Juddmansee.com

Food and health are two topics that are very important to me. Over the past century I believe the average person has lost track of how food is produced and consumed in this country. By losing track of this process I believe we’ve become dependent on large businesses to feed us to the detriment of our individual health and welfare. This is why I’m writing a serious post this morning rather than my normal “look at where we hiked” or “does an armed Scotsman defeat a hillbilly in one-on-one combat.”

This morning while reading an article online about the planned Obama vegetable garden, I discovered the existence of HR 875 – Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009. On the surface this bill appears to be aimed at improving food safety through more thorough government regulation of the food supply. Upon deeper reading the bill appears to grant nearly unlimited authority to several government agencies that could regulate food supplies for any food producer from giant farms down to individual family farmers.

I had a very hard time finding what I considered credible information to make a decision myself. You can read the text of HR 875 here. Unfortunately, like many government bills it is a lengthy collection of statements that taken together can make it very difficult to discern the consequences of passing such a bill. Much of what has been written about saying NO to this bill comes across somewhere between overly alarmist and tin-foil-hat-wearing. I did manage to find a 14 page walk through that focused mostly on the bill and not on overly broad generalizations about how we’re destroying the world. On the same website a rebuttal by a representative of Monsanto.

After reading through the available information I’ve come to the conclusion that at best this legislation is an overly broad and poorly written attempt to enhance food safety. At worst, this legislation puts into place an overly broad government organization which could be used to dictate what I am allowed to produce and eat. In either case, this bill as written would be extremely harmful to local and organic farms and to anyone who wants control over what they put in their mouths.

My biggest area of concern is how the legislation could be used to control seed production which is addressed in the criticism of the bill. Monsanto’s response does not give me much comfort: “Nowhere is there any mention of seed banks, loss of property rights, or GPS tracking of animals. The bill seems to be nothing more egregious than a well-intentioned effort to improve food safety laws and processes. It was no doubt written in response to public concerns with relatively recent incidents with peanut butter, ground beef, spinach, etc.”

I paraphrase it as, “Pay no attention to all this complex language and the man behind the curtain. We don’t say we want to wipe out local farms and control the food supply. We want to make sure that the food supply is safe.”

Forgive me if I don’t believe you, but I don’t trust the track record of Monsanto and as an individual I want to make sure I have as much control as possible over what I can feed myself.

I wrote my congressman urging them to kill/stop HR 875 this morning.