HR 875 and the Criminalization of the Backyard Gardener

[Carol]

Aloha everyone,

I ran across this on the Internet and wanted to share it as this is something that directly impacts each of us along with our basic freedom for survival. Please pass this info to as many people as possible and contact your state representatives to voice your opposition.

Mahalo,

Carol

HR 875 and the Criminalization of the Backyard Gardener
HR 875 http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/...2RD9bb:e11439:



You May Be Arrested Soon For Growing A Tomato



As our government hands over billions to Wall Street bankers, jobless Americans live in tent cities and collect food stamps in record numbers. Now when we need it the most, growing our own food may be against the law and punishable by a fine of up to $1,000,000. Think this is a joke? Meet Bill HR 875, The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, introduced by Rosa DeLauro whose husband Stanley Greenburg works for Monsanto. The insanity doesn’t stop there — fishing boats, hotdog stands, neighborhood vegetable booths and farmers’ markets will be federally regulated under the same draconian law. As always, the spin is designed to make the public believe these new provisions are for our own good. Under the deceitful guise of protection, the goal of this bill is crystal clear: to prevent us from locally growing our own food so multinational agribusiness can completely control the production and distribution of our food supply. I refer you to the usual suspects — Monsanto, ADM, Sodexo, Tyson, and Smithfield.



This bill is designed to allow corporations, with the help of their hired government guns, to force small competitors (you and me) out of business. This is as evil as it gets, folks. Since the dawn of man we have hunted and farmed our own food — it’s second nature. To be stripped of the most fundamental act of survival is equivalent to the kind of mass enslavement you only read about in history books, like the kind under Pharaohs in ancient Egypt.



Lurking within the maze of technical lawyer-like jargon, the bill places wildly restrictive regulatory incumbrances on the average vegetable growing Joe-The-Plumber, small organic farmer, or anyone for that matter who may one day decide to grow a small garden. The bill would require anyone associated with growing, storing, transporting or processing food to be subject to inspections by federal agents of their property and all records related to food production; you would be required to conduct specials tests, maintain samples and records, and allow government officials to mandate the use of chemical pesticides, fertilizers, specific types of nutrients, packaging, and temperature controls. Violation of any of these provisions would subject the offender to property seizure, imprisonment and fines up to $1,000,000. The implementation of these bogus regulations are designed to be so cost and time prohibitive, no one would bother to grow their own food or risk being jailed and fined for participating in a black market.



Linn Cohen-Cole with Oped News writes:



“The bill is monstrous on level after level - the power it would give to Monsanto, the criminalization of seed banking, the prison terms and confiscatory fines for farmers, the 24 hours GPS tracking of their animals, the easements on their property to allow for warrantless government entry, the stripping away of their property rights, the imposition by the filthy, greedy industrial side of anti-farming international ‘industrial’ standards to independent farms - the only part of our food system that still works, the planned elimination of farmers through all these means.



“The corporations want the land, they want more intensive industrialization, they want the end of normal animals so they can substitute patented genetically engineered ones they own, they want the end of normal seeds and thus of seed banking by farmers or individuals. They want control over all seeds, animals, water, and land.”



I urge you to read the bill here (http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h875/text), then call your representative and congressman.



Here is a video on it:



http://blog.friendseat.com/rosa-dela...1/#comment-362

[Dantheman62]

Here's another thread on it, not sure if it's the same article though......
http://projectavalon.net/forum/showthread.php?t=11554

[Machinamentum]

****!

[judykott]

Catching Wild Pigs

A chemistry professor in a large college had some
exchange students in the class. One day while the class was in the lab the
professor noticed one young man (exchange student) who kept rubbing his

back, and stretching as if his back hurt. The professor asked the young
man what was the matter. The student told him he had a bullet lodged in
his back. He had been shot while fighting communists in his native country

who were trying to overthrow his country's government and install a new
communist government. In the midst of his story he looked at the professor
and asked a strange question. He asked, 'Do you know how to catch wild

pigs?' The professor thought it was a joke and asked for the punch line.
The young man said this was no joke. 'You catch wild pigs by finding a
suitable place in the woods and putting corn on the ground. The pigs find

it and begin to come everyday to eat the free corn. When they are used to
coming every day, you put a fence down one side of the place where they
are used to coming. When they get used to the fence, they begin to eat the

corn again and you put up another side of the fence. They get used to that
and start to eat again. You continue until you have all four sides of the
fence up with a gate in the last side. The pigs, who are used to the free

corn, start to come through the gate to eat, you slam the gate on them and
catch the whole herd. Suddenly the wild pigs have lost their freedom. They
run around and around inside the fence, but they are caught. Soon they go

back to eating the free corn. They are so used to it that they have
forgotten how to forage in the woods for themselves, so they accept their
captivity. The young man then told the professor that is exactly what he

sees happening to America . The government keeps pushing us toward
socialism and keeps spreading the free corn out in the form of programs
such as supplemental income, tax credit for unearned income, tobacco
subsidies, dairy subsidies, payments not to plant crops (CRP), welfare,

medicine, drugs, etc.. While we continually lose our freedoms -- just a
little at a time. One should always remember: There is no such thing as a
free lunch! Also, a politician will never provide a service for you

cheaper than you can do it yourself.

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is big enough to
take away everything you have"
Thomas Jefferson

[Machinamentum]

I agree..

[Lorien]

This makes you wonder if the incidents with salmonella in tomatoes and peanut butter were planned to make the public more susceptible to this.

[THE eXchanger]

Congresswoman De Lauro (Whose Husband Works for Monsanto)



IAHF List:

Seems that Congresswoman Rosa De Lauro, the sponsor of HR 875, the (so called) Food Safety Modernization Act, has a husband employed by Monsanto, a company that would directly benefit from the provisions in her bill that threaten to destroy organic farmers and even backyard gardiners via threats of gigantic fines and massive red tape....



Please utilize the info below to raise bloody hell with De Lauro and your own member of Congress, and if you happen to live in the state of Connecticut, and can help me contact every organic gardening club in the state about this, please let me know your phone number.

We'll organize a Tsunami of opposition to this bill from De Lauro's constituents especially so it can be dutifully buried and De Lauro's congressional career appropriately ENDED.

Lose Your Property for Growing Food?



Bye-Bye Organic Foods!

Big Brother legislation could mean prosecution, fines up to $1 million



Attached is a fax that I am sending to both my Senators and House Representative. . . . . . .Find your representative at:: http://www.congress.org/congressorg/...ory/congdir.tt

We need to flood Congress about this Insane Legislature to benefit Monsnato




March 16, 2009
By Chelsea Schilling
© 2009 WorldNetDaily

Some small farms and organic food growers could be placed under direct supervision of the federal government under new legislation making its way through Congress.

Food Safety Modernization Act

House Resolution 875, or the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, was introduced by Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., in February. DeLauro's husband, Stanley Greenburg, works for Monsanto – the world's leading producer of herbicides and genetically engineered seed.

DeLauro's act has 39 co-sponsors and was referred to the House Agriculture Committee on Feb. 4. It calls for the creation of a Food Safety Administration to allow the government to regulate food production at all levels – and even mandates property seizure, fines of up to $1 million per offense and criminal prosecution for producers, manufacturers and distributors who fail to comply with regulations.

Michael Olson, host of the Food Chain radio show and author of "Metro Farm," told WND the government should focus on regulating food production in countries such as China and Mexico rather than burdening small and organic farmers in the U.S. with overreaching regulations.

"We need somebody to watch over us when we're eating food that comes from thousands and thousands of miles away. We need some help there," he said. "But when food comes from our neighbors or from farmers who we know, we don't need all of those rules. If your neighbor sells you something that is bad and you get sick, you are going to get your hands on that farmer, and that will be the end of it. It regulates itself."

The legislation would establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services "to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes."

Federal regulators will be tasked with ensuring that food producers, processors and distributors – both large and small – prevent and minimize food safety hazards such as food-borne illnesses and contaminants such as bacteria, chemicals, natural toxins or manufactured toxicants, viruses, parasites, prions, physical hazards or other human pathogens.

Under the legislation's broad wording, slaughterhouses, seafood processing plants, establishments that process, store, hold or transport all categories of food products prior to delivery for retail sale, farms, ranches, orchards, vineyards, aquaculture facilities and confined animal-feeding operations would be subject to strict government regulation.

Government inspectors would be required to visit and examine food production facilities, including small farms, to ensure compliance. They would review food safety records and conduct surveillance of animals, plants, products or the environment.

"What the government will do is bring in industry experts to tell them how to manage all this stuff," Olson said. "It's industry that's telling government how to set these things up. What it always boils down to is who can afford to have the most influence over the government. It would be those companies that have sufficient economies of scale to be able to afford the influence – which is, of course, industrial agriculture."

Farms and food producers would be forced to submit copies of all records to federal inspectors upon request to determine whether food is contaminated, to ensure they are in compliance with food safety laws and to maintain government tracking records. Refusal to register, permit inspector access or testing of food or equipment would be prohibited.

"What is going to happen is that local agriculture will end up suffering through some onerous protocols designed for international agriculture that they simply don't need," Olson said. "Thus, it will be a way for industrial agriculture to manage local agriculture."

Under the act, every food producer must have a written food safety plan describing likely hazards and preventative controls they have implemented and must abide by "minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water."

"That opens a whole can of worms," Olson said. "I think that's where people are starting to freak out about losing organic agriculture. Who is going to decide what the minimum standards are for fertilization or anything else? The government is going to bring in big industry and say we are setting up these protocols, so what do you think we should do? Who is it going to bring in to ask? The government will bring in people who have economies of scale who have that kind of influence."

DeLauro's act calls for the Food Safety Administration to create a "national traceability system" to retrieve history, use and location of each food product through all stages of production, processing and distribution.

Olson believes the regulations could create unjustifiable financial hardships for small farmers and run them out of business.

"That is often the purpose of rules and regulations: to get rid of your competition," he said. "Only people who are very, very large can afford to comply. They can hire one person to do paperwork. There's a specialization of labor there, and when you are very small, you can't afford to do all of these things."

Olson said despite good intentions behind the legislation, this act could devastate small U.S. farms.

"Every time we pass a rule or a law or a regulation to make the world a better place, it seems like what we do is subsidize production offshore," he said. "We tell farmers they can no longer drive diesel tractors because they make bad smoke. Well, essentially what we're doing is giving China a subsidy to grow our crops for us, or Mexico or anyone else."

Section 304 of the Food Safety Modernization Act establishes a group of "experts and stakeholders from Federal, State, and local food safety and health agencies, the food industry, consumer organizations, and academia" to make recommendations for improving food-borne illness surveillance.

According to the act, "Any person that commits an act that violates the food safety law … may be assessed a civil penalty by the Administrator of not more than $1,000,000 for each such act."

Each violation and each separate day the producer is in defiance of the law would be considered a separate offense and an additional penalty. The act suggests federal administrators consider the gravity of the violation, the degree of responsibility and the size and type of business when determining penalties.

Criminal sanctions may be imposed if contaminated food causes serious illness or death, and offenders may face fines and imprisonment of up to 10 years..

"It's just frightening what can happen with good intentions," Olson said. "It's probably the most radical notions on the face of this Earth, but local agriculture doesn't need government because it takes care of itself."

Food Safety and Tracking Improvement Act

Another "food safety" bill that has organic and small farmers worried is Senate Bill 425, or the Food Safety and Tracking Improvement Act, sponsored by Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio.

Brown's bill is backed by lobbyists for Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland and Tyson. It was introduced in September and has been referred to the Senate Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry Committee. Some say the legislation could also put small farmers out of business.

Like HR 875, the measure establishes a nationwide "traceability system" monitored by the Food and Drug Administration for all stages of manufacturing, processing, packaging and distribution of food. It would cost $40 million over three years.

"We must ensure that the federal government has the ability and authority to protect the public, given the global nature of the food supply," Brown said when he introduced the bill. He suggested the FDA and USDA have power to declare mandatory recalls.

The government would track food shipped in interstate commerce through a recordkeeping and audit system, a secure, online database
or registered identification. Each farmer or producer would be required to maintain records regarding the purchase, sale and identification of their products.

A 13-member advisory committee of food safety and tracking technology experts, representatives of the food industry, consumer advocates and government officials would assist in implementing the traceability system.

The bill calls for the committee to establish a national database or registry operated by the Food and Drug Administration. It also proposes an electronic records database to identify sales of food and its ingredients "establishing that the food and its ingredients were grown, prepared, handled, manufactured, processed, distributed, shipped, warehoused, imported, and conveyed under conditions that ensure the safety of the food."

It states, "The records should include an electronic statement with the date of, and the names and addresses of all parties to, each prior sale, purchase, or trade, and any other information as appropriate."

If government inspectors find that a food item is not in compliance, they may force producers to cease distribution, recall the item or confiscate it.

"If the postal service can track a package from my office in Washington to my office in Cincinnati, we should be able to do the same for food products," Sen. Brown said in a Sept. 4, 2008, statement. "Families that are struggling with the high cost of groceries should not also have to worry about the safety of their food. This legislation gives the government the resources it needs to protect the public."

Recalls of contaminated food are usually voluntary; however, in his weekly radio address on March 15, President Obama announced he's forming a Food Safety Working Group to propose new laws and stop corruption of the nation's food.

The group will review, update and enforce food safety laws, which Obama said "have not been updated since they were written in the time of Teddy Roosevelt."

The president said outbreaks from contaminated foods, such as a recent salmonella outbreak among consumers of peanut products, have occurred more frequently in recent years due to outdated regulations, fewer inspectors, scaled back inspections and a lack of information sharing between government agencies.

"In the end, food safety is something I take seriously, not just as your president but as a parent," Obama said. "No parent should have to worry that their child is going to get sick from their lunch just as no family should have to worry that the medicines they buy will cause them harm."

The blogosphere is buzzing with comments on the legislation, including the following:




* Obama and his cronies or his puppetmasters are trying to take total control – nationalize everything, disarm the populace, control food, etc. We are seeing the formation of a total police state.
* Well ... that's not very " green " of Obama. What's his real agenda?
* This is getting way out of hand! Isn't it enough the FDA already allows poisons in our foods?
* If you're starving, no number of guns will enable you to stay free. That's the whole idea behind this legislation. He who controls the food really makes the rules.
* The government is terrified of the tax loss. Imagine all the tax dollars lost if people actually grew their own vegetables! Imagine if people actually coordinated their efforts with family, friends and neighbors. People could be in no time eating for the price of their own effort. ... Oh the horror of it all! The last thing the government wants is for us to be self-sufficient.
* They want to make you dependent upon government. I say no way! already the government is giving away taxes from my great great grandchildren and now they want to take away my food, my semi-auto rifles, my right to alternative holistic medicine? We need a revolution, sheeple! Wake up! They want fascism ... can you not see that?
* The screening processes will make it very expensive for smaller farmers, where bigger agriculture corporations can foot the bill.
* If anything it just increases accountability, which is arguably a good thing. It pretty much says they'll only confiscate your property if there are questions of contamination and you don't comply with their inspections. I think the severity of this has been blown out of proportion by a lot of conjecture.
* Don't waste your time calling the criminals in D.C. and begging them to act like humans. This will end with a bloody revolt.
* The more I examine this (on the surface) seemingly innocuous bill the more I hate it. It is a coward's ploy to push out of business small farms and farmers markets without actually making them illegal because many will choose not to operate due to the compliance issue.

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/index.p...w&pageId=92002



http://www.standeyo.com/NEWS/09_Food...ood.HR875.html



















Letter to House Rep Re HR 875--Blank form.doc

For Health Freedom, John C. Hammell, President International Advocates for Health Freedom 556 Boundary Bay Road Point Roberts, WA 98281-8702 USA http://www.iahf.com jham@iahf.com 800-333-2553 N.America 360-945-0352 World

[THE eXchanger]

March 16, 2009

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Vaccines as Biological Weapons? Live Avian Flu Virus Placed in Baxter Vaccine Materials Sent to 18 Countries.

Seven birds test positive for bird flu in Hong Kong.
Health workers rest after culling poultry in Hong Kong, Feb 7, 2009 (AFP)
By Mike Adams
Wednesday, March 4, 2009 NaturalNews

There's a popular medical thriller novel in which a global pandemic is intentionally set off by an evil plot designed to reduce the human population. In the book, a nefarious drug company inserts live avian flu viruses into vaccine materials that are distributed to countries around the world to be injected into patients as 'flu shots.' Those patients then become carriers for these highly-virulent strains of avian flu which go on to infect the world population and cause widespread death.

There's only one problem with this story: It's not fiction. Or, at least, the part about live avian flu viruses being inserted into vaccine materials isn't fiction. It's happening right now.

Deerfield, Illinois-based pharmaceutical company Baxter International Inc. has just been caught shipping live avian flu viruses mixed with vaccine material to medical distributors in 18 countries. The 'mistake' (if you can call it that, see below...) was discovered by the National Microbiology Laboratory in Canada. The World Health Organization was alerted and panic spread throughout the vaccine community as health experts asked the obvious question: How could this have happened?

As published on LifeGen.de (Baxter's H5N1 as global flu pandemic threat), serious questions like this are being raised:

"Baxter International Inc. in Austria 'unintentionally contaminated samples with the bird flu virus that were used in laboratories in 3 neighbouring countries, raising concern about the potential spread of the deadly disease'. Austria, Germany, Slowenia and the Czech Republic - these are the countries in which labs were hit with dangerous viruses. Not by bioterrorist commandos, but by Baxter. In other words: One of the major global pharmaceutical players seems to have lost control over a virus which is considered by many virologists to be one of the components leading some day to a new pandemic."

Or put another way, Baxter is acting a whole lot like a biological terrorism organization these days, sending deadly viral samples around the world. If you mail an envelope full of anthrax to your Senator, you get arrested as a terrorist. So why is Baxter, which mailed samples of a far more deadly viral strain to labs around the world getting away with saying, essentially, 'Oops?'

But there's a bigger question in all this: How could this company have accidentally mixed LIVE avian flu viruses (both H5N1 and H3N2, the human form) in this vaccine material?
Was the viral contamination intentional?

The shocking answer is that this couldn't have been an accident. Why? Because Baxter International adheres to something called BSL3 (Biosafety Level 3) - a set of laboratory safety protocols that prevent the cross-contamination of materials.
As explained on Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosafety_level):

"Laboratory personnel have specific training in handling pathogenic and potentially lethal agents, and are supervised by competent scientists who are experienced in working with these agents. This is considered a neutral or warm zone. All procedures involving the manipulation of infectious materials are conducted within biological safety cabinets or other physical containment devices, or by personnel wearing appropriate personal protective clothing and equipment. The laboratory has special engineering and design features."

Source: http://www.naturalnews.com/025760.html


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------




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[Carol]

Pretty scary, isn't it Baggy?

[Dominic]

Bring it on. I will plant no matter what.

[Egg]

I need to look for it, but didn't a member here a while back write that a bill like this was coming? Now its got a name, and a MONSANTO backer, it is very scary indeed.

[burgundia]

I doubt our government would dare to introduce such an act in Poland....

[Egg]

Originally Posted by burgundia

I doubt our government would dare to introduce such an act in Poland....

You already have one. Notice how the price of food has risen and small farmers are being driven out and replaced by large companies?

Thank the Euro Union for that - they have their own equivilant that Polands suffering from.

[Egg]

Enforcement of the good agricultural and environmental conditions of the EU's cross-compliance regulations comes into effect in Poland on January 1st, 2009. Polish farmers seem prepared to meet these requirements. However, Poland is still far from meeting the second tier requirements, the statutory management requirements, set to be enforced on January 1, 2011. The Polish government has requested a postponement or phase-in of the statutory management requirements, as there will need to be greater progress and changes in Poland to meet them. Many people in Poland are worried that cross-compliance will raise cost of production for Polish farmers with a highly regulatory form of farm management and hurt Poland's competitiveness in the EU and to third countries

Food can only be produced by certified peoples - after 2011 it becomes a criminal offence under EU law to do otherwise.

http://www.fas.usda.gov/gainfiles/200812/146306914.pdf

A PDF for the whole GAIN file.

[avyaktam]

That's true: they are sneaking thousands and thousands of rules and regulations in without a possibility for appeal or mentioning by the MSM.

In the mean time the Obama's are making a big show of a home garden in the White House. Just to show who are the elite I guess.

[burgundia]

Originally Posted by Egg

Food can only be produced by certified peoples - after 2011 it becomes a criminal offence under EU law to do otherwise.

http://www.fas.usda.gov/gainfiles/200812/146306914.pdf

A PDF for the whole GAIN file.

Even backyard gardening will be outlawed? it's hard for me to see that coming as so many people in Poland have gardens where they grow fruit and vegetables for their own use, especially people who are retired. So far it's been done more for pleasure than out of a real need,it's been a tradition in former communist ( although I am not sure that this is an appropriate term) countries to pass the time in this way.