Thursday, March 5, 2009
HR
875 Would Essentially Outlaw Family Farms In The United States
I get a lot of e-mails each day and one today (hi Cheryl!) pointed my
attention to HR
875,
a bill introduced into the 111th Congress for consideration. SO, I went
and did something that members of Congress rarely do and actually went
and read the
bill,
or more accurately, at least glanced through it which is still more
than they ever do. It was introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT 3rd)
and has around 36 co-sponsors including Congressman Andre Carson (D-IN
7th) as of this writing. It immediately strikes me as being terribly
bad legislation.
Under a heading described as protecting the
public health and ensuring the safety of food it creates a "Food Safety
Administration" within Health and Human Services. Oddly, not just
adding regulations to the FDA (Food and Drug Administration) which is
also under HHS. And don't we have the USDA as well? The bill applies to
all manner of "Food Establishments" and "Food Production Facilities"
(note the following excerpt).
(14) FOOD PRODUCTION
FACILITY- The term ‘food production facility’ means any farm, ranch,
orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding
operation.
The bill would appear to even cover
fishing boats and your downtown hot dog street vendors. In fact, the
bill probably would also apply to your family garden since no exemption
is apparent.
What it essentially does is place a tremendous
regulatory burden on all of these organizations and individuals by
requiring them to have "food safety plans", consider all relevant
hazards [note: I wish Congress would consider all "relevant hazards" or
unintended
consequences
of everything THEY did], testing, sample keeping and to maintain all
kinds of records. The bill also allows the government to dictate all
manner of standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, packaging,
temperature controls and other items.
This massive bloat in
government regulation (and taxpayer expense to support it) would add
additional cost and headache to every farm, fishing boat, restaurant,
slaughterhouse, processing plant, CO-OP and anyone else associated with
growing, storing or processing food. The bill authorizes fines of up to
$1,000,000 (one million) dollars for "each act" and for "each day" of a
violation.
We'll skip over the concern over how important food
production and distribution, largely recession proof, could be if our
economy continues to decline and inflation takes hold and just address
this on the apparent lunacy that it is. As those familiar with history
know, large dominant corporations often will use government to demand
industry regulations that force the small competitor out of business or
introduce barriers to entry that prevent new companies from starting up
to compete. In the early part of the 20th century a tremendous amount
of regulation was written by the industries themselves to be enacted
into law.
In this case, I think this bill could do tremendous
harm to family farms or independent food operators. Only massive
companies have the ability to meet these regulations and imagine the
legal expenses that could be incurred to defend oneself? Never forget,
the government has near unlimited resources where you might have to
cough up $200 to $500 an hour for a good attorney to defend yourself,
your farm, boat, truck, restaurant, orchard, vineyard or hot dog stand.
And what about the increased cost of food associated with the cost of
compliance, it's not unreasonable to think that many places would have
to hire staff or outside assistance just to comply with the law.
We
have an excellent history in the United States of safe food, but as
Obama's Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel suggested recently, "You should
never want a serious crisis to go to waste." He spoke those words
relative to looking for opportunities to do things that people would
not otherwise accept without some crisis. We should be very careful not
to let the very rare instance of something like the recent peanut
problem be used as such a "crisis". There is no impetus to point the
bureaucrats of government and the guns they control, their ability to
not only deprive someone of life or freedom but to destroy whole
families, careers and reputations, at everyone in the country who might
be involved in ensuring we have stuff to eat.
We're doing just fine without this legislation.
--
Stan Norred
281-782-9744
windstalker@windstalker.com
"Be who you are and say what you feel,
because those who mind don't matter
and those who matter don't mind."
- Dr. Seuss -
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Obama to end stem cell research ban
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