House Passes Far-Reaching Food Safety Bill

House Passes Food Safety Bill on Second Try

July 31, 2009

Consumer Affairs - The House of Representatives voted 283-142 to pass the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 (aka H.R. 2749), designed to improve the Food & Drug Administration's (FDA) ability to police food suppliers and processors for signs of foodborne illnesses and unsafe practices.

The bill was originally introduced on June 29, but failed on a vote of 280-150 as the rules required a two-thirds majority for passage. The bill was reintroduced today only requiring a simple majority to pass the chamber. 229 Democrats and 54 Republicans voted to pass the bill that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called "strong legislation that will protect lives and prevent illness..."

Under the terms of the legislation, the FDA's proposed powers include creating a registry of food producers and importers that would be updated regularly, the ability to quarantine potentially unsafe food products from entering particular geographic areas, and levying a fee of $500 on food facilities to fund the new oversight and investigation procedures.

The bill was the subject of contentious debate in the House. Opponents painted the bill as a move by the government to tell farmers how to conduct their business, and that the $500 fees--originally set at $1,000, but later reduced--were still too onerous for small farmers...

House Passes Far-Reaching Food Safety Bill

July 31, 2009

Associated Press – 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.

Farm-state members had argued that the bill would be too invasive on farms and had pushed colleagues to vote against it as it was considered under a special procedure that requires a two-thirds vote. It was rejected Wednesday by a few votes.

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...

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...

The FDA regulates most foods, though as many as 15 federal agencies have a hand in food safety. The Agriculture Department inspects meats, poultry and some eggs.

The bill, which has support from the food industry as well as a wide range of consumer groups, would give the agency the authority to order recalls if a company fails to act on its own, and would increase the frequency of inspections to high-risk food processing facilities. It would charge food processors an annual $500 fee to help defray the cost of increased enforcement.

Sponsors tweaked the legislation in recent days to appease the farm-state members who objected to it. Last-minute changes included modifying the way a trace-back system would work, clarifying that some hard-to-trace products, such as grains, would not be tracked to individual farms. It also lessened paperwork for some farms and clarified that some smaller operations would not have to register with the FDA or pay fees.

Those changes appeased most farm-state Democrats, but many Republicans still voted against it, saying it would be invasive to farmers and not do enough to improve food safety. Oklahoma Rep. Frank Lucas, the top Republican on the House Agriculture Committee, led the charge against the legislation.

HR 2749 - aka "FDA Sheriff" Bill

July 6, 2009

Farm to Consumer - Passage of the FSEA into law would amend the Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA). The bill proposes a substantial increase in power and resources for the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and would significantly diminish existing judicial restraints on actions taken by the agency.

Although the bill includes some provisions that could improve the mainstream food system, many of these are vaguely worded and do not clearly define the scope of the agency’s power, creating the potential for inappropriate application and enforcement.

Small farms and local artisanal producers are part of the solution to the food safety problem in this country; the bill would impose on them a one-size-fits-all regulatory scheme and would disproportionately impact their operations for the worse.

This grab of power by the FDA will allow the following: WARRANTLESS SEARCHES, EXPENSIVE FOOD TRACING SYSTEMS, $100,000 PENALTIES, FARM REGISTRATION FEEs, GARDEN REGULATIONS

Billions of People Expected to Die Under Current Codex Alimentarius Guidelines

July 21, 2009

NaturalNews - In 1995, the FDA issued a policy statement saying that international standards such as Codex Alimentarius would supersede U.S. laws governing all food. Under the Central American Free Trade Agreement, which is illegal under current U.S. law but is legal under international law, the U.S. is required to conform to Codex as it stands on December 31, 2009.

According to the projections of the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), a minimum of 3 billion people will die from the Codex mandated vitamin and mineral guideline alone. As the clock ticks toward this irrevocable December 31, 2009 deadline for full implementation of Codex Alimentarius, the Natural Solutions Foundation (NSF) and its medical director, Dr. Rima Laibow, are feverishly working to change Codex guidelines. They need your help.

Codex is the enemy of everyone except those who will profit from it, according to Dr. Laibow. She points to its association with those who committed crimes during the Nazi regime. At the end of World War II, the Nuremberg tribunal judged Nazis who had committed horrendous crimes against humanity and sentenced them to prison terms. One of those found guilty was the president of the megalithic corporation I.G. Farben, Hermann Schmitz. His company was the largest chemical manufacturing enterprise in the world, and had extraordinary political and economic power and influence with the Hitlerian Nazi state. Farben produced the gas used in the Nazi gas chambers, and the steal for the railroads built to transport people to their deaths.

While serving his prison term, Schmitz looked for an alternative to brute force for controlling people and realized that people could be controlled through their food supply. When he got out of prison, he went to his friends at the United Nations (UN) and laid out a plan to take over the control of food worldwide. A trade commission called Codex Alimentarius (Latin for food code) was re-created under the guise of it being a consumer protection commission. But Codex was never in the business of protecting people. It has always been about money and profits at the expense of people.

In 1962, the timetable was set for Codex to be fully implemented on a global level by December 31, 2009. Under Codex, committees were established to create guidelines on such topics as fish and fisheries, fats and oils, fruits and vegetables, ground nuts, nutrition, food for specialized uses, and vitamins and minerals. There were 27 committees in all, creating a huge bureaucracy. Under Codex there are over 4,000 guidelines and regulations on everything that can be put into your mouth with the exception of pharmaceuticals which are not regulated by Codex...

Codex is an industry dominated regulation setting organization, and as such has no legal standing. Participation in Codex is said to be voluntary. But Codex has risen to the level of de facto legal standing because Codex is administered by the WHO and FAO. They fund it and run it at the request of the UN. Since the WHO and FAO are supposed to be about health, there is conflict of interest. The committees of Codex work up guidelines, rules and regulations, and present them to a Codex commission for ratification. Once they are ratified and approved by consensus, they become mandatory for any country that is a member of the WHO.

Codex was accepted when the WTO was formed in 1994 as a means of harmonizing food standards globally for easy trade between countries. As a result, countries must harmonize with Codex if they want to have any standing in a trade dispute. When disputes arise and countries are pulled in to WTO, the one that is Codex compliant automatically wins, regardless of the merits of its case.

Dr. Gregory Damato, Ph.D., writing for Natural News, has characterized Codex as "population control for money." He sees Codex as run by the U.S. and controlled by the big pharmaceutical corporations and the likes of Monsanto with the purpose of reducing the population of the world to a level considered sustainable by those promulgating the New World Order. This would mean a reduction of approximately 93 percent of the current world population.

Once Codex standards are adopted there will be no turning back. When Codex compliance is instigated in any area, as long as the country remains a member of the WTO, those standards cannot be repealed, or altered in any way...