Friday, June 10, 2011

FDA's Power Grows Exponentially

We were among those who warned about this legislation.

The FDA is in the midst of writing the critical regulations that will implement the Food Safety Modernization Act Congress passed last year with applause all around from the Obama administration, Democrats and Republicans despite ferocious opposition from small-farm advocates. The sweeping new law gives the agency extraordinary powers to detain foods on farms. It also denies farmers recourse to federal courts.

On July 3, the agency will issue its new rule to detain any food it believes is unsafe, or, more critically, "mislabeled." In Allgyer's case, the entire FDA case rests on a technical violation of a ban on interstate commerce in raw milk and alleged mislabeling.

Before the new law, the FDA could only impound food when it had credible evidence the food was contaminated or posed a public health hazard. The detention powers are part of what Taylor described as a new agency focus on preventing food poisoning outbreaks rather than responding to them after the fact. Taylor described the new law as giving the agency "farm to table" control over food safety.

Taylor outlined an aggressive approach, saying he would seek a "high rate of compliance" with new food safety rules, touted the agency's "whole new inspection and compliance tool kit," including access to farm records, mandatory recall authority, and enforcement actions that can be accomplished administratively, "without having to go to court." He said the agency can now also revoke a farm's mandatory registration (also a new requirement under the law), meaning the FDA can put any farm it finds in violation of any food safety rule out of business.

The regs, as you might guess, will crucify the small farms.

Produce regs are next.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Taylor can take his FDA regulations, his Monsanto Round up, and all of his Monsanto GMO seeds and shove them up his rectum.

For more information and an interesting take on the issue Go to this link and read two postings
http://barnhardt.biz/index.cfm

1. OPEN LETTER FROM A USDA EMPLOYEE
2. WARNING: OBAMA REGIME FORMING "RURAL COUNCIL"

Also there is a way to beat up government officials and make them back off but it requires grass root effort. A Raw Milk Buying club in Louisville succeeded in forcing government to back off.
Read the five suggestions as guidance for food clubs and herdshares to make government back off at:

http://www.thecompletepatient.com/journal/2011/6/7/learning-to-live-on-a-war-footing-louisville-buying-club-kno.html

Anonymous said...

Oh im sorry, Mr. Taylot there is one aditional item you need add! Please dont' forget to shove Monsanto's recombinant bovine growth hormone (rBGH) up there also...... Have a nice day!

Dad29 said...

SHoving recombinant BGH up there might make Taylor a REALLY big ass.

Are you sure that's what you want?

TerryN said...

Gee whiz. Just think what the two words, hope and change, have wrought.

neomom said...

Unfortunately TerryN - this bill was very much bipartisan. My supposedly conservative senator was a whole-hearted supporter even though we had very active letter/call/email campaigns to convince him otherwise.

Shows we still have a ways to go to clean out the Washington cesspool. 2010 was just the first step.

Anonymous said...

Update

http://www.takepart.com/news/2011/08/04/armed-cops-raid-health-food-store-in-raw-milk-crackdown-video


An example is the recent Rawsome Food raid in Los Angeles. If you haven't read the accounts of the raid, armed cops and all, you might want to do some sniffing about because the buzz we're getting it that a few posts have gone speculating that a major competitor may have had a hand in this, and whether or not the purely speculative buzz on the net is clear, the possible use of government by and for the benefit of corporations is becoming more and more of an issue.

One reason? Corporations are usurping human rights as "corporate rights" and while the jury is out on whether Rawsome's experience was a clear-cut case of corpgov joint action against a "people-based challenger" to a corporate good thing, the line is much less blurred in the exercise of government powers in such areas as no-bid selling off of state resources, extreme use of 'eminent domain' as an economic benefit to corporations, or here lately, the increased use of (now unlimited) corporate money to buy candidates to put up for office.

Anonymous said...

Here is another Lead for the DC Mind

In Vernon Hershberger's Decision "Not to Join in Their Game," But Rely on Local Support for Raw Milk Distribution...a Way Around the WI Bossman?

http://www.thecompletepatient.com/journal/2011/9/18/in-vernon-hershbergers-decision-not-to-join-in-their-game-bu.html