Megan Prusynski has an interesting, if not quite accurate, post on Planetsave this morning. Two bills, one in the Senate, the other in the House, seek to standardize a number of aspects of food production that, Prusynski claims, could jeopardize organic farming. She writes:
Provisions include mandatory registration and inspection for “any food establishment or foreign food establishment engaged in manufacturing, processing, packing, or holding food for consumption in the United States,” and sets standard practices such as minimums for fertilizer use. Any food that the agency deems “unsafe, adulterated or misbranded” can be seized and the food establishment or farm fined. It’s not clear how these foods will be deemed unsafe. The bills aim to industrialize farms, standardize farming practices, require registration and inspection for any one producing food, and make practices key to organic farming illegal.
Actually, the House bill is the one that mentions fertilizer and it doesn’t seek to set “minimums for fertilizer use,” as Prusynski writes and which I at first thought meant amount of fertilizer, but rather
with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water.
In other words, the quality of fertilizer is at issue here. This, no doubt, in response to ongoing outbreaks of E. Coli due to improper use of fertilizers (especially in the production of spinach).
But Prusynski is no doubt correct in guesing that agribusiness is behind the bills. The Senate bill is sponsored by Democrat Sherrod Brown of Ohio, while the House bill is being fronted by Representative DeLauro of Connecticu.
Setting federal-level standards for food production does, as Prusynski fears, pave the way for banning local food economies. Prusynski fears for organic farming, but that’s not really the concern here, as organic production is already federally regulated. Rather, it’s locally grown produce and animals, often sold in small quantities at farmers’ markets and through CSAs, that would be threatened.
In any case, the bills are a bad idea. We do need better ways to ensure our food is safe for consumption, but federally mandated minimum standards are not the way to get there.
merely a facet of Codex Alimentarius, you’re only seeing the polished and gold plated tip of an ugly iceberg
this is how Codex Alimentarius is being implimented domestically, slick PR and propaganda job
what? you thought they were doing it for your sake? LMAO
Hempster
14 Mar 09 at 8:18 am
[...] that folks were getting up in arms about, saying they would “ban organic farming.” As I pointed out, the bloggers writing about the bills were, at best, misreading and perhaps deliberately using [...]
Puck » Food Bills Coming Due
3 Apr 09 at 10:04 am
As ever, Hempster’s holier that thou comments are always appreciated. For the past 25 years, Hempster’s been telling me, “We’ve got, at most, a couple years to hunker down before the apocalypse hits and the whole system falls apart.” Hempster discounts the laziness of the human organism, not to mention the inertia of the system. We’ve had capitalism for something like 100,000 years; nothing short of a comet impact and the extinction of the human species is going to destroy the system.
Brian
3 Apr 09 at 10:08 am
every food that we eat should come from Organic Farming. i really get scared about those toxins coming from chemical fertilizers and chemical pesticides. I only eat foods which are certified that they are organically grown
detoxdietlady
3 Oct 09 at 2:29 am
medical care is so costly in the US that the money saved with pesticides and chemical fertilizers is certainly nowhere near the money spent on treatment of resulting cancer and other diseases, so yeah, mandating organic farming makes sense, but that’s not going to happen
also, america happily swallows cheese-ruining mandatory pasteurization for the sake of avoiding the occasional bout of diarrhea, i doubt you’ll see much sympathy over a ban on unsanitary practices that contribute nothing to food quality and that can be life threatening
Justin L
25 Apr 10 at 6:45 pm