Food Safety bill S.510 is alive and well. After suffering a near fatal blow last week in the Senate, it has re-emerged as an amendment to House appropriations bill HR 3082 passed last night, appropriately under the cover of darkness. It is now back in the hands of the Senate for a final vote.
If the Senate passes this bill, powers will be handed to the FDA that have the strong potential to morph it into an American Gestapo. The Gestapo, you will remember, was the feared Secret Police force that wreaked terror on the people of Nazi Germany. What most people do not know is that the Gestapo’s power came from a law passed in 1936 – not a dictatorial edict from Hitler – that allowed it to operate without judicial oversight.
Frighteningly, S.510 would hand similar power to the FDA. The amendment’s language requires the creation of a database of food producers who would be subject to surprise inspections from FDA officials. If the FDA suspects, not proves with scientific evidence, but only believes that a targeted food producer is jeopardizing public health in some way, that food producer is suspended from producing food!
Here’s where the Gestapo part comes in …
With no due process in a court of law (that’s correct – you can forget about your Constitutional rights), suspended food producers would be “evaluated” (aka “railroaded”) by a panel of FDA thugs who have the power to decide whether or not you are out of business or can resume operations.
Small family farms are not exempted from this bill!
Think this scenario is a far stretch? Well, consider the armed raid on a private health food store full of unarmed, law abiding citizens in California this past summer. No one was breaking the law in this raid. It was a witch hunt in every sense of the word.
I’m sure the people of Nazi Germany had no idea that the Gestapo law passed in 1936 would result in people being dragged away in the middle of the night to concentration camps either. They thought the law would be a good thing and help restore order to their society just as supporters of S.510 like Michael Pollan naively believe that this bill will help make our food supply safer and protect the health of consumers.
It is never wise to give any governmental body at any time for any reason the power to operate outside courts of law or to conduct raids/incarcerate citizens without solid evidence and due process of law.
History teaches this simple lesson over and over and over.
If this stealth amendment is passed as part of an under the radar appropriations bill, Americans just may get their first taste of tyranny in the form of the FDA, aka American Gestapo. With 4,000 new FDA agents slated for hire should this bill pass and eager to cut their chops, it’s hard not to envision such a terrifying scenario.
Please contact your Senators right away (call 202-224-3121 to ask for them by name) and express your desire to have this spending bill that contains S.510 as a stealth amendment defeated once and for all.
The future of locally grown food by small family farms may very well depend on it.
Sarah, TheHealthyHomeEconomist.com
Hi Lori, I am all for science and testing, but the problem is that today – testing and science is frequently manipulated and is nothing but a marketing strategy in disguise. If an independent lab conducts proper tests and has evidence to support a particular charge against a food producer, then I’m all for it.
Sarah, I noticed that you mention that, should this bill pass, the FDA’s will be able to make changes if it “…suspects, not proves with scientific evidence…” I’ve been reading your columns for a long time, and you really seem to discount scientific evidence on the basis that’s it’s been improperly influenced by that people who fund whatever study happens to be going on. Are you confident in this sort of scientific evidence but not others? How come?
Tim, the problem is that the FDA does not use the vast power it already has to protect our food. The FDA has only protected the profits of the large agricultural and drug companies.
When you look at that egg carton, remember that the FDA allowed the very same large company that distributed all those tainted eggs to go back into business. The are continuing to sell eggs even as I write this. The FDA put them back in business despite a long history of safety issues.
That bag of spinach you picked up is potentially dangerous only because the government allows the use of CAFOS, where huge numbers of animals are crowded together. and create so much manure that the ground cannot absorb it all and actual lakes of manure are created. The E-coli form that made the spinach dangerous is believed to have mutated into a dangerous form in such a lagoon, and the E coli contamination of the spinach was traced back to manure from a CAFO that got into the ground water that fed the crops. The government still allows CAFOS.
How does this protect your safety?Why do you think the FDA will protect you if it has more power?
I have so much sympathy for you. I agree that we should be able to buy food and know it is safe. That is why I have taken the effort to know where all of my food comes from and how it is raised. But the FDA has never cared about that. The FDA allows pesticides, chemical fumigation, GMOs, advocates the spreading of dangerous sewage sludge on farmland, advocates feeding chicken manure to cattle, allows the use of chemicals in food that have been banned in most of the rest of the world, wants all produce to be irradiated – I could go on and on and on. If you look at what the FDA actually does, it is easy to see that only cares about the profits of the large companies.
There will be no oversight over the FDA if this bill passes, and the FDA will do what it has been attempting to do – destroying the sustainable food competition to the huge industrial farms it favors. Only chemical factory food will be left, and our food supply will be less safe than ever. Why do you think that ALL the large food corporations and associations are lobbying heavily to pass this bill?
The FDA protects nothing, Tim. You are completely duped. You only have to look at the FDAs record over the years to see that it is a puppet of Agribusiness and Big Pharma. It does nothing to protect the people and small farms. It is out for control of what we eat and the drugs we take. We as a people (in the words of my friend Stanley) are simply a “herd to be milked, fleeced(of money) and culled. Big Ag poisons the herd with food that will not support health, making them sick, and Big Pharma sell them drugs that relieve symptoms but heal nothing. Unbelievable profits, and a system they control totally. This whole system is threatened by real food, and they are using the government they control to fight for their evil profits. This is what the “food safety” bills are really about.” WAKE UP my friend.
Sara, respectfully, that is not true. The level of authority of the FDA has waxed and waned over the years and it’s never led to Hitler in the White House.
Loosening food regulations is reckless. I would never support any lowering of standards for any food sold in a grocery store. I *have* to know it’s safe before I buy it for my family. I cannot believe you can look your child in the eye after advocating gutting the agency that protects her food.
Tim, I understand your point but giving a government agency rule above the law is simply not the way to accomplish this. It ALWAYS turns out bad.
Every time I find myself staring down a carton of eggs in the grocery store, believe it or not, my first impulse is not to wish for a weaker FDA. When my hand hovers over a bag of spinach but refuses to grasp, it’s not for fear of too *much* regulation or that food standards are too *high*.
I don’t live in a developing world – I expect my food to not make me sick. And I expect the FDA to do absolutely everything to protect me, even if that includes crawling up every farmer’s ass so far they’ll know what he had for breakfast.
Ok, finally got the number for the bill to oppose: its HR 3082 .. tell your Senators to vote NO. If you can’t call the number above, then do this:
Go to http://www.Congress.org; enter your zip code on the right side under “Get Involved” and click “Go”. Click on your Senators’ names then click the “Contact” tab to get office phone number(s).
shared on FB. Everyone needs to WAKE UP and get planting, start a co op and protect our REAL food. It’s a dark age coming.. I plan to be ready.
xo
deb
Both my US Senators have been called by me!!