FLAWED FOOD SAFETY BILLS IN CONGRESS

[Guest guest]

It literally takes about 5 mins to find your reps' phone #s at

www.congress.org, call them, and to tell the staffer who answers that you

urge your rep to oppose these bills.

Is your freedom to eat real whole foods worth 5 mins of your time?

Suze

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IMPORTANT ACTION ALERT

FLAWED FOOD SAFETY BILLS IN CONGRESS

Many of you have been hearing about HR 875, a food safety bill that has been

introduced in Congress. Although much of what has circulated the internet

is not accurate, HR 875 does pose serious problems for sustainable farmers

and their consumers. Unfortunately, there are already four other " food

safety " bills that also pose serious problems: HR 814, HR 759, S 425, and S

510. HR 814 is essentially a mandatory NAIS bill, while the others focus on

produce, processed foods and game under FDA jurisdiction.

Consumers who buy nutrient-dense foods from local, sustainable farmers can

feel secure about the safety of their food. The same is not true for the

majority who buy their food in grocery stores from mass-production

industrialized operations. We understand the pressure that Congress faces

to improve the safety of that mainstream system. But it is critical that

the laws not interfere with the right to choose local foods or with our

farmers' ability to raise safer, healthier foods!

Small sustainable farms are fundamentally different from factory farms, and

should not be regulated the same way! All of the proposed food safety bills

suffer from a " one-size-fits-all " approach. And even though the bills'

sponsors might intend for them to apply only to food crossing state lines,

the federal agencies regularly take a broader view of their jurisdiction.

The FDA's and USDA's past actions clearly show that Congress must place

strict limitations on these agencies, or they will impose burdensome and

unfair regulations and enforcement actions on small farms.

We don't know which of these bills will move forward to committee hearings

-- or perhaps another bill, not yet filed, will be the one to move forward.

So we encourage everyone to send a clear message: Protect our farms from bad

regulation!

TAKE ACTION: Call your U.S. Representative and Senators. If you do not

know who represents you, you can find out at www.congress.org or by calling

the Capitol Switchboard at 202-224-3121. Ask to speak to the staffer who

handles food safety issues.

Talk with the staffer about why you support local foods. Tell them you

oppose the five bills listed above. Ask that they support a food safety

bill that focuses on the real threats to food safety, such as uninspected

imports from China and lax inspections of massive slaughterhouses and other

factory processing, and ask that any new laws explicitly exempt small

farmers. Explain that this issue cannot be left to the agencies' discretion,

and you want a clear focus on the broken factory farm system and not on

small, sustainable farmers.

UPDATE: Congressional Hearing on NAIS

Last Wednesday, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Livestock, Dairy and Poultry

held a hearing on NAIS. The questions and comments of several of the

Subcommittee members revealed that they view NAIS as a food safety program

and critical for animal health in case of a " catastrophic outbreak. " One

member said, in essence, that the costs to farmers financially and in loss

of privacy must be weighed against the " cost in human life " if NAIS isn't

implemented.

Yet USDA continues to provide absolutely no scientific evidence to support

the claim that NAIS will do anything at all to improve animal health or food

safety! What NAIS will do is impose government surveillance and significant

expense on animal owners for no real benefit to the public. The only ones

who will benefit from NAIS are the meat packers and exporters, tag

manufacturers, database managers and other large corporations.

TAKE ACTION #2: You can send written testimony to the Subcommittee before

Friday, March 20. Send your testimony to the Hearing Clerk, ,

at .@...

Put " March 11 Hearing - Animal Identification Programs " in the subject line.

Keep your comments clear, polite, and concise.

And be sure to send a copy to your Representative and Senators! A copy of

your letter to the Subcommittee makes a great follow-up to the phone call we

suggest above.