Illegal to Grow, Share, Trade or Sell (Organic Food)

[Infinitylady]

It's ashame.  

If you have your own garden, know someone who does or a farmer. Please this on.  If we don't stand for something we will stand for anything.

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Pass this on.

[Ninanina]

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Senate Bill S510 (FDA Food Safety Modernization Act) Explained:


When I heard about Senate Bill s510 I was completely freaked out. The first thing I heard about it was that it makes it illegal to grow your own food. I immediately got on the phone to call my senator about how OUTRAGED I was and why was he planning on putting my grandma in jail for that cute little patch of cucumbers she grows for her canned pickles! What kind of man likes to put grandmas in JAIL HUH? In fact, I think I will just go down there and tell him what an asshole he is in person!! But then I regained some of my brain cells and remembered that MY senator probably didn’t write the bill and took a journey down the rabbit hole to see what I could find out about this bill.

The first thing I found out was it doesn’t make growing your own food at home and eating it yourself illegal. PHHHEWWWW!! Grandma’s pickles are SAFE!! Then I started actually reading what WAS in the bill.

You will probably think this bill is a good thing. Unless you are one of those tin foil hat wearing weirdos who think you need rights and freedoms. It might even be better than that wonderful piece of extistence we call the Patriot Act (Don’t you LOVE that one?)

A couple pertinent facts on the bill include:

The original bill no longer exists. The new S510 is only one part of an amendment they kept. (Kinda makes you wonder how bad the first one was huh?) It also is only in committee, which means the senate has been asked to consider it. Will they vote on it? Why yes of course, otherwise the senate doesn’t care about the children. Did I mention the bill is sponsored by congressman Dingell?

but here is why you should be mad as hell and just aren’t going to take it anymore:

If you trade or give your food away, or sell it at farmers markets, you are no longer considered growing for personal consumption which puts you in a category as a Community Supported Agriculture supplier, or so you forget what it actually means CSA’s for short. This is a whole world of difference because now your food has to be “traceable” That means if your neighbor little sally walker has a tummy ache, you need to be held accountable for giving her those bacteria laden zucchinis. What it really means is a drive to the freshly built State Agriculture Office, to talk to the ladies who got promoted from the DMV to fill out a stack of paperwork the size of War and Peace, pay a handy little “CSA Liscensing fee” plus all the taxes and stuff of course, agree to surprise inspections, OH, and don’t forget that dollar to the blabbity blabb fund. By the way would you like to register to vote sir?

So in other words you don’t grow it yourself, you probably aren’t going to get to eat it. Which is going to make you a pretty big ball of sad if you get most of your fruits and veggies from farmers markets. Is this going to be the end of organic farming? No probably not directly or in the near future but farmers who can afford to give away 50% of their profits to the government to implement this bill will probably not going to be living in your town. And because of the lack of farmers putting their heirloom seed grown produce out there, we will eventually see a decline in the amount of heirloom seeds available to the public. The worst part though is the bill will directly affect pet and animal feed manufacturers as well, which means higher feed costs for farmers, which means you ain’t makin chicken wings for the backyard barbecue buddy. It’s all hot dogs from here. We will probably still get hamburgers for a while, but eventually hamburgers will be the price of steak, steak will be the price of lobster, lobster will be filled with oil.

So the question now is how much do you love freedom? And vegetables.

PS there is a counter part in the house of representatives to this bill called  H.R. 2749 I haven’t checked it out but it may be cause for a part 2 and s510 could cost Americans $825 billion in 2010 alone

Click here for an opportunity to send a letter opposing S.B. 510 as it is currently written.

References:

Click here to read the entire bill

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

A really good blog on the bill

Open letter to Congressman Tim Holden

[Infinitylady]

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

Senate Bill S510 (FDA Food Safety Modernization Act) Explained:


When I heard about Senate Bill s510 I was completely freaked out. The first thing I heard about it was that it makes it illegal to grow your own food. I immediately got on the phone to call my senator about how OUTRAGED I was and why was he planning on putting my grandma in jail for that cute little patch of cucumbers she grows for her canned pickles! What kind of man likes to put grandmas in JAIL HUH? In fact, I think I will just go down there and tell him what an asshole he is in person!! But then I regained some of my brain cells and remembered that MY senator probably didn’t write the bill and took a journey down the rabbit hole to see what I could find out about this bill.

The first thing I found out was it doesn’t make growing your own food at home and eating it yourself illegal. PHHHEWWWW!! Grandma’s pickles are SAFE!! Then I started actually reading what WAS in the bill.

You will probably think this bill is a good thing. Unless you are one of those tin foil hat wearing weirdos who think you need rights and freedoms. It might even be better than that wonderful piece of extistence we call the Patriot Act (Don’t you LOVE that one?)

A couple pertinent facts on the bill include:

The original bill no longer exists. The new S510 is only one part of an amendment they kept. (Kinda makes you wonder how bad the first one was huh?) It also is only in committee, which means the senate has been asked to consider it. Will they vote on it? Why yes of course, otherwise the senate doesn’t care about the children. Did I mention the bill is sponsored by congressman Dingell?

but here is why you should be mad as hell and just aren’t going to take it anymore:

If you trade or give your food away, or sell it at farmers markets, you are no longer considered growing for personal consumption which puts you in a category as a Community Supported Agriculture supplier, or so you forget what it actually means CSA’s for short. This is a whole world of difference because now your food has to be “traceable” That means if your neighbor little sally walker has a tummy ache, you need to be held accountable for giving her those bacteria laden zucchinis. What it really means is a drive to the freshly built State Agriculture Office, to talk to the ladies who got promoted from the DMV to fill out a stack of paperwork the size of War and Peace, pay a handy little “CSA Liscensing fee” plus all the taxes and stuff of course, agree to surprise inspections, OH, and don’t forget that dollar to the blabbity blabb fund. By the way would you like to register to vote sir?

So in other words you don’t grow it yourself, you probably aren’t going to get to eat it. Which is going to make you a pretty big ball of sad if you get most of your fruits and veggies from farmers markets. Is this going to be the end of organic farming? No probably not directly or in the near future but farmers who can afford to give away 50% of their profits to the government to implement this bill will probably not going to be living in your town. And because of the lack of farmers putting their heirloom seed grown produce out there, we will eventually see a decline in the amount of heirloom seeds available to the public. The worst part though is the bill will directly affect pet and animal feed manufacturers as well, which means higher feed costs for farmers, which means you ain’t makin chicken wings for the backyard barbecue buddy. It’s all hot dogs from here. We will probably still get hamburgers for a while, but eventually hamburgers will be the price of steak, steak will be the price of lobster, lobster will be filled with oil.

So the question now is how much do you love freedom? And vegetables.

PS there is a counter part in the house of representatives to this bill called  H.R. 2749 I haven’t checked it out but it may be cause for a part 2 and s510 could cost Americans $825 billion in 2010 alone

Click here for an opportunity to send a letter opposing S.B. 510 as it is currently written.

References:

Click here to read the entire bill

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

You are not allowed to view links. Register or Login

A really good blog on the bill

Open letter to Congressman Tim Holden

Thank you for sharing more about this bill. This is why we need to share the info so much is out there and many people donot even have a clue what is going on.