Food, Ink. (legislatively)

Senate Bill S 510 Food Safety Modernization Act vote imminent: Would it outlaw gardening and saving seeds?

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/seeds-how-to-criminalize-them/


http://www.naturalnews.com/030418_Food_Safety_Modernization_Act_seeds.html


This is quite complicated and causes me some great concern, since the appearance of the bill at first glance is simple updating of the food protections standards already in place and enforceable by the FDA. Still, upon closer inspection (pun unintended) there appears to be a great deal to be concerned about relative to the suspension of human rights and liberties of the individual citizen. We may lose the right to grow our own food.


The bill is uncharacteristically broad in scope and vague in language. There is enough in it for me to be concerned that this is a trojan horse for the food industry (namely the big 5 industrial producers) to hold all the cards (er, seeds) in the market. They've seen a great deal of backlash from consumers who have seen films like Food, Inc. lately, and it is clear that they're not willing to take that lying down.


This concerns me because there have been a few things lately which should have been noted by those of us interested in our food economy in USA. One is the hoopla and legal battles over drinking unpasteurized milk, and the other is the rise of urban farming.


The first is a very unusual contest between those folks who believe that pasteurization is a destructive process and simply want the liberty to drink their milk without it and the "big brother" government regulators who claim to be acting in the interest of public safety. I don't see how someone drinking unpasteurized milk puts anyone at risk of the sorts of communicable diseases that this new legislation alludes to. 


And the growth of urban farming, led by a man named Wil Allen, from Growing Power here in Milwaukee, is a boon to the urban poor. He's teaching the poor and the landlocked how to grow food to feed their own families on a 3x3 square of concrete. It's been gaining accolades from around the world, and he's been to D.C. to talk about his successes here in Milwaukee and the Midwest. He recently helped establish a greenhouse in Cabrini Green in Chicago (puttin' the green back there), for example.


Allen certainly raised the hackles of the industrial giants like Monsanto and co. when he began this movement. They see this movement reducing their formerly guaranteed markets, and they cannot be pleased that the education program will teach people the difference between healthy and processed foods, something which has been a really significant issue in our inner cities. Nutrition could revolutionize the urban poor's lives, but that would impact the bottom line for some in unacceptable ways.


This legislation would put the Growing Power movement at risk of being illegal. It threatens to take the liberty of the individual citizen. When we can no longer grow our own food we will be stripped of the most basic human right. We'll be at the mercy of corporate farms. We'll be test subjects in the bioengineering industry.


Overseas we've seen the production of potatoes without eyes and empty beans, controlled by the folks at companies like Monsanto (which has control of the food supply in Iraq nearly exclusively now). There is an effort to monetize everything in America. If companies can eliminate the legacy (unfettered) seeds from the planet, they'll hold the patents to all of our food. If they engineer foods which do not produce seeds within them, they'll also prevent the rest of us from being able to take back growing our own food, even with the tainted seed from those new products.


Remember that in USA there have been granted the same rights as an individual to a corporation. They're considered "individuals" and they are treated as the same, even though they have the powerful interests of their billions behind them. That said, they're now willing to give back some of those individual rights if they can wrest control of the rights of the individual to fed themselves from their grasp. Then they can retreat toward being an inhuman machine.


What is insane about this whole thing is that corporations used to work toward building a name which consumers could trust, in an effort to build brand-recognition and loyalty over generations. Nowadays the same corporations have eschewed this philosophy and now work toward building monopolies and brand-illusion (with hidden parent companies) without a concern for loyalty. They're no longer building corporations for consumers, they're building them for profits. All that matters is the next quarterly report, and if that means wresting control of human rights from citizens to create an unwilling or at the very least, unwitting market of consumers, then it's totally acceptable.


Meanwhile, folks are waking up to the corporate dominance, albeit slowly. We may be too late. This past election has set in motion a machine of billionaire interests which manipulated the electorate and will now stop at nothing to legislatively build a permanent majority. That was something dreamed of in the Bush II years, but W was too dim to maintain it. Now, since Citizens United, they are empowered to actually do it.


I didn't think that this would impact what I eat. But now I must admit that I have been far too optimistic. Heck, this is a bipartisan legislation, so I hold no allusions about the Dems having clean hands here. They're in bed with the corporations as well, but may be better at hiding it.