The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (S. 510) squeaked by in the House with a 212-206 vote. But that’s enough to get it sent back to the Senate for another try.
The food safety bill passed the Senate before, but was held up by the House because the Senate had included provisions for collecting fees. According to the Constitution, revenue-raising provisions must originate in the House.
A Brief History of the Food Safety Modernization Act
The House had also voted for a food safety bill of their own, which gave the FDA more powers to recall foods and required more frequent inspections than the Senate bill. The House decided to go with the Senate version because the session of Congress is over in a week or two.
The House took the Senate bill back and rewrote some portions so that the provisions to raise revenue came from the House. Now the House has to send the bill back to the Senate, where it will be voted on again.
Veterans Affairs
In order to hurry things along, the House attached S. 510 to another bill, H.R. 3082, the Military Construction and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act. H.R. 3082 provides spending for Veterans Affairs, mainly for construction and renovation of facilities for training and housing military personnel and also for health services.
What Happens Next?
If the Food Safety Modernization Act passes the Senate this time, it will go to the President. It seems likely that it will pass fairly easily. The food safety bill hasn’t changed much since the Senate passed it before and the Veterans Affairs bill usually goes through with no problem.
Still, you might consider letting your senators know what you think of the bill. You can find your senators here.
Image by Joost J. Bakker IJmuiden, used with Creative Commons license.
This bill has called by some a “food fascism bill”. If you want to learn why it is bad news, go to http://www.healthfreedom.com and find out more, and maybe even get involved. Thanks
This bill is a horrible idea. Illegal gardens. No more small farmers. Virtually no competition for the big farms. Major reduction in crop variation, loss of hybrid vigor. Monsanto wins. Vote against this bill senators. Write your senators and tell them to vote against this bill… http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
Only people they want cheat are against the Food Safety Bill. Small farmers can still sell their products off the farm or on farmers market. It will be hard for them in the future to sell stuff they buy in big stores on the way to the farmers market and sell it as home grown, best organically grown, so they can charge us more money!
What are you protecting? peoples health or producers crime?
Health freedom has been posting the same stuff all along. But, not everyone has read the same thing when reading the bill.
Some people who are into food safety really do find some things worthwhile. But, with each set of amendments, small farmers must be protected. If they are not, there will be no more organic agriculture. The only choice will be toxic conventional, or more toxic herbicide tolerant GE engineering, which alike factory farms IS NOT REGULATED.
If you eat, eat organic. If you cannot buy, grow your own…assuming there are still organic seeds available. Because otherwise, the seeds may be genetically modified with foreign DNA to give new traits, often untested, unlabeled, and unwanted by consumers, to your food.
If you cannot eat organic because seeds are no longer available, eat vegan, eat for high nutrition, avoid peaches, strawberries and apples which are high in toxic pesticides; avoid meat which is fed Genetically modified corn and soy and either make your gut into a pesticide factory or in the case of soy, is herbicide tolerant. Farmers are encouraged to spray and spray and spray mostly Roundup, but also other dangerous pest controls to kill every last weed. The soil is sterilized so that it cannot cause decay, and weeds have to be swept off the fields. At least, that’s what occurred in Argentina.
With toxic chemicals in the soil, the poisons go into crops and the animals and people who eat the crops, or the animals. Rainwater carries the poisons into surface and groundwaters.
Buy a good activated carbon water filter to remove VOC’s in pesticides from the water. The toxic fertilizers contain hazardous wastes that has been recycled from mining and chemical factories. Only a good reverse osmosis filter will remove the toxic heavy metals from your water.
Bottled water is not required to be tested as often or for as many pesticides and other poisons as municipal drinking water from cities. Rural wells are not required to be tested at all. Furthermore, bottled water companies don’t have to tell us what’s in their water. Hence, buy a water purifier and contract with a responsible testing firm that is certified to test the quality of your water.
Next time you vote, do more homework on the candidates and vote based on these health issues.
Pesticides are increasing the rate of cancers in humans and other animals. Exposure to the nearly 1,400 petrochemical pesticides approved by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has been linked to brain/central nervous system, breast, colon, ovarian, lung, kidney, pancreatic, testicular, and stomach cancers, as well as Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin lymphoma, multiple myeloma, and soft tissue sarcoma.
Read: The President’s Cancer Panel 2008-2009 report, Reducing Environmental Cancer Risk. What We Can do Now
http://deainfo.nci.nih.gov/advisory/pcp/annualReports/pcp08-09rpt/PCP_Report_08-09_508.pdf
If this passes, they will use this to control “persons” from growing their own food in the back yard. This also makes farms and resturaunts excempt?
Looks like it’s dead now. Killed yet again in the Senate, and there’s not time to try again.
http://redgreenandblue.org/2010/12/17/food-safety-modernization-act-the-bill-that-wouldnt-die-is-dead/
Dagnabbit.