It all began in February of 2009, when HR 875, the Food Safety Modernization Act, sponsored by Rosa DeLauro D-CT, was introduced in the House. DeLauro received nearly $200,000 in campaign donations from agri-business, and her husband Stanley Greenberg had at one time been a political consultant for Monsanto.
Then in March ’09 we saw S. 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, followed by the House passage of H.R. 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, which has since stalled.
Gardiner Harris with the NYTimes blames “a stubborn senator from Oklahoma and an unusual coalition of left-and right-wing advocates for small farmers” for the delay of H.R. 2749. Harris would shamefully have you believe a cranky senator and a paranoid group of small farmers are to blame for preventing the FDA from correcting the flaws inherent in the nation’s food safety system.
So much for objective journalism from the Times. But since when has main stream corporate media been anything but stenographers for what ever party happens to occupy the White House?
The food safety system (FDA and USDA) has had over a century to correct their utter and complete incompetence and glaring ineptitude. The fact is, our food system is controlled by monopolies that — as Eric Blair notes — “fully controls the basic building blocks of the food that makes up the majority of the American diet. Those who control the corn, wheat, and soybeans,” says Blair, “control all food, since all livestock and all processed foods are dependent on those food resources. These monopolies place their cronies in government regulatory agencies like the FDA and USDA to weed out their competition through excessive regulation.”
How else could Austin “Jack”DeCoster, the man who owns Wright County Egg, responsible for 380 million of the 550 million recalled eggs, have escaped notice? DeCoster is a habitual offender who for two decades committed a series of egregious violations encompassing human rights violations, labor rights violations, environmental laws, and animal cruelty abuses.
FDA Corporate Favortism
Last month, the F.D.A. enacted new requirements on major egg producers to reduce egg-related salmonella cases. The new rules require salmonella testing of hens and eggs, improved sanitation in henhouses and improved refrigeration. But the F.D.A excluded from their new rules, the most potentially powerful weapon against salmonella by rejecting standard vaccination of hens against salmonella; the agency claimed there was not enough evidence vaccinations would prevent people from getting sick.
For ten years, from 1998 through 2008, a group of high-ranking corporate purchasing managers from some of the most well-known and largest food companies in North America were involved in racketeering, bribery, conspiracy, price fixing, bid rigging, and falsifying laboratory tests. The scope of corruption involved more than 55 companies, and included PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay, Kraft Foods, B&G Foods, the maker of Ortega Mexican foods, Safeway, and SK Foods LP, one of the nation’s largest tomato processors.
This racketeering scam had been going on for 10 years. Where was the FDA while the American public was being sold contaminated food? No amount of federal regulation will change corruption and deliberate negligence within the federal regulatory system itself.
In 2008, the FDA participated in a cover-up of toxic melamine in US baby formula. As much as ninety percent of the infant formula sold in the US was contaminated; the FDA collected nearly 100 samples of infant formula made by U.S. manufacturers, then held a conference call to alert the manufacturers of their findings but withheld the test results from the public; they only released the results after the Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request, revealing that Nestle, Mead Johnson and Enfamil infant formula products were all contaminated with melamine.
And the FDA has a history of intimate ties with the pharmaceutical industry. The agency approved “unsafe and ineffective medicine”for market from Ranbaxy Laboratories, even while Ranbaxy was being investigated by Congress. The Department of Justice concluded that a pattern of systemic fraudulent conduct, including submissions by Ranbaxy to the FDA contained false and fabricated information.
Orwellian Food Safety Bill is Food Fascism
While it’s true the new bill’s passage would require more government inspections of food manufacturing facilities and finally empower a deliberately weakened FDA with the authority to shut down plants, order recalls, and track food-borne illnesses, the FDA’s new authority will undoubtedly be enforced primarily on small farmers, even though the biggest offenders of contaminated food requiring food recalls are massive corporate-run farms.
As Blair observes, “This [food bill] can be an effective tool for the big multinational agri-corporations to further squeeze out their competition and gain near complete control of food resources in America. And the new food bill hands much of the FDA’s duties over to the Department of Homeland Security, mentioned 41 times in the bill.
HR 2749 ” The Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, would subject farmer’s markets, organic farmers, and even the Amish to:
* Random warrantless searches of business records even with no evidence of violation
* Full quarantine of “food facilities”, vehicles, and surrounding geographic area
* Forced tracing system for food
* Severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 yrs and/or fines of $100K
* FDA mandates to regulate how crops are raised and harvested
* Annual registration plus fee of $500
The new food bill would place severe restrictions on “the public’s right to grow, own, trade, transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice”
The bill would charge fees and force small producers to maintain detailed records about where their food is sold so it can be traced in the event of a recall or outbreak. Small farmers can’t afford to hire food safety staffs and pay for expensive laboratory testing.
Blair reminds us that the easiest way to determine if a proposed legislation will benefit the average Americans is to note who is supporting the bill, versus who opposes the bill. “Monsanto and other agri-monopolies support the bill with full force. Indeed, some speculate that they even wrote the bill themselves,” says Blair.
The incestuous relationship between government and agribusiness is all too clear. “Subsidies rain down on big agribusinesses that grow what the government tells them to grow. Industry leaders like Cargill, Monsanto, and Tyson essentially turn farmers into indentured sharecroppers,” notes Blair.
We’re witnessing the same attempt at food fascism when it comes to raw milk. The FDA has decided consumers have no inherent right to choose the food they eat, and has banned the interstate transport of raw milk.
As Mike Adams with Natural News points out, “The real reason why the FDA opposes raw milk is because Big Dairy opposes raw milk. Just like Big Pharma, Big Dairy has worked very hard behind the scenes to steer FDA policy in its favor. And according to some recent reports, Big Dairy is one of the primary forces trying to eliminate raw milk because it threatens the commercial milk business”
No amount of added federal regulation will enhance food safety in a corrupt federal regulatory system controlled by the very corporations they are suppose to regulate. Worse yet, says Blair, this bill may just be the primer for the even more egregious bill HR.759 Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act, which fully restricts local food producers and natural health remedies.