A
new food safety bill is on the fast track in Congress-HR 2749, the Food
Safety Enhancement Act of 2009. The bill needs to be stopped.
HR
2749 gives FDA tremendous power while significantly diminishing
existing judicial restraints on actions taken by the agency. The bill
would impose a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme on small farms and
local artisanal producers; and it would disproportionately impact their
operations for the worse.
HR
2749 does not address underlying causes of food safety problems such as
industrial agriculture practices and the consolidation of our food
supply. The industrial food system and food imports are badly in need
of effective regulation, but the bill does not specifically direct
regulation or resources to these areas.
(Read the section on tracing. That is NAIS, isn’t it? – highly disguised yet triggered by the word “trace.” )
Alarming Provisions:
Some of the more alarming provisions in the bill are:
* HR 2749 would impose an annual registration fee of $500 on any “facility” that holds, processes, or manufactures food. [isn't this every home in the US, every garden?] Although “farms” are exempt, the agency has defined “farm” narrowly. [What is the definition?] And
people making foods such as lacto-fermented vegetables, cheeses, or
breads would be required to register and pay the fee, which could drive
beginning and small producers out of business during difficult economic
times. [Yes.
There are laws against this corporate-size-destroys-the-little-guy
policy, aren't there? Are home bread or cheese or lacto-fermented
vegetable makers who make for their own families included in this?]
* HR 2749 would empower FDA to regulate how crops are raised and harvested. It puts the federal government right on the farm, dictating to our farmers. [This
astounding control opens the door to CODEX. WTO "good farming
practices" will include the elimination of organic farming by
eliminating manure, mandating GMO animal feed, imposing animal drugs,
and ordering applications of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Farmers, thus, will be locked not only into the industrialization of
once normal and organic farms but into the forced purchase of
industry's products. They will be slaves on the land, doing the work
they are ordered to do - against their own best wisdom - and paying out
to industry against their will.
There
will be no way to be frugal, to grow one's own grain to feed the
animals, to raise healthy animals without GMO grains or drugs, to work
with nature at all. Grassfed cattle and poultry and hogs will be
finished. So, it's obvious where control will take us. And weren't these the "rumors on the internet" that were dismissed but are clearly the case?]
* HR 2749 would give FDA the power to order a quarantine of a geographic area,
including “prohibiting or restricting the movement of food or of any
vehicle being used or that has been used to transport or hold such food
within the geographic area.” [This - "that hasbeen used to transport or hold such food" - would mean all cars
that have ever brought groceries home so this means ALL TRANSPORTATION
can be shut down under this. This is using food as a cover for martial
law.] Under
this provision, farmers markets and local food sources could be shut
down, even if they are not the source of the contamination. The agency can halt all movement of all food in a geographic area. [This is also a means of total control over the population under the cover of food, and at any time.]
* HR 2749 would empower FDA to make random warrantless searches of the business records of small farmers and local food producers, without any evidence whatsoever that there has been a violation. [If these bills cover all who "hold food" then this allows for taking of records of anyone at any time on no basis at all.] Even
farmers selling direct to consumers would have to provide the federal
government with records on where they buy supplies, how they raise
their crops, and a list of customers.
[NAIS for animals and all other foods?]
* HR 2749 charges the Secretary of Health and Human Services with establishing a tracing system for food.
Each “person who produces, manufactures, processes, packs, transports,
or holds such food” [Is this not every home in the US?] would have to
“maintain the full pedigree of the origin and previous distribution
history of the food,” and “establish and maintain a system for tracing
the food that is interoperable with the systems established and
maintained by other such persons.” The bill does not explain how far
the traceback will extend or how it will be done for multi-ingredient
foods. With all these ambiguities, [with all these ambiguities, it is dangerous, period, separate from the money] it’s far from clear how much it will cost either the farmers or the taxpayers. [It
is massive and absurd and burdensome beyond the capacity of people to
comply - is this not fascism? - so it is a set up for being used to
impose penalties endlessly and/or to eliminate anyone at will.]
* HR 2749 creates severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation for individuals. [Does
it include judicial review, Congressional oversight, a defined and
limited set of penalties and punishments for a defined set of "crimes"?
Or is it entirely ambiguous and left to the whim and sole power of
"the Administrator"? Who is that person set to be? Is it Michael
Taylor, Monsanto lawyer and executive, as Food Democracy has said?
That is, do these bills set up an agency by which the entire US food
supply will be turned over to the control of a multinational
corporation under WTO regulations (and not to US farmers and not to US
laws under the Constitution), with boundless freedom to do what it
wants, and one infamous for harm to farmers and lack of safety of food?]
If
it was not clear before how frightening these bills were, this small
section of provisions, should make their actual fascism clear now. It
goes way beyond “food safety” to absolute control over farms, animals,
food, and us, including our movements and access to food at all.
Action to Take:
Contact
your Representative now! Ask to speak with the staffer who handles
food issues. Tell them you are opposed to the bill. Some points to
make in telling your Representative why you oppose HR 2749 include:
1.
The bill imposes burdensome requirements while not specifically
targeting the industrial food system and food imports, where the real
food safety problems lie.
2.
Small farms and local food processors are part of the solution to food
safety; lessening the regulatory burden on them will improve food
safety.
3. The bill gives FDA much more power than it has had in the past while making the agency less accountable for its actions.
HR 2749 needs to be defeated!! Please take action NOW.
To contact your Representative, use the finder tool at www.Congress.org or send a message through the petition system (the petition will be on our website this evening) athttp://www.ftcldf.org/petitions_new.htm. Or call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.
To check the status of HR 2749, go to www.Thomas.gov and type “HR 2749″ in the bill search field.
[Written by a collective of people interested or involved in food and farming.]
YourNetwork.tv Aspartame Special
WeAreChange LA confronts 9/11 criminal General Richard Myers
On May 20, 2009, General Richard Myers was at the Nixon Library in
Yorba Linda, California to give a talk and a book signing. Bruno
Bruhwiler and Jeremy Rothe-Kushel of WeAreChangeLA were there to call
into question the ‘General’s’ credibility when it came to talking about
9/11 and threats to the nation. Watch the following 3 videos, created
by Paul Wittenberger, to see what happened. All I’ll tell you for now
is that towards the end of his speech, Myers said, “I’m sorry about the
disturbance. If I had anything to do with causing that, I apologize.”
Well, I guess you could consider that the small step of a criminal
towards owning up to and doing penance for his participation in
treason, mass murder and war crimes.
“The American military is built to dominate all phases
and mediums of combat. We must acknowledge that our way of war requires
superiority in all mediums of conflict, including space. Thus, we must
plan for, and execute to win, space superiority.” [Foreign Service
Journal, 4/2001]
Shortly Before 9:00 a.m. September 11, 2001: Acting Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Learns of First Crash from Television
According to his own account, Air Force General Richard Myers, the
vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, sees reports of the first
WTC crash on television. Myers is acting chairman of the US military
during the 9/11 crisis because Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
Army General Henry Shelton is flying across the Atlantic for a NATO
meeting in Europe. [ABC News, 9/11/2002; American Forces Press Service,
9/8/2006] Myers has a 9 o’clock appointment with Senator Max Cleland
(D) in one of the Senate office buildings. He is heading into Read the rest of this entry »
Richard Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations was
confronted at a book signing downtown by members of We Are Change
Chicago. Haass once again ignores questions about the Bilderberg
Meeting he attended.
Fed chair Ben Bernanke was unexpectedly confronted by patriots and
members of We Are Change Chicago during his June 10th visit to Chicago
regarding his treasonous attendance at Bilderberg in 2008.
Federal Chairman Ben Bernanke won’t tell Congress where the money
was lent; not surprisingly Bernanke was inclined to remain secret about
his Bilderberg attendance as well. Of course, he was caught on video attending the meeting.
WeAreChange Boston Confront Richard Perle and friends
DAVID GERGEN AND OBAMA'S NATIONAL SERVICE CITY YEAR AGENDA
New World Order documentary asserts global conspiracy
Uzi Arad, Mossad Spy, allowed back in U.S. by Obama administration
Obama gov't restores visa to former spy, Netanhayu adviser
Jonathan Cook, The Electronic Intifada, 20 May 2009
Uzi Arad (Herzliya Conference)
As might be expected of a former senior official with Israel's spy
agency Mossad, Uzi Arad -- the most trusted political adviser to
Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel's prime minister -- has become used to being
in the shadows as he exerts influence.
But that is fast changing. Arad was prominent in preparing Netanyahu's
tough positions as he headed for Washington this week to meet Barack
Obama, the US president, who is seeking to advance a Middle East peace
plan.
Arad, recently appointed the head of Israel's revamped National
Security Council, will oversee an organization that Netanyahu regards
as the linchpin of the new government's security and foreign policy.
One military analyst, Amir Oren, has noted that, given Netanyahu's
unstable coalition, Arad "is likely to emerge as a strong adviser to a
weak government."
Arad has been outspoken both in rejecting Palestinian statehood and in
promoting the military option against Iran, positions believed to be
shared by the Israeli prime minister and that will be at the root of a
possible confrontation in the coming months with the Obama
administration.
Arad is also one of only a handful of senior figures on Netanyahu's
Iran Task Force, charged with devising a strategy for dealing with
Tehran and its supposed ambitions to attain nuclear weapons.
That will make some in Israel uneasy. The hawkish views that have made
Arad indispensable to Netanyahu have also earned him several
high-profile opponents.
Arik Carmon, founder of the Israel Democracy Institute, has described
Arad's proposal to arrange "territorial exchanges" to strip some of
Israel's Palestinian minority of their citizenship as "racist."
Alon Liel, a former director-general of Israel's foreign ministry, has
called Arad's efforts to derail recent talks with Syria by demanding
the continuing occupation of the Golan "ridiculous and nasty."
In 2007, before his rise to public prominence, Arad also fueled worried
speculation about Israel's plans for a military strike on Tehran, after
he described it as "easier than you think." A wide range of
non-military Iranian targets were legitimate, he added.
But despite Arad's espousal of opinions that in many respects accord
with those of Avigdor Lieberman, leader of the far-right Yisrael
Beiteinu Party and Netanyahu's foreign minister, few doubt the prime
minister's fierce loyalty to him.
In a sign of that commitment, Netanyahu pushed through Arad's
appointment as national security adviser, a post in which he will need
to be in almost continual consultation with the US, at the risk of
provoking a diplomatic crisis with the Obama White House.
He had been barred from entering the US by the Bush administration
after implication in a spying scandal. A Pentagon official, Larry
Franklin, jailed in 2006 for passing secrets about Iran to the Israel
lobby group AIPAC, was reported to have met Arad frequently.
When the US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, arrived in Jerusalem
in April for meetings with Netanyahu, then prime minister-designate,
her staff quietly suggested he remove an official -- a hint that Arad's
presence was not welcome. Netanyahu instead sent out Sallai Meridor,
the ambassador to the US, who resigned soon afterwards.
The Obama administration has since restored Arad's visa and agreed to
his political rehabilitation, not least so that he will be able
regularly to meet his US opposite number, Gen. James Jones.
Arad spent more than 20 years in Mossad, much of it working in the
intelligence section, before being appointed as Netanyahu's foreign
policy adviser in his first government in the late 1990s.
He was also closely associated with a leading neoconservative think-tank in New York, the Hudson Institute, in the 1970s.
But paradoxically, his influence on Israeli thinking -- both among
policy-makers and the public -- may have actually increased during his
years in political opposition, after the fall of the first Netanyahu
government in 1999.
It was then that he established an influential think-tank, the
Institute for Policy and Strategy, at the Herzliya Interdisciplinary
Center.
The institute stages an annual conference, dedicated to the "balance of
Israel's national security," that has become the most important event
in the Israeli calendar for politicians, generals and diplomats, as
well as attracting high-profile US guests.
Since the first meeting in 2000, the conferences have defined the major
security issues supposedly facing Israel, closely mirroring Arad's own
key obsessions.
Chief among these have been fears about the demographic threat to
Israel's Jewishness from Palestinian birth rates both in the occupied
territories and among Israel's own Palestinian citizens, and the danger
posed to Israeli hegemony in the region from Iran's acquisition of a
nuclear bomb.
In an indication of his implacable opposition to a Palestinian state,
Arad recently told an interviewer: "We want to relieve ourselves of the
burden of Palestinian populations, not the territories."
He has suggested that the Palestinians be required to become
economically self-reliant, in the hope that their leaders will be
forced to promote family planning methods to reduce the population. His
motto is that the Palestinians need "one man, one job" before they need
"one man, one vote."
He has also promoted a complex territorial exchange involving Israel,
the Palestinian Authority and Egypt that would see many Palestinians
relocated to the Sinai so that Israel could take control of chunks of
the West Bank.
But his greatest vehemence is reserved for Iran -- an antipathy
apparently shared by the Israeli prime minister. In the past he has
called for "maximum deterrence," including threats to strike "anything
and everything of value" in Iran, including its "holiest sites."
As Netanyahu's plane touched down in Washington on Sunday, Arad briefed
reporters that Tehran posed an "existential" threat to Israel and that
"all options are indeed on the table."
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A
new food safety bill is on the fast track in Congress-HR 2749, the Food
Safety Enhancement Act of 2009. The bill needs to be stopped.
