Marti Oakley (c)copyright 2010 All Rights Reserved
___________________________________
“Instead, FDA, just as the USDA, is pulling out all the stops in its efforts to terrorize and harass domestic producers and suppliers, and to end anything but industrialized corporate agriculture. After all, these corporations keep the FDA and USDA awash in funds.”
__________________________________________________
If food safety were the real issue…we would close down the USDA and FDA corporations immediately. S.510 is not intended to, and will not do anything other than stifle economic growth, kill off the domestic agricultural sector and hand that sector over to corporate predators.
S.510, just as the CLEAR Act, Cap & Trade, and a host of other offensive pieces of legislation is nothing more than a system of fees, fines and royalties meant to generate revenue while at the same time forcing individuals to keep records intended to be used for no other purpose than compiling a criminal case against themselves. These records can be seized on the whim of the “secretary” who can at his/her leisure, decide that they “believe” you represent a risk: no evidence needed.
Just as the appointment of Michael Taylor, the Monsanto hired gun, to the post of “food czar” in the White House was no coincidence, neither is the pandering to Monsanto and other multi-national corporations intent upon owning and controlling food prodution and supply in the US in the text of S. 510.
Both the USDA and FDA were created using the Administrative Procedures Act (APA) of 1946. Even if this act were constitutional, the federal government is precluded from entering into agriculture as it is not in the enumerated powers of the federal government. Agriculture is non-positive Code & Tile (7) and cannot be codified into law as it is a right reserved to the states. Creating fictional public service agencies, which are in reality privately chartered corporations, held by the federal government to by-pass Constitutional restraints, on the federal government makes them no less unlawful.
Contrary to comments from various national organizations and groups, the last thing we need to see happen is the expansion of power and reach of either the USDA or, the FDA.
Both of these corporate federal agencies have a long history of harming the public while deferring to corporate contracted partners who make sure both agencies are profitable even if the public is harmed.
On the other hand, it is no surprise to see national food organizations of all kinds jumping on the bandwagon to support this coup, hoping, I guess, that if they throw the rest of us under the bus they might be able to secure special treatment for themselves. The organics producers did. More