Posts Tagged Food Safety

NAIS is useless for source verification

September 29, 2009U_1730_m

by Darol Dickinson

When a critter is over 30 months of age the USDA has made a rule that the processing procedure can not saw the carcass down the middle.  Slaughter must do two cuts on each side of the spinal column and not compromise the meat with the possible material from the spinal column.  Supposedly if there is a contaminated BSE carcass it could affect the meat. These animals only get BSE after 30 months of age.  On a fed steer we lose the T bone cut because the bone is lost in the cut.

That is the reason for source verification, to prove the animal is under 30 months.

NAIS proposed data is retained by USDA and not available for source verification unless the animal’s owner has a separate system of keeping records that they have access to.

Therefore:  NAIS is useless for source verification.

Source verification is a small carrot that the declining beef industry uses to point to a flake of hope at the end of the tunnel.  If everyone had source verification then there would be no premium for those who do. If cattle are over 30 months of age it is not an issue because the quasi premium of a few bucks wouldn’t be possible anyway.

Currently age verification is determined by USDA meat kill floor inspectors [mouthing] cattle.  An inspector trained to visually evaluate can tell within one to 4 months a animal’s age by tooth development.

I process about 80 steers for our retail beef sales each year that are 26 to 32 months.  I found some inspectors were guessing my 26 month steers at 30+ months and this loss of the T bones was costing me about $30 per carcass.  I called the USDA people and cried foul play.  He said;  ”Tell me the age and that will be fine.”

All my steers are age number branded and we have a computer print out on every steer.  Our cattle are numbered with the only method proven to be a permanent ID since before King David — fire branding.

  • I send them a computer print out showing the
  • birth date,
  • pedigree records,
  • vaccination records and,
  • rate of gain.

We have about 20 items on our computer records of each steer that no one holds in a secret vault outside the USA.

The USDA inspector respects our proven honesty and I can send him a steer 29 months and 29 days with my computer records and he regards him as under, 30 months.  This is not hard, just another USDA red tape issue.

Our total record system is for genetic improvement.  It is vast and cheap and far more economical than NAIS, and the tags won’t fall off!

People who are amateur and who don’t raise cattle, fight to keep from knowing the truth. One individual called Senator Blanche Lincoln’s office this week and her staff  says:  “She only supports voluntary NAIS”, but the reason that she voted for NAIS funding is because: “Several producers enjoy receiving the value-added from the NAIS program.”

Just for the record,  there is no NAIS document concerning value-added.

These people who think this system of NAIS and Premises ID is going to benefit them, can high center on theory and die on their own sword of stupidity.

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Super Human Radio: Stoping HR 2749 the Fake Food Safety Bill.

As you may know the US government is trying to pass a law, HR2749, which is about imposing totalitarian control on the food supply (such as mandating GMO-food) and restricting anything natural or healthy, such as access to supplements or even any natural food. Our health and very lives and the lives of our children depend on this being stopped. This is not an exaggeration. Our food supply will be placed in the hands of large factory farms and conglomerates like Monsanto who’s only objective is profits.

This is nothing short of a full out assault on independent and family owned agricultural producers to end competition to corporate producers. Within the verbiage is language that would once and for all codify Codex Alimentarius into U.S. law. This will restrict access to all supplements currently available over-the-counter. In Europe, CODEX has restricted the availability of such OTC products as Glucosamine and Selenium and now people are required to obtain a prescription to obtain these supplements. In fact, Vitamin C will no longer be available in anything larger than a 60 Mg tablet under CODEX!!
If you would like to take an in-depth look at what HR2749 will do to our food supply while handing it over to companies like Monsanto, read this entry in the Food Freedom Newsletter “Why HR2749 Is No Good For Us“.
Every American needs to know about this, and how they can help create real change. Email your friends, family, coworkers… everyone. Tell them their ’s and the health and lives of their children are at stake.
I have established a simple and effective way to let your opinion be known. Emails and snail mail don’t work because emails can be deleted and snail mail is shredded. BUT a fax must be read, cataloged, filed and saved FOR YEARS! I have set up a way for you to fax your State Representative or Senator in sixty seconds or less. Everything you need is on one page. You can locate your Representative and his or her fax number. I have had political activist Marti Oakley write a form letter so you can simply copy it and add your personal information. AND YOU CAN FAX THE MESSAGE RIGHT FROM MY SITE FOR FREE!
Please take action NOW. Take one minute out of your day and go to http://www.superhumanradio.com/core/2749.htm and send a fax to your State Representatives and Senators telling them that you do not want HR2749 to be voted in as Law. And copy and paste this email and pass it to everyone you know. We must act now before our God given rights to healthy natural food and supplements are sold to the large corporate monsters who put their profits far above our health and longevity.
Live Stronger, Live Longer,.
Carl Lanore
Super Human Radio
Follow Me On Twitter http://www.twitter.com/triceptor

Super Human Radio, 2528 Glen Eagle Dr, Louisville, KY 40222, USA

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Who speaks for family farmers?

Who speaks for family farmers?

By: Rhonda Perry, Minuteman Media, Worthington Daily Globe

ARMSTRONG, Mo. — My family has farmed in Missouri for over a century and I currently raise livestock and grain on 800 acres in Howard County, Mo. But folks like me always seem to get drowned out in Washington, D.C, by commodity groups purporting to represent my interests. The American Farm Bureau bills itself as the “voice of agriculture.” A seemingly innocent-sounding group called the National Milk Producers Federation (NMPF) calls itself “the only nationwide expression of dairy farmers.” These organizations spend millions in lobbying and donating money to politicians. In the halls of Congress, in the federal agencies, and in presidential administrations, representatives from these groups exert undue control over the agenda for food and agriculture policy.

It is nearly impossible to convince D.C. politicians that these corporate interests do not represent the interests of family farmers. Until now. The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently concluded 13 listening sessions to hear farmers’ input on the despised National Animal Identification System (NAIS) that calls for us to electronically tag and track the movements of every one of our animals. Factory farms, however, are allowed one group lot ID for their thousands of animals. Over $130 million of taxpayer money has been wasted on this radical, corporate-driven bureaucracy that originated from the National Institute for Animal Agriculture, a group comprised of — surprise, surprise — the Farm Bureau, National Pork Producers Council (NPPC), NMPF and agribusinesses such as Cargill. Only a gigantic outcry from farmers has stopped NAIS from becoming mandatory by its proposed 2009 date.

At listening sessions across the country, including one in Missouri attended by over 300 people, up to 95 percent of producers were united in their adamant disapproval of NAIS and how it would do nothing to address animal disease or food safety. The few folks in the crowd willing to go on record for their support of NAIS were uniformly from the likes of NPPC, Farm Bureau and NMPF allies. That should tell the media, Congress, USDA and the Obama administration to quit listening to these interest groups and quit thinking of them as representing family farmers!

Why do we have such a broken food system that allows for deadly E. coli in our meat and now peanut butter? Why have factory farms been allowed to proliferate like viruses in rural America? Because these interest groups have been allowed to use their false facade representing America’s “farmers” to con politicians into buying their disastrous policies, while simultaneously conning the media into thinking that they speak on behalf of those farmers. Now they have conned USDA, President Obama and members of Congress into thinking we need a mandatory NAIS program.

These same corporate farm groups have opposed more testing for mad cow disease, opposed increased inspection of meat processing plants where most food borne illnesses start and continue to thwart any efforts to address antibiotic abuses on factory farms. Meanwhile they advocate for free trade agreements that bring in foreign animals from countries with known disease outbreaks like foot-and-mouth and BSE. Thus, the folks most responsible for breeding animal disease are now trying to shift responsibility from corporate meatpackers and factory farms onto the backs of America’s independent family farmers through NAIS.

Since 2006, NPPC has donated over $350,000 to federal politicians and spent over $3 million in lobbying. NMPF has spent $2.2 million in lobbying, including for a mandatory NAIS, even while dairy farmers suffer their worst crisis since the Great Depression.

We are thankful that USDA took the time to listen to the voices of family farmers instead of relying on the same old corporate interest groups. Given the shocking chasm between our corporate farm groups and real family farmers, NAIS is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to bad farm policy that emanates from of Washington. So the next time you hear that “farm groups” oppose cracking down on antibiotics, or that they want to water down environmental regulations over factory farms or that we need another free trade agreement the likes of the one with Colombia, just remember whose interests these folks really represent–and it’s not rural America.

Rhonda Perry is a livestock and grain farmer from Howard County, Mo. She serves as Program Director of the Missouri Rural Crisis Center, a member of the National Family Farm Coalition.

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Lies and Prevarication

Doreen Hannes, radio talk show host, NAIS scholar, legal analyst and livestock freedom advocate prepared the following details of HR 2749.  Hannes, far more knowledgeable of international political sabotage than most all elected officials, offers this carefully researched document.  Read it and go to the next town hall meeting with your elected employees.  Use this data to know how the cow ate the cabbage and where to spit it.  Darol


HR 2749 Authorizes International Take Over of Food Production –

by Doreen Hannes 2009

August 6, 2009

Spy on YouThe staff of Congress said HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009, didn’t authorize the National Animal Identification System. Many organic groups agreed with them.

They weren’t telling the truth, however, either out of ignorance or deliberate omission.

HR 2749 certainly doesn’t mention “the” National Animal Identification System by name, but it definitely authorizes the program.

It also doesn’t state that it is legally authorizing Good Agricultural Practices, or GAP, partially comprised of Codex guidelines on traceability and food safety and the OIE’s Guide to Good Farming Practices including auditing, certification and inspections as well as disincentives for not participating in the form of fines, penalties, and loss of access to market; but it most certainly does.

Is it possible that Congress doesn’t have the slightest idea what they were voting on?

Maybe, maybe not.

It doesn’t come as any surprise that Congress didn’t read the bill as it was changed three times in a 24-hour period before it was passed out of the House with a 283-142 vote.

Congress says it doesn’t have time to read bills like HR 2749.

The bill includes that mentioned above and even more.

All one needs to do is understand what is involved in Good Agricultural Practices and how the agencies of the World Trade Organization operate within member countries to get this.

I’ll explain that to you. Really, there are only a few pieces from the legislation itself that are necessary to read to fully comprehend that this is indeed what we are dealing with in HR 2749.

The international “guidelines” are much lengthier than the legislation itself.

HR 2749 is 160 pages in its final version. If you search through it, you will find the following references to international standards and guidelines:

“(B) INTERNATIONAL STANDARDS.—In issuing guidance or regulations… the Secretary shall review international hazard analysis and preventive control standards that are in existence on the date of the enactment of this Act and relevant to such guidelines or regulations to ensure that the programs…..are consistent……with such standards.” (page 35)

“CONSISTENCY WITH INTERNATIONAL OBLIGATIONS.—The Secretary shall apply this paragraph consistently with United States obligations under international agreements.” (page81)

“The Secretary shall issue regulations to ensure that any qualified certifying entity and its auditors are free from conflicts of interest. In issuing these regulations, the Secretary may rely on or incorporate international certification standards.” (page 82)

What this actually means is that there will be a layer of auditors, certifiers, and inspectors over every aspect of food production in this country, and that these inspectors and certifiers will be trained in ISO (International Standards Organization) management program certification.

The ISO has been working with Codex Alimentarius on Food Safety Standards and in particular, a technical standard for Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) which is a consortium of the seven largest food retailers in the world, and that is ISO22000:2005.

All traceability falls under the purview of Codex, the OIE (World Animal Health Organization and the IPPC (International Plant Protection Convention) for global trade agreements.

The following excerpt from HR 2749 shows the fully interoperable global network already in existence regarding food and its production:

“Development of such guidelines shall take into account the utilization of existing unique identification schemes and compatibility with customs automated systems, such as integration with the Automated Commercial Environment (ACE) and the International Trade Data System (ITDS), and any successor systems.” (page 142)

So it is clear that international standards and guidelines are implicit in this legislation.

Note the usage of the command form SHALL. This isn’t a ‘might’, ‘may’ or in anyway a voluntary issue on the part of the Secretary.

Then there is the section on Traceability. This is a code word in the National Animal Identification System and when one reads Sec.107 of this bill, it definitively describes components of NAIS even down to the 48 hour trace back, which cannot even be fantasized about with out individual animal identification.

“…..the Secretary shall issue regulations establishing a tracing system that enables the Secretary to identify each person who grows, produces, manufactures, processes, packs, transports, holds, or sells such food in as short a timeframe as practicable but no longer than 2 business days.” (=note that it says “grows”=) (page 70), and

“……use a unique identifier for each facility owned or operated by such person for such purpose…” (page69)

So we have PIN and 48 hour traceback harmonizing with international standards and guidelines along with this:

“….”(C) COORDINATION REGARDING FARM IMPACT.—In issuing regulations under this paragraph that will impact farms, the Secretary “(i) shall coordinate with the Secretary of Agriculture; and “(ii) take into account the nature of the impact of the regulations on farms.” (page 71)

Now that I’ve killed you with legalese, it’s time to let you find out just what these international standards and guidelines mean to those engaged in agriculture in this country.

Good Agricultural Practices are not a standard in and of themselves. They are more of a combination of standards and guidelines set forth by the FAO, Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN, through both the OIE (World Animal Health Organization) and Codex Alimentarius (Food Code) to meet the certification and auditing side of the international trade aspects of the standards set forth.

The OIE and Codex are charged with setting global standards and guidelines for the member countries of the WTO to meet to satisfy the SPS (Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary), TBT (Technical Barriers to Trade) and Equivalency agreements of the WTO for participation in international trade.

Both the OIE and CODEX have guidelines for traceability that, with the passage of HR2749 into law, would be written into regulations governing all interstate commerce within the boundaries of the United States.

The components of traceability are the pillars of NAIS that many of us have become so familiar with in the course of the battle over the past several years. Those being:

  • Premise Identification,
  • Animal Identification, and
  • Animal Tracking.

You can’t have traceability under the Codex and WTO and FAO international standards without having those three components.

One of the main issues in the implementation of these standards and guidelines within a member nation of the WTO is that they must have a legal framework through which to regulate and enforce these guidelines and standards.

HR 2749 would meet the criteria for that legal framework via the excerpts from the bill above.

In the OIE’s “Guide to Good Farming Practices” the management of a livestock facility are clearly spelled out.

Some of these recommendations that would become defacto law in the US under agency rule-making on passage of HR2749 (GGFP delineates international guidelines for food safety at the farm level) are for each animal, you must keep:

  • All commercial and health documents enabling their exact itinerary to be traced from their farm or establishment to their final destination,
  • A record of all persons entering the farm,
  • Medical certificates of persons working with the animals,
  • Documents proving the water you give to the animals meet specific criteria,
  • Samples of all feed given to the animals,
  • Documents from official inspections,
  • Records of treatment and procedures on all animals (castration, disbudding, calving, medications, etc.)
  • Prevent domestic animals (cats and dogs) from roaming in and around livestock buildings,
  • All of these documents at the disposal of the competent authority (government or veterinary services) when it conducts farm visits.

Some of the other guidelines and standards that would come into play after the implementation of traceability for all agricultural products would be :

  • (from FAO COAG/17 “Development of a Framework for Good Agricultural Practices”)
  • The adoption and implementation of international standards and codes for which Codex food safety standards and guidelines have been designed, and
  • The associated capacity building, training, development and field implementation in the context of the different production systems and agro-ecozones. These include:
    • Enhancing Food Quality and Safety by Strengthening Handling,
    • Processing and Marketing in the Food Chain (214A9);
    • Capacity Building and Risk Analysis Methodologies for Compliance with Food Safety Standards and Pesticide Control (215P1);
    • Food Quality Control and Consumer Protection (221P5);
    • Food Safety Assessment and Rapid Alert System (221P6); and
    • Food Quality and Safety Throughout the Food Chain (221P8).”*

To be certified as meeting the requirements of “GAP,” which is synonymous with being in compliance with international standards and guidelines, we can check out GlobalGAP.org.

This is “the” certifying methodology for international trade in ag products. Here are a few excerpts from their 122 page general regulations booklet that has links to checklists for those who would be certifiers and auditors under the principles of GAP.

GAP is an organization, not a governing body under WTO agreements, that works with nations and businesses to meet the criteria regarding these GAP practices for international trade. Here is a bare minimum of excerpts from their regulation document:

  • (ii) Developing a Good Agricultural Practice (G.A.P.) framework for benchmarking existing assurance schemes and standards including traceability. (iii) Providing guidance for continuous improvement and the development and understanding of best practice. (iv) Establish a single, recognised framework for independent verification.
  • Production Location: A production unit or group of production units, covered by the same ownership, operational procedures, farm management, and GLOBALGAP (EUREPGAP) decision-making activities.
  • Within the context of GLOBALGAP (EUREPGAP) Integrated Farm Assurance this means tracing product from the producer’s immediate customer back to the producer and certified farm.
  • Within the context of GLOBALGAP (EUREPGAP) Integrated Farm Assurance this means tracking product from the producer to his immediate customer.

In simple English, which appears to be highly lacking in all these guidelines, it means NAIS for everything, and for anyone who wishes to be engaged in agriculture. Remember the “grows” phrase from the earlier excerpt from HR2749.

Now let’s look at some of the ‘exception’ clauses in HR2749.

This bill is a terrifically crafty piece of legislation that is designed to cloud the reader’s understanding of the impact of the law being proposed in it.

For example, all of the exception clauses give the exception under this Act so long as you are ready to be regulated under a different Act. We’ll just look at a couple of these clauses to allow you to get the gist of the lack of exception available through the exceptions….

FARMS- A farm is exempt from the requirements of this Act to the extent such farm raises animals from which food is derived that is regulated under the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the Poultry Products Inspection Act, or the Egg Products Inspection Act.

“(I) such an operation that packs or holds food, provided that all food used in such activities is grown, raised, or consumed on such farm or another farm under the same ownership;

“(II) such an operation that manufactures or processes food, provided that all food used in such activities is consumed on such farm or another farm under the same ownership; (pages9 and10)

Thus, if you grow everything you feed and consume, then everything you grow—and use no minerals or salts that you don’t mine yourself—you may be exempt.

Or, in plain English, don’t even try to make a living in agriculture if you won’t comply with these rules.

One more exception to contend with here is:

(A) DIRECT SALES BY FARMS- Food is exempt from the requirements of this subsection if such food is–

(i) produced on a farm; and

(ii) sold by the owner, operator, or agent in charge of such farm directly to a consumer or to a restaurant or grocery store. (page 71)

Thissounds good.

However, there are several problems with this that are not evident without some knowledge of how things are done in the traditional avenues open for market to growers.

First of all, cattle, whom you may recall as the primary target of the NAIS Business Plan, are sold either at auction barns or via potload to feedlots. It is illegal to sell beef directly from the farm to consumers in every state that I know of. People often will sell a calf ready to butcher in halves or quarters to people and deliver the calf to the slaughter facility for the consumer, but this is far from the normal route of commerce in cattle or other species of meat animals. Even if you can securely wedge your operation into this particular exemption, they get you later via the record keeping section of this bill:

‘(E) RECORDKEEPING REGARDING PREVIOUS SOURCES AND SUBSEQUENT RECIPIENTS- For a food or person covered by a limitation or exemption under subparagraph (B), (C), or (D), the Secretary shall require each person who produces, receives, manufactures, processes, packs, transports, distributes, or holds such food to maintain records to identify the immediate previous sources of such food and its ingredients and the immediate subsequent recipients of such food.

‘(F) RECORDKEEPING BY RESTAURANTS AND GROCERY STORES- For a food covered by an exemption under subparagraph (A), restaurants and grocery stores shall keep records documenting the farm that was the source of the food.

‘(G) RECORDKEEPING BY FARMS- For a food covered by an exemption under subparagraph (A), farms shall keep records, in electronic or non-electronic format, for at least 6 months documenting the restaurant or grocery store to which the food was sold.’. (page 74 and 75)

So being exempt means you are required to keep records.

Keeping required records means you may be required to release those records. So how exempt can a person get under this legislation?

Then of course, as with any law, there are the fines and penalties. These are from $20,000 to $1,000,000 per violation. (page 122)

There is also the change under the seizure section that takes away judicial overview…(double quotations indicate amending language)

“. . .procedure in cases under this section shall conform, as nearly as may be, to the procedure in admiralty; except that on demand of either party any issue of fact joined in any such case shall be tried by jury, “”and except that, with respect to proceedings relating to food, Rule G of the Supplemental Rules of Admiralty or Maritime Claims and Asset Forfeiture Actions shall not apply in any such case, exigent circumstances shall be deemed to exist for all seizures brought under this section, and the summons and arrest warrant shall be issued by the clerk of the court without court review in any such case””……pg 116

So we can just throw out that pesky Fourth Amendment to the Constitution and while we’re at it, let’s get rid of probable cause as well via this wording from page 117:

by striking “credible evidence or information indicating” and inserting “reason to believe;”

There are many other dangerous aspects to HR 2749, like seizures, quarantines, and licensing and whistle blower provisions, but this should leave no doubt that this bill will indeed affect ranches and farms, and has the potential to affect even home food production if an agency decides to apply the international risk analysis schemes to that venue.

Now, the questions that everyone involved in agriculture, meaning everyone who eats, must ask themselves are these:

Can regulating, fining and destroying the freedom of people to grow food create food safety?

Have the impacts of Free Trade on this nation been beneficial for the citizens of this country?

Have food safety concerns increased or decreased since we have begun to import more food under these trade agreements?

And ultimately, does the US Constitution provide for the voidance of the Bill of Rights to participate in global trade?

My copy of the Constitution clearly does not allow for any law to void the Bill of Rights which is unalienable and Constitutionally guaranteed. It’s time to let our Federal representatives know in no uncertain terms, that everything to do with governance ultimately comes down to the consent of the governed, and we will not consent to being run by international agencies.

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My deep thanks to Paul Griepentrog, who helped in going through the legislation and many of the ramifications and amendments to current law under this Act.

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Save the Farmer

This is a great country for stepping in and rescuing those who need it. We as Americans do our job so well at home that we’re the first called upon when need arises in other countries with their crisis. We never say no.

But now we’re failing to listen to the calls for help. Even as the calls grow louder, they are being ignored. And we are going to pay a painful price for doing so.

Farmers in this country’ are in a free-fall of despair unlike ever seen. The prices they receive for milk – as set by the US government – don’t cover the cost of producing that milk. One by one, the work force that allowed this country to become independent and self-sustaining is becoming extinct.

We all know that a farming life isn’t easy. Subject to the weather, farmers learn to live with bad years occasionally bro­ken up with a good year. Get upset when a planned event doesn’t go as expected due to the weather? Imaginee if your livelihood depended on the weather.

Then there are the never-ending, must be done on time chores. Not only do the cows need to be milked on a pre­dictable cycle, but they hate going away from the pasture, so let’s rule out taking a vacation for the most part. –

And unlike most jobs where the adults go off to each day and leave the family behind, farming is a family package deal. . Can’t get your teenager to clean his room? What if you had to get him to clean the barn?

So it’s not easy under the best of circumstances, and the year 2009 is hardly that. In addition to losing money as milk prices have declined, costs have gone up for farming, as farm businesses struggle to keep going in a tough economy.

What can the non-farming community do to help our neighbors survive?

Stop by farm stands and farmers markets and buy your vegetables and fruit directly from the grower. Reach for the milk in the grocery store instead of soda. Round up the kids in the neighborhood, take -them to a local farm and say, ‘here, they’re yours for the day. Give them some work.’ Ask what you can do for them.

Also, help get the attention of those in Washington, D.C. that this is a problem that needs to be addressed now. Milk prices need to be set at a level that allows for farmers to make a profit to live on. Ask town and county officials to lend their voices to the appeals for help.

When gas prices go up, out come the arguments on how this country is dependent on oil from other countries.

Imagine if our milk supply and prices were set by another country. What if our vegetables came from elsewhere, with different growing regulations and safety requirements?

Save the farmers. It’s how we’ll save ourselves.


Letter to the Editor Waterville Times August 5, 2009

To the editor:

Anyone who hasn’t been under a rock for the past eight months knows that dairy farmers are experiencing their lowest their lowest incomes since 1978, but their expenses are three times what they were in 1978. The experts told us to hang on until June and milk prices would increase. Guess what folks, milk prices have actually gone down.

Our milk is marketed by DMS (Dairy Marketing Services). We just received the July newsletter. It says, “Everyone in the industry is waiting for the much antici­pated change in the market­place to occur. While much of the information in this Milk Price Update sounds like what we’ve been telling you for some time now, factors are occuring pretty much the way we expected them to occur, The only exception is that dairy cow attrition DUE TO LENDER ACTION has not happened, although it is only a matter of time before it does.”

WHAT??? The in-the-gutter price that we have been receiving is because not enough-lenders have fore­closed on farmers? I suppose that it has nothing to do with the” fact that the processors are paying us hardly anything for our milk, robbing the pub­lic by keeping the price of dairy products artificially high, and filling their back pockets with record profits-AND-the government lets them get away with it with its out-of-date pricing system.

Dairy farmers have been crying for months to our elected officials, but so far it’s been all talk and no action. Farmers and consumers need to call their Congressmen and INSIST that they support the biIlS-889. It’s the only bill out there that deals with the cheap imports that the gov­ernment lets the processors bring into displace our domestic supply. It also deals with supply-manage­ment and cost of production. There are several ideas out there, but the only actual bill is S-889. No other plan deals with imports, and if imports aren’t controlled, then the minute that the price of milk goes up even a little bit the processors will just import more MPC’s (Milk Protein Concentrates) to drive the price right back down.

Pro Ag is sponsoring a sec­ond Farmer’s Rally on Aug. 14 at one o’clock at the West Winfield Middle School. We are asking all producers, agri-business people, and consumers to attend and voice your concerns to our elected officials. It will prob­ably be the one day of the week that it doesn’t rain and farmers will want to hay it, but if milk prices don’t turn around soon, they won’t need any hay.


I scanned the Editoral and a letter to the editor from today’s Waterville Times – a very small weekly newspaper in central NY – that I thought you all might be interested in. They’ve been good about printing our letters and at long last, the Editor is taking up the plight of our dairy farmers, who are 2nd in the US for the worst economic situation. (Only CA beats us for losing the most money in dairy farming.) Two of my closest friends own dairy farms. They are long past hanging on by their fingernails – both have had to take bank loans just to meet their monthly expenses while they try to hang on for the increase in price they were promised in June and which never came.

I will be attending the Pro-Ag Farmer’s Rally and will be printing off some no-NAIS info to hand out – especially since some of our elected officials will be there. Maybe at long last our elected officials will wake up to what NAIS will do to ALL of us with farms in this area.

Karen

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Controlling E. coli in hamburger requires “meat ID” not animal ID

Daryll E. Ray and the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN

July 24, 2009

Food safety has been getting a lot of attention lately. In response to the peanut butter, pistachio, and toll house cookie recalls, the House Energy and Safety Committee has approved the Food Safety Enforcement Act of 2009 to strengthen and expand the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) role in food safety and inspection. To gauge the response of the agricultural community, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing on this legislation.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a White House Food Safety Group was formed by the Obama administration. In July 2009, the Working Group recommended “a new, public health-focused approach to food safety based on three core principles: (1) prioritizing prevention; (2) strengthening surveillance and enforcement; and (3) improving response and recovery”

(http://www.foodsafetyworkinggroup.gov/FSWG_Fact_Sheet.pdf).

In all this, major-crop and livestock farmers are worried that the move toward increased emphasis on food safety will lead to the FDA inspection of farms as part of its role in protecting the integrity of the food ingredients that are produced by farmers. Many involved in beef production are resistant to an animal identification system that would allow traceback to the farm-level.

At the same time, the meat industry, having freed itself from a government-directed inspection through the use of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point program (HACCP), wants to prevent a move back to a greater government involvement in the inspection of meat and meat products.

When considering issues of major importance to a sector—which this one definitely is in the case of agriculture—the rhetoric sometimes out-distances the the reality of the arguments made and fears generated.

In the case of E. coli in beef, there is nothing that cattlemen can or cannot do that will materially affect the probability of E. coli showing up in your hamburger. There is some evidence that taking cattle off the feedlot for a period of time and putting them on pasture prior to slaughter reduces the level but does not eliminate the presence of E. coli and therefore its potential for contamination. So there is no reason for the FDA to use valuable resources to visit cattle ranches or feeding operations as part of “beefing-up” prevention of E. coli contamination from beef.

Since what happens on ranches and feedlots has no effect on whether beef ultimately becomes contaminated with E. coli, traceback to production agriculture—that is, an animal identification system—is not needed to protect consumers from E. coli.

That is not to say that an animal ID program is, or is not, appropriate for other reasons. Recent arguments for animal traceback are primarily concerned with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow disease). While that may be an important issue, it is unrelated to the E. coli discussion.

Traceback is required, of course, but it is MEAT traceback that is needed, not animal traceback.

Meat traceback is needed because E. coli O157:H7 grows in the gut of beef animals, the food safety issue concerns the prevention of the contamination of slaughtered meat from sources like intestines and hides.

When E. coli O157:H7 is found in ground beef or on beef muscle meat surfaces, the problem is one that originates at the packing plant. Since the institution of the HACCP system in meat inspection, the USDA has focused its enforcement at downline facilities that process boxed beef into hamburger and resisted tracing the contamination back to the packing plant that produced the boxed beef.

The USDA has done this despite the knowledge that a processing facility that does no slaughtering lacks a source of E. coli O157:H7. The most likely source of the E. coli is on the surface of meat that came in from the slaughterhouse, thus the need for meat traceback.

The rhetoric of those speaking for meat packers and processors tend to steer attention away from the central issue. James Hodges of the American Meat Institute Foundation makes statements like “No outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 have been linked to whole muscle cuts like steaks and roasts.” Similarly, the North American Meat Processors Association (NAMP) sent out a 2008 NewsFax release saying “NAMP knows of no illness that has resulted from the consumption of intact beef product.”

The issue is not the consumption of steaks, roasts, and intact beef product. Everyone acknowledges that heating the outside of those products to 160 degrees kills E. coli 0157:H7. Rather the problem comes from the fact that the presence of E. coli O157:H7 on the surface of primals is not considered an adulterant. That presence raises the opportunity for cross contamination with other foods or the incorporation of E. coli present on the surface of intact cuts into ground beef.

Cutting through the rhetoric, it seems clear that the USDA can significantly reduce the number of E. coli illnesses by declaring E. coli O157:H7 on the surface of primals to be a contaminant that must be eliminated as part of the slaughtering process and by instituting a meat traceback system that will trace contaminated ground beef back to the packing plant that provided it.

Daryll E. Ray holds the Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy, Institute of Agriculture, University of Tennessee, and is the Director of UT’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center (APAC). Daryll Ray’s column is written with the research and assistance of Harwood D. Schaffer, Research Associate with APAC.

agpolicy.org

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To Control E. Choli – We Need Meat ID, not Cow ID

Daryll E. Ray and the Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN

Food safety has been getting a lot of attention lately. In response to the peanut butter, pistachio, and toll house cookie recalls, the House Energy and Safety Committee has approved the Food Safety Enforcement Act of 2009 to strengthen and expand the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) role in food safety and inspection. To gauge the response of the agricultural community, the House Agriculture Committee held a hearing on this legislation.

At the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue, a White House Food Safety Group was formed by the Obama administration. In July 2009, the Working Group recommended “a new, public health-focused approach to food safety based on three core principles: (1) prioritizing prevention; (2) strengthening surveillance and enforcement; and (3) improving response and recovery”

(http://www.foodsafetyworkinggroup.gov/FSWG_Fact_Sheet.pdf).

In all this, major-crop and livestock farmers are worried that the move toward increased emphasis on food safety will lead to the FDA inspection of farms as part of its role in protecting the integrity of the food ingredients that are produced by farmers. Many involved in beef production are resistant to an animal identification system that would allow traceback to the farm-level.

At the same time, the meat industry, having freed itself from a government-directed inspection through the use of Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point program (HACCP), wants to prevent a move back to a greater government involvement in the inspection of meat and meat products.

When considering issues of major importance to a sector–which this one definitely is in the case of agriculture–the rhetoric sometimes out-distances the the reality of the arguments made and fears generated.

In the case of E. coli in beef, there is nothing that cattlemen can or cannot do that will materially affect the probability of E. coli showing up in your hamburger. There is some evidence that taking cattle off the feedlot for a period of time and putting them on pasture prior to slaughter reduces the level but does not eliminate the presence of E. coli and therefore its potential for contamination. So there is no reason for the FDA to use valuable resources to visit cattle ranches or feeding operations as part of “beefing-up” prevention of E. coli contamination from beef.

Since what happens on ranches and feedlots has no effect on whether beef ultimately becomes contaminated with E. coli, traceback to production agriculture–that is, an animal identification system–is not needed to protect consumers from E. coli.

That is not to say that an animal ID program is, or is not, appropriate for other reasons. Recent arguments for animal traceback are primarily concerned with bovine spongiform encephalopathy (Mad Cow disease). While that may be an important issue, it is unrelated to the E. coli discussion.

Traceback is required, of course, but it is MEAT traceback that is needed, not animal traceback.

Meat traceback is needed because E. coli O157:H7 grows in the gut of beef animals, the food safety issue concerns the prevention of the contamination of slaughtered meat from sources like intestines and hides.

When E. coli O157:H7 is found in ground beef or on beef muscle meat surfaces, the problem is one that originates at the packing plant. Since the institution of the HACCP system in meat inspection, the USDA has focused its enforcement at downline facilities that process boxed beef into hamburger and resisted tracing the contamination back to the packing plant that produced the boxed beef.

The USDA has done this despite the knowledge that a processing facility that does no slaughtering lacks a source of E. coli O157:H7. The most likely source of the E. coli is on the surface of meat that came in from the slaughterhouse, thus the need for meat traceback.

The rhetoric of those speaking for meat packers and processors tend to steer attention away from the central issue. James Hodges of the American Meat Institute Foundation makes statements like “No outbreaks of E. coli O157:H7 have been linked to whole muscle cuts like steaks and roasts.” Similarly, the North American Meat Processors Association (NAMP) sent out a 2008 NewsFax release saying “NAMP knows of no illness that has resulted from the consumption of intact beef product.”

The issue is not the consumption of steaks, roasts, and intact beef product. Everyone acknowledges that heating the outside of those products to 160 degrees kills E. coli 0157:H7. Rather the problem comes from the fact that the presence of E. coli O157:H7 on the surface of primals is not considered an adulterant. That presence raises the opportunity for cross contamination with other foods or the incorporation of E. coli present on the surface of intact cuts into ground beef.

Cutting through the rhetoric, it seems clear that the USDA can significantly reduce the number of E. coli illnesses by declaring E. coli O157:H7 on the surface of primals to be a contaminant that must be eliminated as part of the slaughtering process and by instituting a meat traceback system that will trace contaminated ground beef back to the packing plant that provided it.

Daryll E. Ray holds the Blasingame Chair of Excellence in Agricultural Policy, Institute of Agriculture, University of Tennessee, and is the Director of UT’s Agricultural Policy Analysis Center (APAC). Daryll Ray’s column is written with the research and assistance of Harwood D. Schaffer, Research Associate with APAC.

agpolicy.org

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Organic farmers plead for help from USDA Secretary Vilsap

Written by: Bill Suydam, Editor, Health Spectator

This posting from the Cornucopia Institute is a video that portrays an emergency meeting of organic dairy farmers in Wisconsin pleading with U.S. Department of Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack to level the playing field against factory farms so that small farmers can survive.

One of the ironies of this piece occurs at the beginning, when an emcee approaches the refreshment stand at the fair and notes that bottled water is selling for $2.00—and milk for $0.50.

“Can farmers really be expected to sell milk for one quarter the price of water?” he asks the camera.

The farmers are protesting the fact that many large “organic” dairy farms flaunt the regulations, while “conventional” dairy farms—ironically the current term used for farms that inject their dairy cows with hormones to force them to produce twice as much milk as normal—may milk as many as 7200 cows a day.

Meanwhile, small farmers are finding it tough to survive, and more go out of business every day. This is not what we want to see if we are going to keep ourselves and our children healthy with wholesome products from small, local organic farms.

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NAIS Is A Threat To Small Sustainable Farms and Ranches

From the Underground Food Movement-
Written by: Maria Minno



Sustainable farms, healthy foods, local foods

NAIS Is A Threat To Small Sustainable Farms and Ranches

NAIS is the National Animal Identification, a government system to track animals by injecting them with a computer chip that is read and reported on by the farmer whenever an animal changes places. It will require small farmers to spend a great deal of money on equipment and inserting the chips and reporting any changes, with terrible fines for computer errors, acts of nature, or non-compliance. Large feedlots are virtually exempted from the process, as they need only one chip number for hundreds of animals.

NAIS is a very important issue to me, as well as to small farmers, who produce our healthiest foods in a sustainable manner. It will not help with food safety, however.

The USDA will be in charge of NAIS, and the government is pushing it, because they are being heavily lobbied by the companies who will make millions off of the tags, reading equipment, and data management. It makes it look like they are doing something to promote food safety, yet NAIS is the antithesis of food safety.

The National Animal Identification System is truly frightening to me. Clearly, the modern American food system is not keeping us safe. Yet NAIS is more dangerous than the status quo. It is Orwellian, it threatens small farms, it runs against my beliefs, and is a threat to my basic needs.

It’s not that we do not need vast improvements in food safety to clear up our health crisis and food contamination dangers. We do! But corporate agribusiness pressure is preventing Congress and the USDA from enacting and enforcing true animal health and food safety measures. NAIS is not an animal health or food safety measure.

The USDA has been hearing overwhelming opposition to this measure, from both consumers and farmers. I will add my voice to the choir. I am a nutritional therapy practitioner, and I represent myself, my family, and my clients who rely upon high quality foods from small farms to regain and maintain their health. We all say that NAIS is not the animal health or food safety solution this country needs.

I am suffering from mercury poisoning caused by having a lot of silver fillings, which were removed with no consideration for the toxicity of mercury, and by consuming a lot of catfish that were contaminated with mercury and DDT. In order to survive and get well, I need to eat a lot of the highest quality milk, meat, eggs, and other animal foods. I am very careful about what I purchase, because I feel the quality of my food immediately in my day-to-day well-being. Most of the foods I buy are from small local farmers.

Because of my personal experience, I have changed the way I feed my family. My family members and my grandchildren all eat high quality animal foods from local farms, and I can really see the difference in their health and well being, especially compared to other families we know. My husband recovered from osteopoenia within a year of changing our diet to locally purchased meat and milk, and my son also became much healthier. Local animal foods have saved my life during my difficult struggles with chronic mercury toxicity.

I serve a number of clients who also have serious chronic health problems. Like me, they have found that proper nutrition is much more effective than drugs and medical procedures in improving their health and well-being. These people also rely upon animal foods from small local farms to keep them alive and healthy. If NAIS is implemented, I believe we will have NO MORE local small farms to purchase high quality products from. This is a huge quality of life issue for many people, and may even be a life-and-death issue for me, personally.

Corporate industrial farms may want to use NAIS to improve their overseas sales, and I have no objection to them tagging their own animals. Let them. However, because the tags are known to cause cancer, I wouldn’t want to eat the meat they produce, and I don’t think people from other countries will, either, once they know the tags cause cancer. And NAIS is clearly not the answer to animal health or food safety for food we want to consume in our own country.

I have a friend who did a lot of health care work at the VA hospital in Gainesville. She said that the identification tags the veterans had embedded in their necks, which are very similar to the NAIS tags, caused terrible cancers. Research shows that these tags used on pets are causing cancer, also. I do not want to eat food that has been injected with cancer causing tags. Do you?

The REAL sources of food safety problems are huge confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that concentrate thousands of animals in one location, as well as unsafe practices at the slaughterhouse and in food processing. NAIS traceability ends at the slaughterhouse, so what’s the point?

NAIS requires small farmers and ranchers to track each animal individually, while allowing CAFOs to track all animals under one blanket Group Identification Number. So it will be infinitely easier for the huge and dangerous CAFO’s to comply with NAIS, and impossible for the small farmers and ranchers. Thus, the USDA is promoting factory farms whose practices encourage disease, while putting small farms out of business and destroying the local food movement with their tag requirements and fees. Whose USDA is this, anyway?

What we actually need is small farms scattered all over, especially around urban areas, where the demand is the greatest and the distance the smallest, for energy efficiency and food security. The huge centralized CAFOs clearly are not good for people, for the environment, for animals, or for food safety. They are not even good for the economy, because, like WalMart, they replace the local small businesses (farms) with low-income low-quality slave labor types of jobs.

We need diversified farms, which are more sustainable, healthy, efficient, productive, and safe. If a local farm grows both animals and plants, their ecology supports one another (fertilizer for the plants, food and bugs for the animals). Small, sustainable farms are a pleasure to live near; CAFO’s are a blight.

We need to improve the viability of our own farming sector by making imports more costly, by increasing inspections of imported animals and agricultural products, and barring the entry of animals from countries with known disease problems.

We need to support our small farms, not try to put them out of business with laws and regulations such as NAIS. Read Joel Salatin’s book, “Everything I Want To Do Is Illegal” if you want to hear a funny but true story of the difficulties of producing really high quality food in this country.

We particularly need to improve enforcement of existing laws and inspections of large slaughterhouses and food processing facilities, including unannounced spot inspections. I heard an interesting story about the USDA slaughterhouse near Gainesville. Apparently they were stealing and switching meat, so that high quality grassfed meat that my friend was selling would be replaced at the slaughterhouse by conventional, low quality meat. My friend tried to talk with the slaughterhouse management, but the unethical practice continued. When my friend asked the USDA to intervene, they said that wasn’t their job!

It appears that the USDA sees its job as protecting the huge industrial farms from competition from small farms that produce exceptionally high quality food that is now in high demand.

Where NAIS has been tried already, it has been found to be a resounding failure for all of its stated goals. NAIS is government control and ineptitude magnified a million-fold. Furthermore, it is reminiscent of the practices of Nazi Germany. NAIS may make a few large corporations wealthy (like the tag and reader manufacturers and database managers), but for all the rest of us, it has no redeeming value, and an unacceptable cost.

Please stop this travesty now.

To sign a petition against HR 2749
http://www.ftcldf.org/petitions/pnum993.php

To sign a petition against NAIS
http://www.ftcldf.org/petitions_new.htm

To submit comments regarding NAIS to the USDA
http://animalid.aphis.usda.gov/nais/feedback

For more information on NAIS and HR 2749
http://www.nonais.org/
http://www.ftcldf.org/press/press-08july2009.htm
http://www.ftcldf.org/news/news-02june2009-5.htm

Gainesville Sun editorial on HR 2749
http://www.gainesville.com/article/20090714/NEWS/907149927/1008/WEATHER?Title=Maria-Minno-This-bill-is-a-threat-to-small-farms

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HR 2749: Totalitarian Control of the Food Supply

monsanto-no-foodA new food safety bill is on the fast track in Congress-HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.  The bill needs to be stopped.


HR 2749 gives FDA tremendous power while significantly diminishing existing judicial restraints on actions taken by the agency.  The bill would impose a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme on small farms and local artisanal producers; and it would disproportionately impact their operations for the worse.

Take Action HERE.

HR 2749 does not address underlying causes of food safety problems such as industrial agriculture practices and the consolidation of our food supply.  The industrial food system and food imports are badly in need of effective regulation, but the bill does not specifically direct regulation or resources to these areas.

To read a detailed account of the bill, go to: http://www.ftcldf.org/news/news-15june2009.htm


(Read the section on tracing.  That is NAIS, isn’t it? –  highly disguised yet triggered by the word “trace.”  )

Alarming Provisions:

Some of the more alarming provisions in the bill are:


* HR 2749 would impose an annual registration fee of $500 on any “facility” that holds, processes, or manufactures food. [isn’t this every home in the US, every garden?] Although “farms” are exempt, the agency has defined “farm” narrowly. [What is the definition?] And people making foods such as lacto-fermented vegetables, cheeses, or breads would be required to register and pay the fee, which could drive beginning and small producers out of business during difficult economic times. [Yes.  There are laws against this corporate-size-destroys-the-little-guy policy, aren’t there?  Are home bread or cheese or lacto-fermented vegetable makers who make for their own families included in this?]

* HR 2749 would empower FDA to regulate how crops are raised and harvested.  It puts the federal government right on the farm, dictating to our farmers. [This astounding control opens the door to CODEX.  WTO “good farming practices” will include the elimination of organic farming by eliminating manure, mandating GMO animal feed, imposing animal drugs, and ordering applications of petrochemical fertilizers and pesticides.  Farmers, thus, will be locked not only into the industrialization of once normal and organic farms but into the forced purchase of industry’s products.  They will be slaves on the land, doing the work they are ordered to do – against their own best wisdom – and paying out to industry against their will.

There will be no way to be frugal, to grow one’s own grain to feed the animals, to raise healthy animals without GMO grains or drugs, to work with nature at all.  Grassfed cattle and poultry and hogs will be finished.  So, it’s obvious where control will take us.  And weren’t these the “rumors on the internet” that were dismissed but are clearly the case?]

* HR 2749 would give FDA the power to order a quarantine of a geographic area, including “prohibiting or restricting the movement of food or of any vehicle being used or that has been used to transport or hold such food within the geographic area.”  [This – “that has been used to transport or hold such food” – would mean all cars that have ever brought groceries home so this means ALL TRANSPORTATION can be shut down under this.  This is using food as a cover for martial law.] Under this provision, farmers markets and local food sources could be shut down, even if they are not the source of the contamination.  The agency can halt all movement of all food in a geographic area. [This is also a means of total control over the population under the cover of food, and at any time.]

* HR 2749 would empower FDA to make random warrantless searches of the business records of small farmers and local food producers, without any evidence whatsoever that there has been a violation. [If these bills cover all who “hold food” then this allows for taking of records of anyone at any time on no basis at all.] Even farmers selling direct to consumers would have to provide the federal government with records on where they buy supplies, how they raise their crops, and a list of customers.

[NAIS for animals and all other foods?]

* HR 2749 charges the Secretary of Health and Human Services with establishing a tracing system for food.  Each “person who produces, manufactures, processes, packs, transports, or holds such food” [Is this not every home in the US?]  would have to “maintain the full pedigree of the origin and previous distribution history of the food,” and “establish and maintain a system for tracing the food that is interoperable with the systems established and maintained by other such persons.”  The bill does not explain how far the traceback will extend or how it will be done for multi-ingredient foods.  With all these ambiguities, [with all these ambiguities, it is dangerous, period, separate from the money] it’s far from clear how much it will cost either the farmers or the taxpayers. [It is massive and absurd and burdensome beyond the capacity of people to comply – is this not fascism? – so it is a set up for being used to impose penalties endlessly and/or to eliminate anyone at will.]

* HR 2749 creates severe criminal and civil penalties, including prison terms of up to 10 years and/or fines of up to $100,000 for each violation for individuals. [Does it include judicial review, Congressional oversight, a defined and limited set of penalties and punishments for a defined set of “crimes”?  Or is it entirely ambiguous and left to the whim and sole power of “the Administrator”?  Who is that person set to be?  Is it Michael Taylor, Monsanto lawyer and executive, as Food Democracy has said?  That is, do these bills set up an agency by which the entire US food supply will be turned over to the control of a multinational corporation under WTO regulations (and not to US farmers and not to US laws under the Constitution), with boundless freedom to do what it wants, and one infamous for harm to farmers and lack of safety of food?]

If it was not clear before how frightening these bills were, this small section of provisions, should make their actual fascism clear now. It goes way beyond “food safety” to absolute control over farms, animals, food, and us, including our movements and access to food at all.

Action to Take:

Contact your Representative now!  Ask to speak with the staffer who handles food issues.  Tell them you are opposed to the bill.  Some points to make in telling your Representative why you oppose HR 2749 include:


1.  The bill imposes burdensome requirements while not specifically targeting the industrial food system and food imports, where the real food safety problems lie.

2.  Small farms and local food processors are part of the solution to food safety; lessening the regulatory burden on them will improve food safety.

3.  The bill gives FDA much more power than it has had in the past while making the agency less accountable for its actions.

HR 2749 needs to be defeated!! Please take action NOW.

Take Action HERE.

Or, contact your Representative by using the finder tool at www.Congress.org or send a message through the petition system (the petition will be on our website this evening) at http://www.ftcldf.org/petitions_new.htm.  Or call the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121.

To check the status of HR 2749, go to www.Thomas.gov and type “HR 2749″ in the bill search field.

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