wont even be legally allowed to have a garden. This bill is a facade to protect Monsantos Genetic Mutation seed.
If this passes, you will bow to the Lord Monsanto or they will sue you and break you as they are doing to small farmers already up and down the Great Plains.
Never ....Never......Freep with your zucchini in your hands......
Shame on you, this isn’t that kind of site.... :^)
Wanna bet?
It aint about vitamin and herbs and gardens, it is about the total farm economy. It is about the total food production of this country. The home gardens and your herbies and vitamins will just be collateral damage,,,,you have to look at the big picture.
They have already stated that they will be suspending the need for sixty votes in the senate
Irradiate the food like they do in Europe. Safe and effective.
Great. More government trying to protect us from ourselves.
I hardly know anyone who has even had real food poisoning, much less anyone who has had salmonella .
All the government regulation in the world isn’t going to banish the bacteria or protect people who are careless.
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