There are lots of reasons to be upset by S510, the so-called food safety bill. But none of those reasons justifies my lashing out and impugning the intellect or motives of those fighting for the Tester-Hagan amendment to exempt some smaller producers and farms from the worst effects of S510.
In the heat of the battle, and there’s been lots of heat around this debate, it’s tempting to blame those who are on your side, and lose sight of the real problem–our legislators and regulators who would push for authoritarian control of our food producers.
Part of the reason I called out particular people and organizations was that I was taken aback by the complexity and multiple interpretations of the Tester-Hagan amendment provisions last week. I thought a good discussion, while on the surface possibly divisive, would be healthy, and might even somehow inform members of the House of Representatives, which still needs to decide what to do about S510…that maybe in its infinite wisdom, it would decide to do what’s right, which is to let the whole package go away. There definitely was some good discussion following my previous post.
But as I said, I didn’t handle my side of the strategy very well. People like Judith McGeary of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, who works tirelessly in support of small farms and food producers, didn’t deserve that kind of criticism, and I apologize.
The good news in all this–yes, there is some good news regardless of whether the legislation is approved–is that a food rights movement has taken shape. Sure, it may have become divided over how to handle S510; even the closely knit Weston A.Price Foundation (in favor of Tester-Hagan) and Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (opposed) divided on S510.
But in the process, many more people–including high-ranking legislators–have become informed about the high stakes in this legislation, and in the entire direction this country has taken in using food safety as an excuse for further high-handed political control of our food supply and choices. Hopefully those pols who have become engaged on behalf of the good guys won’t be turned off by the internal bickering they’ve been witness to.
When I feel especially badly about my role in fostering divisions, I like to think about the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which was notorious for sharp divisions that often spilled over into personal accusations–mostly because so many people cared so much.
The food rights movement’s progress can be measured not just in the Washington debate, but in terms of what is happening on the local level. In Maine, the farmers pushing for regulatory exemptions within particular locales for private food transactions, are moving forward in at least four towns with their ordinances. In Wyoming, a food rights bill that last year failed in the state legislature, is once again pushing forward. I’m sure other efforts are ongoing as well.
The cause is just. The path is never smooth. ?
"SB 510 is dead".
Its unattended unmourned Funeral is scheduled for the morning of January 1st 2011.
Any bets???
This lame duck session and the constitution are the greatest gifts we could have for Christmas. There are so many other very effective food safety checks and balances in our country. Marler and the insurance companies are the first two that come to mind. Consumers that hear about unsafe food rarely continue to buy it. The mediamadness assures that there is always a paranoid mass market exodus away from the slightest scare with lots of finger pointing at mostly the wrong people.
David you are forgiven….no apologies needed….at least you have a spine, a voice and passion. That is much more than can be said of most Americans. You can see Fascism from a personal perspective that few can appreciate.
Mark
At the moment, S 510 is far from dead. My closest contacts on Capitol Hill have stressed the urgency of individuals contacting their Representatives immediately – http://house.gov – to have them OPPOSE passage of the bill. Doreen Hannes reported that folks who called the House Ways and Means Committee were also told that in spite of the blue slip process, the House is trying to find a way to get the bill passed.
As one staff member put it to me, This monster is wounded, but not dead.
If we do not want this bill passed, then we all need to contact our Representatives to oppose it. I agree that many Representatives dont know the reach of this bill and as they learn they are appalled. Creating doubt could stall or stop this.
People who call just need to tell the truth about the bill and the amendments.
The clause you found on p. 30 sounds reassuring, but I suggest it is misleading. The Agency has to approve all HACCP type plans, inspections, etc. and they can dictate by non-approval as surely as by positive design.
Debbie
I think that you did fine, David, and you gave voice to much of my own thinking, with a much kinder, gentler voice than I have. If we are going to get anywhere in this struggle, we must be able to give and accept criticism as part of the search for truth.
Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfils the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.
Winston Churchill
Your constructive criticism is invaluable and much appreciated.
Ken Conrad
Sharon
In this environment, compromising on new rules does nothing to fix the real problem, which is the tendency to make more rules, especially rules that attempt to manipulate individual, rather than corporate, behavior. Compromise, in fact, likely INCREASES the problem by giving tacit approval to the idea that some degree of increased control is appropriate.
Re S 510 or H B 2749 neither would change the system that has been created by capitalism subsidized – AKA the Farm Bill with mass produced food in a mass produced culture of fast and cheap food. I think the anti-reform camp from tea party people to you and David – wanted the change you can believe in, but it was not going to come from those bills. It is going to come from a fundamental shift in population, eating habits, energy cost, politics and money. Neither of these bills were intended to do that. That is another long-term battle, that IMHO has been made very difficult because natural friends small farmers and consumer groups became enemies in this battle. The idea behind both bills would have been to give the FDA more resources to inspect facilities and for CDC to track more illnesses yes, more inspectors, inspecting under the egg rule (which took 20 years to implement) would have prevented Wright County. And, more coordination from the CDC with State Health Departments would have caught that outbreak earlier, leading to fewer illnesses. To think these bills were a plot by Monsanto to consolidate more power to squash small farmers especially raw milk farmers is absurd.
Bottom line, I was all about trying to knock down illness and death caused by mass production. You guys were all about trying to protect the perceived threat to a utopian view of food production in an America of 300,000,000 and a world population of nearly 7,000,000,000. Frankly, these bills would have been a good first step. Businesses like Wright County are chuckling at you, David and Glenn Beck.
Not trying to be mean spirited, I am simply just broken-hearted.
It is sad that utopia is natural, green, immune strong and probiotic and the current reality is CAFO fed antibiotic resistant and all PMO.
If your goal is to "knock down illnesses"….you ( and we ) can start by building very strong immune systems in our kids and stop creating, supporting and protecting a sterile food system that creates super bad bacteria that easily sickens or kills the "immune depressed and weak".
This type of sustainable thinking is "utopian"….so I guess everyone will just ignore it. But there are those of us that think with open eyes and a vision for a better healthier future on earth. More of the current system will bring more of our current tragedy. Do not forget the crisis in Autism, Diabetes, Obesity, Asthma etc….these were not brought to us by organic whole foods. These are sinister sicko gifts from: the PMO, CAFO, Antibiotic abuse, Sterile foods, Pasteurization, GMO, super processed "Kill Step" twinky pseudo foods, and Cloning etc….
SB 510 is dying…and the more people that read it… the more that realize what it really is.
Mark
For the record, Utopianism is the belief that man can create a perfect sociopolitical world. Believers are largely harmless of course, until they gain government or agency powers and find themselves suddenly able to force their vision on everyone else. Pseudo-Utopianists exist as well—non-believers they are, but cagily cognizant of the enticements found in the Utopian message, and willing to cash in by selling pretty lies about truth, justice, and a better world. None of these charlatans need ever mention the silly U word as they bulldoze along, although the really clever ones may find a place here or there to demean the cockamamie Utopianists as they go.
Liberty, based on natural law, is quite the opposite.
We have a society which is talking the wrong talk, and walking the wrong walk. Real talk about both health reform and food safety is about stewarding the earth and bringing forth nutritious bounty (words with a venerable ring). But the talk we talk is thick with the bloated tongue of law and regulation. The real walk should be organically-grown, locally sourced farm and economy. The walk which we walk, is big agriculture, manifested by gigantic corporate entities and their handmaiden a gigantic government and bureaucracy.
The benefits of health reform should be vibrant health, happiness, and radically reduced infrastructures of drugs and medical care for chronic illness to which we now sacrifice obscene amounts of the national treasure. The benefits of food safety should be vibrant health, happiness, and radically reduced infrastructures of ag chemicals, petroleum use (with its attendant wars) and medical care for those injured by acute poisonings and chronic malnutrition.
I think Bill is right – all the yelling about details won't ever build consensus. More laws? or more cows? Which will get us there?? Perhaps it will happen when the number of cows exceeds the number of laws.
Or, we could just leave small farmers the hell alone and see what happens. Let the big guys be regulated, as they should be. Let things resolve from the ground up, naturally. The current fighting over the Tester-Hagan amendment to S.510 is, if nothing else, a compliment to the local food movement, since it's clear that the big boys want their brothers in big government to watch their backs when the going gets tough. Poor babies.
I agree…..
You continue to bring the "pathogen propagators" to justice and I will continue to breathe life and strength into the immune depressed.
My hope is that someday soon the real propagators of pathogens….the ones hiding behind the pathogen teasing "Kill Steps" of pasteurization will meet you in court and finally find out what they have done to the American family and child. Challenging bacteria by "Kill Step" is "not good science". It is tragically short sighted and down right stupid.
We know better….why is it that we can not do better?
$$$$$$$$$$$$
Mark
I vote for more cows and pastures with you!!
Mark
I've puzzled a good deal about your very accurate observation, that "natural friends small farmers and consumer groups became enemies in this battle." Why did this happen? Certainly one reason is that consumer groups have become conditioned to ask the government for "protection" from all manner of risk in life. That's part of the reason the federal register that Dave Milano describes has expanded the way it has. But I also think the alienation is a function of the ever-wider distance between modern consumers (including their legislators and regulators) and farmers. Most consumers are repulsed by the idea that manure is a regular occurrence around farms, that animals are bloodied when they are slaughtered, that field mice and bats are regular farm hangers-on, and assorted other facts of farm life and food production.
I also think a number of people here could gone along with what you say, "The idea behind both bills would have been to give the FDA more resources to inspect facilities and for CDC to track more illnesses…" The problem came with all the other things that were piled on–the HAACP plans requiring FDA approval, the quarantining authority, the Good Agricultural Practices, the power to implement "scientific standards," the power to inspect at will, and so on and so forth. Not sure where all that came from–suddenly it was there.
David
Bill,
Although there is a battle raging between different ideologies, anyone who chooses to do battle against the natural order of things including individual free will can expect disappointment and failure.
As far as wars go Steve, no matter the reason, there does appear to be a tendency to sacrifice obscene amounts of the national treasure, not to mention ensuing collateral damage.
Ken Conrad
Have you ever been to a US farm or processing plant operating under good agriculture practices (GAPs) or HACCP (do you even know what that acronym stands for?). Your writings on these topics suggest you have not, which is surprising since your research on raw milk was much more compehensive and interesting. Your coverage of GAPs and HACCP is naive, at best, and lazy, at worst.
——————————
Raw milk among items seized from Gibbon farm
Controversial farmer Mike Hartmann has continued producing despite a state order.
State Agriculture Department investigators Tuesday seized hundreds of gallons raw milk and other food produced by a Gibbon dairy farm that has kept churning out product despite a state order to stop.
….
http://www.startribune.com/business/111499544.html?elr=KArks:DCiU1OiP:DiiUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aULPQL7PQLanchO7DiUr
The problem with HACCP is that it was developed for food processors and retail units using prepared foods where there are always specific steps employees perform in a useless attempt to create sterility, but does not fit at all well on small farms for that very same reason…. it's impossible to create sterility on a farm. Not to mention that the fees and paperwork are very burdensome for small producers that are barely noticeable for giant farms.
You may want to read this viewpoint on HACCP and GAPs on a market gardener list to get an idea why we all resist it… doesn't sound so very ideal for small and sustainable farmers, does it? And these are just market gardeners, not even raw dairy producers.
As the main writer points out in the following link:
"… the good old monocropping conventional farms get a free ride because here, 'Good Agricultural Practices' says nothing about the dangers of using toxic pesticide and fertilizers, for example, but focuses solely on microbial contamination. Well, OK — we all want our food to be free of E. coli, salmonella and the other virulent pathogens that are loose in our food system, right? But wouldn't we also want to have any governing standards based on sound scientific data and truly good ag practices??"
http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/marketfarming/2008-December/000012.html
THIS is the point we've all been trying to make here for years now. But FDA can't have that, can they? Why not? Because Monsanto et al would lose business, and we all know that Monsanto has employees (oh, excuse me, EX-employees, hahahahahahhahaha) in certain government divisions…. like FDA, EPA, and even the Supreme Court.
From Wikipedia on Monsanto: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monsanto
Public officials formerly employed by Monsanto
* Justice Clarence Thomas worked as an attorney for Monsanto in the 1970s. Thomas wrote the majority opinion in the 2001 Supreme Court decision J. E. M. Ag Supply, Inc. v. Pioneer Hi-Bred International, Inc.|J. E. M. AG SUPPLY, INC. V. PIONEER HI-BREDINTERNATIONAL, INC.[114] which found that "newly developed plant breeds are patentable under the general utility patent laws of the United States." This case benefitted all companies which profit from genetically modified crops, of which Monsanto is one of the largest.[24][115][116]
(what a surprise…)
* Michael R. Taylor was an assistant to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) commissioner before he left to work for a law firm on gaining FDA approval of Monsantos artificial growth hormone in the 1980s. Taylor then became deputy commissioner of the FDA from 1991 to 1994.[24] Taylor was later re-appointed to the FDA in August 2009 by President Barack Obama.[117]
* Dr. Michael A. Friedman was a deputy commissioner of the FDA before he was hired as a senior vice president of Monsanto.[24]
* Linda J. Fisher was an assistant administrator at the United States Environmental Protection Agency? (EPA) before she was a vice president at Monsanto from 1995 – 2000. In 2001, Fisher became the deputy administrator of the EPA.[24]
* Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was chairman and chief executive officer of G. D. Searle & Co., which Monsanto purchased in 1985. Rumsfeld personally made at least $12 million USD from the transaction.[24]
WHAT?!!???!!! a Monsanto lobbyist (well, you gotta KNOW this guy is not unbiased… do you KNOW how much money those guys get???) is now senior advisor to FDA on FOOD SAFETY??????? MONSANTO advising about food safety????
An FDA commissioner went to work for Monsanto as Senior Vice PRESIDENT??? Wow.
And you seriously expect us to take the FDA's word about food safety???
Well, Goatmaid took some of the words right out of my mouth. In answer to your Qs, I have been to farms with great agricultural practices, and great safety practices. Whether they are following the wonderful ideas you and/or your colleagues have no doubt spent many hours producing that you call Good Agricultural Practices or Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP, which I've spelled out many times), I don't know. I have no objection to any of that, so long as it stays in the teaching and guidance arenas. What scares me about these practices is giving the FDA the power to force farms to implement them. The FDA has a history of abusing such powers, of putting safety second to political considerations. You don't want political considerations driving safety, do you?
David
For each of the 7 billion human inhabitants of this earth there exists about an acre and a half of arable land (this according to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations). Thats far more than enough to feed everybody, except of course for the little problem that our landscape has been reformed to reduce or prohibit access to it. Now considering the fact that real health is found in healthy soils, plants, and animals, and that properly caring for oneself is a natural human tendency, we ought to honestly and seriously ask the question, Where would we be now if we had not taken the centralization/commodification route to food production and instead persisted with the old-fashioned small-farm, community-garden, family-garden approach?
Many today can imagine no other way to feed the world except with a factory model. Thats understandable given what most of us have been indoctrinated into, and especially since decentralized food production has been essentially built out of our landscape. But there is another way–an economically and biologically (and some might argue psychologically) sustainable way, and it is simply to devolve food production down to a human scale. Teach people to feed themselves, rather than feed people. (The sad fact that tradition did not carry the techniques of feeding oneself down through recent generations is evidence both of how far weve gone down the road of central production, and how miserably weve planned our futures).
Every tank has a reverse gear. Its past time to shift ours. Turn off the big-ag, big-business preferential support systems, and let people find their way.
Now that thought to me is heartening. Hopefully it is as well to Bill.
Fat-fearing moms putting babies on diets… even diluting their nutrient-rich formula and breast milk with water, to keep them from getting "fat":
http://www.latimes.com/fl-nbcol-baby-diets-brochu-1130-20101130,0,3757213.column
Especially horrifying when you consider that babies NEED fat to develop their brains……………
Farms are not industrial settings. Instead they lend themselves well to nuance and intimate knowledge of place. Standardizing farms and farmstead practices ultimately leads to disaster. This is because the agriculture and health practices are subject to "faddism". Whatever the rule of the day may be today: GAP or what have you, will be completely overturned in less than a decade. This is sometimes due to advances in science. More often it is due to changes in politics.
I am proud of our friends in Minnetonka, MN where they were ready to defend their RAW MILK rights and "turned on the cameras" to record the nutritional treason by theft of raw milk by authorities. The guy with the Beret really thought he was the official dude. He even had his baton to protect himself and refused to speak with the tax payers as he made an ass of himself. People really need to become more belligerent and emphatic with these jerks. They need to push the envelope of civil disobedience. Physically standing in the way of a thief is one thing….refusing to give up milk is probably the next step. But this must be done in masse….when there are 50 people holding their own milk…and refusing to surrender it, then it will take much more than one little beret wearing jerk to take away their milk. That will be a bigger news story when raw milk is being physically wrestled from 50 moms that are refusing to surrender their milk. In the future I suggest that the people seize their own raw milk ( that they have purchased ) and refuse to surrender it to the beret wearing little Food Fascist CAFO Guards.
This is an outrage…..but we must make it a newsworthy outrage. They did there best and I am proud of them for that.
Mark
over the top? really? when then do we resist? when we're being taken to the internment camps fema is building RIGHT NOW.
lucky for us all though, governments are all collapsing in s debt sprial that will not, in fact can not be reversed.
too bad that debt collapse will take many individual folks down with it and leave the country in shambles. but with it we'll see the return of individual responsibility. and that's a start.
what's scarey about prison is the food and water. lucky for me i raise my own food and eat well so i did my 30 hours without a sip of water or a bite of food.
I just think zero compromise is as bad as zero tolerance. Of course, you can't have sterility on farms, and that isn't the goal. But, GAPs serve a good purpose and the process of creating them is collaborative. If you leave the table, your ideas are not incorporated. Biodiversity can be part of a GAP – put it in there! But, you have to be there participating in the process.
I think the baby "diet" is horrifying. Removing natural fats is not a solution, and for a long time now I've been "won over" by those principles of WAPF even if I disagree with their approach to food safety.
Thank you for apologizing. It was very disheartening to witness the public infighting on your 'Good Cop, Bad Cop' post, especially in light of your plea against just such behavoir at the FTCLDF fundraiser earlier this year.
It has been troubling enough to have to deal with the conflicting messages from WAPF and FTCLDF on S510. But even so, we all need to stick together as much as possible, even if we have to 'agree to disagree'.
For what it's worth, you have redeemed yourself in my eyes.
Kevin