Food Fight Heads to the Hill
Posted by The Editorial Desk / Friday, April 17th, 2009
Most commercial villains aren’t daft enough to broadcast videos of themselves defiling the food supply:
(Video: YouTube)
The truth is, food tampering is often an invisible crime–at least until it becomes a national pandemic like our back-to-back salmonella scares.
And while almost everyone agrees that protecting what we eat should be a priority, the shape and scope of said safeguards are being hotly debated even as we speak courtesy of H.R. 875 – the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009.
Bill author Rep. Rose DeLauro (D-Conn.) maintains that her plan would:
“set up a farm-to-fork system for protecting foods … and changes the focus from catching violators to preventing disease-causing contamination.”
Pivotal changes to our current food production infrastructure would include the establishment of a new “Food Safety Administration”–to be run by a White House appointed “Administrator of Food Safety”–within the Department of Health and Human Services, and the adoption of a national traceability database designed to “retrieve the history, use and location of an article of food through all stages of its production, processing and distribution” (echoes of the Virginia Peanut Corporation crackdown, no doubt).
Meanwhile, DeLauro has been accused of demagoguery by some who smell a Patriot Act-sized rat rooting around in the farm registry and inspection provisions of the bill:
(Video: YouTube)
Of course, both DeLauro and Monsanto vehemently deny any wrong doing. And neither H.R. 875 nor its Senate companion S. 510 have cleared so much as a single committee yet.
But independent farmers aren’t going to sit idly by on the sidelines.
Sustainable agriculture supporters are planning to plead their case in person Tuesday, April 21, when they fan out across the Capitol for their “Farm Food Voices” lobbying blitz.
Deborah Stockton, executive director of the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, and Polyface Farms operator Joel Salatin are expected to host a reception that evening where locally sourced foods will be served, while the morning will be dedicated to bending solons’ ears and pressing the flesh with congressional aides.
Anxious to write yourself into this David v. Goliath storyline? Head downtown on Tuesday and investigate the issues for yourself.
Otherwise, sit back in silence and wait for the next batch of tainted food to be delivered to your door/favorite restaurant/neighborhood grocery.
–Warren Rojas
Tags: Deborah Stockton, Department of Health and Human Services, Farm Food Voices 2009, farming, food safety, Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, Gut Check, H.R. 875, Joel Salatin, Monsanto, National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, Northern Virginia Magazine, Polyface Farms, Rep. Rose DeLauro, S. 510, sustainable agriculture, Warren Rojas