An interesting bill just passed, one that is designed to provide additional safety to the food supply in our country, and hopefully take deadly illness resulting from food supply down another notch. It reads like an excellent step in the right direction for human kind.
Sad thing, is that it is easy to spin something in a summary, and the biggest concern for me, was that Monsanto was behind this in a big way; and anything that Monsanto is pushing, cannot be good! So I decided to look deeper into this bill, and see what it really says.
First off, you will find that there are a lot of small farmers out there, lining up to complain about this bill. As I was digging into more information on this bill, I kept seeing responses from senators and legislators along the lines of “The farmers are the ones who asked for this bill, this is going to help them.” In addition, more than once I saw something like “farmers will still be able to sell raw milk, and corn off the back of a pickup truck”.
However, as I read into the bill, I realize that those farmers can have the right to sell those items taken away in an instant, based on a hunch. In other words, if officials believe their is a “reasonable” probability that a food could cause harm, then they have the right to suspend the sale, or production of that food. The interesting thing, is that it is illegal to sell raw milk in our state already, so if a farmer is selling it, they must label it as “for pet use only”. According to this new law, it appears as though FDA officials would have the ability to stop the sale of milk to individuals if they could show a reasonable probability that the end user was a person instead of a pet.
It is bad enough that the government has imposed so many fear based rules, but this one is awful. So I was trying to figure out where monsanto was seeing advantage out of this bill. And there was one simple answer. This bill will take foods off of shelves that have risk of bacterial contamination. Monsanto has created genetically modified foods that can withstand the harshest pesticides. They have a corn product that can literally be sprayed with “Round Up”, and not die. It is easy to sell the government on how safe this is because these foods will never be contaminated with e-coli. However, the questions that don’t get asked or answered, are the ones regarding the cancer risk of a so heavily sprayed food, or the possible long term effect on the colon if you put DNA modified foods into it.
It is a sad day for many organic farmers who know this will eventually cause more of their “risky” crops to be discarded, forcing prices up further, and making it harder for the average American to afford organic foods. At this time, I don’t have an action for you, it happened too fast. So at this time, we simply need to wait, and pray that this won’t have an awful impact on us overnight. Lastly, I encourage everyone of you to plant your own gardens and tend to them every year! God Bless.