Flashback: Obama Signs Food Safety Modernization Act into Law

December has turned out to be a very good month for the Bilderbergers. The Food Modernization Act was signed into law, a bipartisan committee is voting for austerity measures against the people under the pretext of deficit reduction, Obama signed into law the tax package to destroy Social Security, the world's mayors signed a pact (prior to the UN climate change summit in Cancun, Mexico) to tax carbon emissions, California approved the creation of a cap-and-trade system (hoping other states will follow), the FCC adopted 'net neutrality' rules as a justification to seize more power (and to put an end to free and open internet) and, four days before Christmas, the new START Treaty (a nuclear pact with Russia) cleared its last Senate hurdle before ratification.

Patriot Act for Food: A Close Look at Bizarre Propaganda for S.510

November 30, 2010

Food Freedom - Need a good laugh? Check out the bizarre reasoning offered in support of the Patriot Act for Food (S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act), which the U.S. Senate will vote on shortly (likely Monday). From a need to stop food smuggling, to the law is too old, to the terrorists are gonna get us, elites sure are shy on brains when it comes to credible propaganda. They must be drinking fluoridated water and smoking Monsanto marijuana, or hoping you are.

A couple weeks ago, we reported that Senator Bob Casey informed his Pennsylvania constituents that S.510 will stop food smuggling in the United States. Never heard of the problem? That might be because the “biggest food smuggling case in the history of the U.S.” amounted to $40 million worth of commercial grade honey over a five-year period. Food smuggling is clearly not a problem -- nor is it a fiscally sound reason for giving the Food and Drug Administration an extra $1.6 billion.

Admittedly, no one is accusing U.S. elites of being fiscally sound -- just look at our rising unemployment, hunger, and home foreclosure rates. Clearly, food smuggling is just bizarre bunk that lazy propagandists invented out of thin air.

Next, the well-regarded Christian Science Monitor listed as the “strongest argument for the bill” -- get this -- because the law in place is too old. Nothing about whether or not the old law is effective, nothing about the tens of thousands of deaths the FDA causes each year by the drugs it allows on the market. No -- that very agency needs more power, more money, more authority over what’s on your table, according to S.510 supporters.

Here’s some more penetrating analysis by CSM:

Would SB 510 put America’s cornucopia under the control of a “globalist mafia” led by the World Trade Organization?

No. Some people have been concerned that the bill would give international groups more power over food matters in the US. The bill does state that the US will not knowingly break any existing agreements with the World Trade Organization, but it doesn’t cede any inspection or enforcement powers to international agencies.

Merely because the bill does not cede inspection or enforcement powers to foreign agents does not preclude domestic ones from inspection and enforcement authority. CSM’s response is absurd, as well as deceptive. The correct answer is YES, SB 510 puts US food under the control of the WTO. Read the section and decide for yourself:

SEC. 404. COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS.

Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed in a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the United States is a party.

Black is white; war is peace; and who are you going to believe: corporate media or your own ability to read plain English?

And, who is the enforcement agency for these agreements? Why, the DHS, otherwise known as the:

• Dept. of Homeland Stupidity -- you know, those folks who want to build a bioterrorism lab in the middle of Tornado Alley, where a huge bulk of the nation’s food is grown and raised (map here);


• Dept. of Heck-of-a-Job Security that miserably failed New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and has again failed the Gulf of Mexico following the BP oil catastrophe this year;


• Dept. of Homeland Perversity that sexually molests children and adults who travel by air, that is collecting naked images of those who pass thru their carcinogenic body scanners, and which has not prevented a single terrorist from boarding a plane.

That’s who’s going to be in charge of protecting the US food supply. Feel safer?

This leads us to the latest absurdity emanating from the federal government: The terrorists are going to try to poison us. Like the “red menace” that was so effective a bogeyman in the last century, the Muslim “terrorist” is this century’s bogeyman. It’s just as overblown.

How are terrorists going to poison the food supply? Seriously, that might be accomplished in a centralized food system that is forced to adulterate natural foods because laws and rules have decreed it or allowed it -- like the FDA allowing BPA, fluoride, chlorine, pesticides -- all known poisons. Notice how sick Americans are compared to the rest of the world? You can thank the alphabet soup of federal agencies that allows our skies, lands and waters, and thus our food, to be poisoned by industrial processes.

It’s nearly impossible to poison the food supply under a decentralized scenario with tens of millions of producers and distributors. Food safety is enhanced by decentralization and localization, not by allowing monopoly production as we have now in the U.S. Centralizing control in the hands of a few people who used to work for Monsanto, the company that brought us PCBs, DDT, rBST, Agent Orange, aspartame, and glyphosate, amounts to a clear and present danger to our health, and certainly to our food safety. But that’s what S.510 intends to do.

How likely is a terrorist attack on the US food supply? About as likely as 19 Muslims destroying four significant structures without a defensive response from the world’s largest and most technologically advanced military.

The threat to our food safety lies within, from a corrupt and bloated federal government owned and controlled by pharmaceutical, chemical and biotech corporations, not from outside our borders.

The entire food “safety” legislative scheme at the federal level is really a “food control” scheme backed by corporate monopolies. It is part and parcel of the Full Spectrum Dominance plan to control every aspect of human life.

“Control the food and you control the people,” planned Henry Kissinger back in the 1970s.

We might expect more effective propaganda when going for complete control over our natural born right to sustain ourselves as we deem fit, but we’d be expecting too much from this crop of elites. Rather than intelligence, they rely on brute force and hyper-regulation in destroying small producers and distributors of natural, unadulterated food.

To view a list of articles that detail the dangers of such legislation, click here.

Welcome to the food wars.

Obama Signs Food Safety Modernization Act into Law

December 23, 2010

Macon County News - President Barack Obama has signed into law sweeping new legislation that will give expanded powers and a new mandate to the Food and Drug Administration. The 2010 Food Safety Modernization Act marks the most significant change regarding the oversight of the national food supply in 70 years and is expected to cost $1.4 billion over the next four years, including the expense of hiring more than 2,000 new FDA inspectors.

Versions of the bill, written in response to a number of high profile cases of food contamination, had been floating around Congress for almost two years. Less than a month ago, the Senate had passed an almost identical bill, but that bill was tripped up by a constitutional rule stating that all legislation with revenue provisions must originate in the House of Representatives. This made Senate Bill 510 a nonstarter. Most predicted that a revision of the bill would have little to no chance in getting through the lame-duck Congress a second time and that the bill would be killed until the the 2011 session. A similar bill was attached by House lawmakers to a omnibus spending package, but that legislation, too, was blocked.

However, with only days left in this Congress, the Senate unanimously passed a new Food Safety Bill through a bit of nimble legislative gymnastics. On Wednesday, the bill was then sent to the House where it passed by a 215-144 vote.

While the bill received broad bipartisan support among legislators, opponents of the law say it will be ineffective against the big industrial food processors it is intended to regulate while at the same time endangering the livelihoods of small and organic farmers as well as the rights of people to choose their own food and vitamin supplements. Among other powers, the law gives the FDA a mandate to inspect processing plants, order recalls and impose stricter standards for imported foods.

The final bill that was signed into law yesterday does include a series of amendments sponsored by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Montana) and Sen. Kay R. Hagan (D-North Carolina) -- amendments intended to protect small farmers from onerous new regulations. These amendments include exemptions for farms that generate less than $500,000 annually and farms that only sell food directly to people, stores or restaurants within a 275 mile radius. An additional provision sponsored by Hagan offers protections from erroneous recalls.

Both right-wing groups and grassroots advocates for farmers and consumers of local, organic foods are calling the last minute legislating slippery politics. Some have even called it a betrayal by lame-duck representatives. Others are taking a wait and see attitude about the new law and the impact it may or may not have on the rights of people to choose their own food.

Emily Dale, a former chairperson of the Macon County Planning Board, says she is wary of the new law.

“While the Tester-Hagan amendment in S 510 certainly gave some breathing room to our local farmers and purveyors of homemade food items, I am still concerned about some of the language that keeps a foot in the door for further controls,” she said.

Dale goes on to note that the law adds yet another layer of regulations to those which the FDA and the USDA are already charged with carrying out, duties which she believes the agencies have never carried out sufficiently in the past.

In addition, Dale and others are concerned that the legislative process has been monopolized by large corporate lobby groups being funded by multi-national corporations such as Monsanto who have a vested interest in harmonizing international laws and controlling access to food as well as vitamin and minerals supplements.

Others claim that the law will not be cost effective. However, new estimates released by the federal Centers for Disease Control this month say that about 48 million people --— or about one in six Americans -- are sickened, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die each year from foodborne illnesses. Advocates of the law say that such numbers justify the FDA’s new mandate and will actually save the country money.