The recent introduction of the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 or HR 875 to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the House Committee on Agriculture has created quite a stir among the “Buy Local” community.  Many fear the creation of the Food Safety Administration and the amped up regulatory power they would have over essentially all food produced in the US would spell an end to small farms, farmer’s markets, and would be a deathblow to sustainable and local agriculture in general.  While the bill will most certainly go through some changes as it’s passed through Congress, the concerns are justified as the vagueness of the bill does not explain exactly what will cause a food or food production operation to be deemed “unsafe”.

If anything, this bill is just another reminder of how paranoid and germaphobic our country has become.  Based on the wording in the bill it appears that almost any food or food production operation that is inspected by FSA inspectors will be marked “unsafe”, which will lead to hefty fines ($1,000,000 or so) and potential jail time.  Obviously, small farms won’t be able to survive one infraction while the big agricultural corporations, who are responsible for pumping our food full of all sorts of preservatives and hormones, will slowly (or perhaps rapidly) gain a monopoly of the food industry.

Again, there’s no knowing for sure as the bill fails to give a clear idea of what is expected in order for food to be declared safe.  However, the massive amount of power and control that the FSA would have over the entire food industry is frightening even if this bill was introduced with the best intentions.  And then there’s that issue, which we should probably address.  The bill was introduced by Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), who is married to Stanley Greenberg.  Greenberg, who is a political and business strategist, has had the Dick Cheney of agriculture as one of his clients.  Who is that?  Well, none other than the diabolical Monsanto.  Doesn’t ring a bell?  How? How is that possible?  This is a company who genetically modified seeds to make them resistant to their most popular product, RoundUp, and then somehow managed to patent those seeds because as Congress decided in the 80’s, genetically engineered seeds are technically an invention.

What’s even worse is that they actually sued farmers, whose acres-upon-acres of crops may have had a few RoundUp resistant seeds slip into the mix.  Now you can probably imagine how they went about checking to see if one of their seeds ended up on a farmer’s property.  They sprayed a bunch of crops with RoundUp and the ones that didn’t die were clearly the result of a genetically modified resistance to the herbicide.  Of course, the first lawsuits Monsanto waged against farmers came as a result of farmers who saved the second generation of RoundUp Ready seeds, which came from the first generation of seeds that they bought from Monsanto.  Saving seeds, which is a practice farmers have used for as long as farming has existed, was prohibited by the contract these farmers entered into with Monsanto.  Yet, as most people know, seeds get around and since Monsanto has a patent on their RoundUp Ready seeds they have been hellbent on seeking out any farm that might have those seeds growing there.  You can read more about Monsanto’s ploy to takeover the farming industry via the courtroom here and here.

As for HR 875, a few good places to go to get more informed on it are here and here.  After all, the implications of this bill being passed are huge and will forever change the food industry in America.  The fact that the person who introduced the bill is married to someone who has done work for Monsanto is troubling simply because Monsanto clearly has its sights set on a monopoly of the entire food industry.  Given their affinity for genetically modified foods and bioengineering, a Monsanto monopoly would be a terrible thing.  Besides, when a company is as evil and calculating as Monsanto only bad things will come from any situation where they have a ridiculous amount of control.  So please take the time to visit the 4 links above and educate yourself on this issue as Congress needs to know that food regulation needs to be kept at the state and local level since that is where average people have the most control over what bills and policies pass and which ones don’t.  And when it comes to food, having the ability to control its production and sale is something the average person should have the final say on, not government.