Police has the authority to protect Americans and they are still dying. This country clearly needs more government "authority".
Posted on 07/31/2009 1:03:55 AM PDT by Jet Jaguar
The House has passed a far-reaching food safety bill requiring more government inspections and imposing new penalties on those who violate the law, reacting strongly to an outbreak of salmonella in peanuts that killed at least nine people.
The legislation would require greater oversight of food manufacturers and give the Food and Drug Administration new authority to order recalls. It also would require the FDA to develop a system for better tracing food-borne illnesses. Food companies would be required to create detailed food safety plans.
President Barack Obama praised the bill soon after it was passed, calling it "a major step forward in modernizing our food safety system."
Democrats scrambled to put the legislation back on the House floor Thursday under a rule that required a simple majority to pass. The vote was 283-142.
Supporters said the legislation would help the FDA change its focus from a reactive to a more preventive approach in keeping the nation's food safe.
"Americans are dying because the Food and Drug Administration doesn't have the authority to protect them," said Michigan Rep. John Dingell, the bill's sponsor and a long-serving Democrat who has been pushing for tougher standards for more than a decade.
A similar bill sponsored by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., has not yet seen action in the Senate.
The legislation gained new momentum in the wake of one of the largest product recalls in U.S. history, stemming from salmonella in peanuts that killed nine people, sickened hundreds of others and was linked to shoddy practices at a peanut company in Georgia. Other recent outbreaks include contaminated spinach in 2006 and salmonella in peppers last year. The government estimates that 76 million people each year are sickened by food-borne illness, hundreds of thousands are hospitalized and around 5,000 die.
(Excerpt) Read more at breitbart.com ...
With this being a Rat plan, there has to be at least a hundred things done wrong in it.
Here they go again.Another bad bill.
If vague memory serves, this plan was going to kill farmers’ markets and other small time local operations that can’t tag each apple and cucumber or buy the specialized tracking software.
As well as raise the price of everything in the supermarket
Police has the authority to protect Americans and they are still dying. This country clearly needs more government "authority".
Any government powerful enough to protect you from all perceived ills is also powerful enough to do whatever it wants to you, including kill you. And once the corrupt politicians have that power, THEY WILL USE IT.
Anyone who thinks that is paranoia is an abject moron with no understanding of history. Thanks again, NEA...
Just another socialist power grab by the rats in the name of the good of the people...
Has anybody sat down and figured out how much food borne illness would be stopped by these schemes, best case. I’d wager that almost all food borne illness comes not from a contaminated source but from mishandling at point of use. One possible plus is that this (if done right) would make it easier to combat attempts to sabotage a major food source, as in terrorism.
There goes the local food movement, mostly liberals loved the local food movement.... organic farms? buh bye to most of them.
“With this being a Rat plan, there has to be at least a hundred things done wrong in it.”
Undoubtedly. How many pubics voted FOR this?
Probably part of the Health Kill Bill.
Unbelievable.
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-2749
His poll numbers will be -40 by Monday.
You know, large agri-businesses are in bed with the government as they can absorb the costs of regulations and pass those costs on, while destroying their local competition; in turn the government gets a more dependent populace.
Because this bill will put great financial burdens on small farmers and producers, local food sources will quickly stop selling and growing. Food will be controled by large ‘ag groups’ (monsanto,adm,con-agra). Food is now a commodity like oil,gas,and water.
Every major food problem concerning safety in recent years has come from major ‘factory farms’, sent through nationwide distribution systems. This bill will increase that risk.
Local food produced and sold in regional rather than nation-wide systems would greatly reduce the risk of national risks to our food supply. (drought, germ infestations,terrorism. This bill will do just the opposite.
By the way; The congresswoman who sponsored the bill was Rosa deloro. Her husband is the leading lobbyist for Monsanto.
They can have my zucchini when they pry it from my cold, dead hands!
prisoner6
All this shows is that even with 30 agencies, the Gov could not manage food safety, but it could kill an industry with paperwork. We do not a DMV of food.
If the people of the US want a food safety agency, so be it. But if 15 can't get it done, 16 is not the answer. The answer is firing the fifteen and starting over with one that had better get it right with a small team and efficient methods, or it will join its 15 friends on the unemployment line.
How much cost will this add to our food? Isn't food expensive enough already?
I can already hear it now, 6 months or a year, or whatever amount of time when this has had it's chance to be implemented and food costs rise as a result, members of congress will get up and start complaining about gouging as if they are innocent bystanders.
The electeds have become, for the most part, enemies of the people.
They have lots of company in the radical enclaves of the democratic party. There will never be reconciliation between those radicals and people who analyze what they have done.
9 died from peanuts so we pass this law.
Over 250 have already died from H1N1 Flu (aka Swine Flu) but we couldn’t close the borders.
5000 die annually from food-related illness.
An estimated 50,000 or more will die this year from H1N1, but we couldn’t close the borders.**
How many die annually from Smoking?
How many die annually from Auto Accidents?
**The current CDC-reported death rate is over 0.5 percent, but I used a conservative rate of 0.5 percent, and a conservative estimate of 10 million people in the US contracting H1N1 during Flu season. In a normal flu season, between 10-30 million people contract the flu.
Here are the Republicans who voted Aye
DE-0 Castle, Michael [R]
FL-4 Crenshaw, Ander [R]
FL-5 Brown-Waite, Virginia [R]
FL-9 Bilirakis, Gus [R]
FL-10 Young, C. W. [R]
FL-12 Putnam, Adam [R]
FL-13 Buchanan, Vern [R]
FL-18 Ros-Lehtinen, Ileana [R]
FL-21 Diaz-Balart, Lincoln [R]
FL-25 Diaz-Balart, Mario [R]
GA-9 Deal, Nathan [R]
GA-11 Gingrey, John [R]
IL-6 Roskam, Peter [R]
IL-10 Kirk, Mark [R]
IL-13 Biggert, Judy [R]
IL-19 Shimkus, John [R]
IN-4 Buyer, Stephen [R]
KY-1 Whitfield, Edward [R]
KY-2 Guthrie, Brett [R]
KY-5 Rogers, Harold [R]
LA-1 Scalise, Steve [R]
LA-2 Cao, Anh [R]
MI-3 Ehlers, Vernon [R]
MI-4 Camp, David [R]
MI-6 Upton, Frederick [R]
MI-8 Rogers, Michael [R]
MI-10 Miller, Candice [R]
MI-11 McCotter, Thaddeus [R]
MN-2 Kline, John [R]
MN-3 Paulsen, Erik [R]
MN-6 Bachmann, Michele [R]
NE-1 Fortenberry, Jeffrey [R]
NE-2 Terry, Lee [R]
NJ-2 LoBiondo, Frank [R]
NJ-4 Smith, Christopher [R]
NJ-7 Lance, Leonard [R]
NJ-11 Frelinghuysen, Rodney [R]
NY-3 King, Peter [R]
NY-23 McHugh, John [R]
NY-26 Lee, Christopher [R]
OH-3 Turner, Michael [R]
OH-12 Tiberi, Patrick [R]
OH-14 LaTourette, Steven [R]
OR-2 Walden, Greg [R]
PA-15 Dent, Charles [R]
PA-18 Murphy, Tim [R]
PA-19 Platts, Todd [R]
TX-6 Barton, Joe [R]
TX-26 Burgess, Michael [R]
VA-10 Wolf, Frank [R]
WA-8 Reichert, Dave [R]
WV-2 Capito, Shelley [R]
Bump
My rep, Lee Terry NE 2, voted for it... I will call too, but I won’t be thanking him.
While I disagree strongly with my Dem Rep’s (Pingree, ME-1) positions, she hit it right with this one. I did send her a note thanking her for her vote. (I fax her frequently - this is so far the only favorable fax.)
As a food broker my life just got exponentially tougher.
IMO, this bill was sponsored by Agri-Business as a[nother] effort to suppress competition. Unless some rules have been changed, large-scale cattle operations only have to register/tag the herd AS A GROUP while smaller ranchers have to do that to EACH ANIMAL. There was even talk that the law is so loosely written as to give the govt control over your garden, let alone farmers' markets.
You nailed it. That is exactly what this is. Big business using government to kill smaller competition.
I’m not old enough to remember Victory Gardens, but man that must have been a time when even a Rat had some horse sense left.
Government control of the food supply.
- Barack Obama, March 14, 2009
Says the forked-tongued-fascist-commie-liar-in-chief.
This bill is a travesty. It effectively gives government control over our food supply in the name of "food safety."
USSA is going to hell in a hand basket at lightning speed.
“We are a nation built on the strength of individual initiative. But there are certain things that we can’t do on our own. There are certain things that only a government can do. And one of those things is eating.” — Brraaaaak Obama.
As you begin to get a handle on all the effects you’ll see from this, would you summarize and post them to this or another FR thread, please? And please ping me, because I’m very interested to know.
Control the food, control the people. Not enough fingers in the dike people.
Let’s not spread disinformation. Do you have a link to that quote?
I’ve read that it is going to put thousands of small organic farms out of business due to the requirements of sterile soil and over zealous standards. It will also affect local farmers markets.
All the American people can do at this point is stall. Play stupid and act wisely by preparing for the total government control of our food sources.
Governments have done it time and time again. Control the food, weapons, medical resources and monetary supply...and you control the populace.
-----
Of the Simplicity of Criminal Laws in different Governments
In republican governments, men are all equal; equal they are also in despotic governments:
in the former, because they are everything; in the latter, because they are nothing.
The Spirit of the Laws - Book VI
By Charles de Secondat, Baron de Montesquieu
If, from the more wretched parts of the old world, we look at those which are in an advanced stage of improvement, we still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry, and grasping the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised, to furnish new pretenses for revenues and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without tribute.
Thomas Paine, Rights of Man, 1791
....no, no, no, not a PUN, what's that thing what goes the same way backwards as forwards.
A *PALINDROME*!
We are a nation built on the strength of individual initiative. But there are certain things that we can’t do on our own. There are certain things that only a government can do. And one of those things is ensuring that the foods we eat …are safe and don’t cause us harm.
http://www.foodsafetyworkinggroup.gov/FSWG_Key_Findings.pdf
Anyone have any idea what they might be basing these "estimates" on? AFAIK, I have never been "sickened by food-borne illness," and I'm not even especially careful!
It won’t get 60 votes in the senate.
He who controls the food supply...
Oh, they're intended.
I expect this to be widely ignored at the gardener/farm market/fundraiser level. There will be test cases as some people who are affected sue the inspectors.
This is reminiscent of the laws regulating childrens’ items, which began to affect even yard sales. I believe regulatory changes were made after a lot of citizen anger. Please correct me if that is not so.
Personally, I have already begun to give away container vegetable plants to anyone who wants one, with advice on how to grow them, both indoors and out. I do expect this law to increase the prices on all fruits and vegetables. I know farmers who raise beef for people on an individual basis. The consumer buys the beef, the farmer keeps it in pasture until slaughter, the consumer is responsible for the processing. I believe as long as the numbers of beef involved per farmer are quite low, there is no regulatory involvement. We have many small processing plants out here and a new one is being built right now. Whatever the regulations, they did not prevent this business from forming. A lot of folks have chickens and eggs are commonly given away Spring to Fall. I see no way to stop this.
Most of the farmers and ag business folks out here voted for zerO, especially the largest organic co-ops.
Control the food...control the people.
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