Here Come the Food Police

April 5, 2009
by Andrew Bosworth

It has come to this: for Farmer John to sell pecans at the state fair he must furnish the federal government with his "24-hour emergency contact information" (Section 202).

According to H.R. 875, the "Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009," which will probably pass into law, all small farmers and organic producers must obtain permission to grow and sell food by "registering" as "food establishments" with a brand new federal bureaucracy: the Food Security Administration (FSA).

Not registering as a "food establishment" will fall under one of the twelve "prohibited acts" found in Section 401. Thus, small and organic farmers are about to enter a world of high risk. H.R. 875 is clear:

"Any person that commits an act that violates the food safety law (including a regulation promulgated or an order issued under the food safety law) may be assessed a civil penalty by the Administrator of not more than $1,000,000 for each such act" (Section 405).

Amazingly, the FSA is empowered to use the money it obtains to expand its inspection regime even further. This feedback loop creates an incentive to levy harsh fines on minor infractions:

The FSA "...may use the funds in the account, without further appropriation or fiscal year limitation (A) To carry out enforcement activities under the food safety law," (Section 405).

Still not satisfied, the new FSA will insist that its authority to punish remain open ended:

"The remedies provided in this section are in addition to, and not exclusive of, other remedies that may be available" (Section 405).

Big Business also benefits. According to the bill, the largest (and most unhealthy) corporations - as "Accredited Laboratories" - can sample and test all growers (Section 211).

Just as the Department of Defense outsourced security concerns to Blackwater, the new FSA will be free to take the leash off corporations such as Monsanto, and have its white-smocked bio-engineers set the standards with industry-wide "sampling" and "testing."

Monsanto, by way of introduction, was in the business of producing polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), a compound so toxic that it was banned in 1979. Monsanto also manufactured Agent Orange, a defoliant employed in the Vietnam War which is still causing birth defects. Today, Monsanto poses as a food company - if by "food" one can include the kinds of genetically-scrambled Frankenfoods for which Monsanto is famous.

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And it might be relevant that the sponsor of H.R. 875, Rosa DeLauro (Democrat-CT), is married to Stanley Greenberg, a political strategist whose corporate clients have included Monsanto.

H. R. 875 did not come out of the blue. Consider, for example, the "National Uniformity for Food Act of 2005," from the Republican Congress, which forced many states to lower high safety standards. The Act trumped California's Proposition 65, which had required warnings for carcinogens and substances linked to birth defects.

Clearly, both political parties push "food control." The Republican Party, as the handmaiden of monopolies, is slavishly devoted to the abuse of corporate power, while the Democratic Party pursues a nanny-state agenda, enabling Big Government to infringe upon state, local and individual rights, supposedly for our own good.

The sponsors of H.R. 875 claim to address the needs of a growing population of "immune-compromised consumers..." But why do many Americans suffer from immune deficiencies, food allergies, diabetes and obesity in the first place?

America's health problems are largely the result of the dominant food-industrial complex, based as it is on chemical agriculture, growth hormones, steroids, junk food and, increasingly, genetically-modified foods that cross the plant and animal divide. It is this corporate food machine that is about to consolidate its power with H.R. 875.

Indeed, if one seeks clean and healthy food, it is best to turn to traditional farmers markets, local cooperatives and small-time producers and distributors - none of which are implicated in mad cow disease, none of which traffic in toxic fish from Asia, and none of which regularly serve e. coli as a side dish. When it comes to the dinner table, "de-globalization" should be the order of the day.

Clearly, H. R. 875 moves the nation's food infrastructure in the opposite direction it needs to go - in the direction local food sovereignty. Families, communities and states should break free from the kind of national and international infrastructures that have proved to be so damaging in other sectors from petroleum to finance.

Ultimately, growing and selling healthy food is a "natural right," which means that any authority infringing upon that right is illegitimate.

"Agriculture is our wisest pursuit, because it will in the end contribute most to real wealth, good morals, and happiness."
--Thomas Jefferson

Andrew Bosworth, Ph.D. [send him email] is an assistant professor of Government at the University of Texas at Brownsville. He is the author of Biotech Empire: The Untold Future of Food, Pills and Sex.

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