Food “Safety” Bill Empowers Monsanto To Control Food Industry

“If you control the food, you can control the people.” – Henry Kissinger

by Stephanie Spinelli
TruthSquad.TV
1/13/2011

Under the guise of protecting Americans from food-borne illnesses, Congress has passed the S510 Food Safety Act, granting unlimited power to the FDA to oversee the processing of food from farm to table.  The FDA has led the public to believe over a number of years that we desperately need government protection from food-borne illnesses.  As a result of this manipulation, the S510 Food Safety has been passed without opposition.  Ironically, the regulatory actions made possible by this bill will only promote the type of farming that produces food borne illnesses.

The S510 Food Safety Act will regulate the entire process of food production from every source in the United States.  Farms must submit to government inspections and have safety documentation on record for 2 years.  This documentation must be made promptly available upon oral or written request by an FDA agent. Farms are responsible for the fees associated with their own inspections.  The FDA will also oversee food transportation within the United States; food imported from other countries will not be regulated but must simply carry a guarantee of safety by the exporting country.  This imbalance in addition to the bill-related costs imposed on farmers will cause prices of locally produced food to increase exponentially.

Starting with the enactment of Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) measures by President Bill Clinton in the 90’s, the biotech/agribusiness industry has been making the necessary moves to arrive at this point; while HACCP is focused on prevention, the S510 Food Safety is focused on inspection. Combined, these laws will enable the FDA to completely control the process of food production. As if controlling our food weren’t enough, the agribusiness industry is voraciously seeking to have vitamins and supplements be redefined as drugs, so that the FDA can limit the amount that can be legally purchased.  Once we can no longer take the proper amounts of nutrients for prevention of disease, we will be forced to turn to the pharmaceutical industry for medication.

As the bill is written, the FDA must consult with “farmer representatives” to publish guides for good practice.  The farmer representatives will no doubt include Monsanto, the biotech company standing behind the bill that stands to benefit from it the most. The FDA is intimately linked with Monsanto – Michael Taylor, a lawyer who volleys between an appointed post at the FDA and employment by Monsanto, pushed through the concept of “substantial equivalence”, which opened the doors for Monsanto to flood the market with unlabeled Genetically Modified Organisms (GMO’s).  In July 2009, the Obama Administration appointed Taylor “Food & Drug Czar” as head of the FDA. This move ensures Monsanto’s influence of its own regulation. The fox now has the keys to the hen house.

S510 grants the FDA and in turn, Monsanto, unbridled power to make all of their own rules for governing food going forward:

‘(d) No Limit on Secretarial Authority- Nothing in this section shall be construed to limit the ability of the Secretary to review and act upon information from food testing, including determining the sufficiency of such information and testing.’

The FDA will determine if, when, and what types of food safety testing are necessary. “In the interest of national security”, the FDA will decide what information will be made available to the public.  In keeping with their trend of raiding farms and markets that sell raw milk, the bill also provides for the organizing, training and equipping of animal, plant, and food emergency response teams.

The L.A. Times reported that in June of 2010, four officers raided Rawesome Foods, an organic food co-op in Venice California, with their guns drawn. The officers were in search of raw, unpasteurized milk. Cartons of raw goat’s and cow’s milk as well as blocks of unpasteurized goat cheese were among the groceries seized by federal, state and local authorities. If raw milk could produce such an excessive show of force when there were no laws being broken, what will happen now that there is a law in place?

Interestingly, the bill includes a provision requiring parents to provide documentation to their children’s school regarding any food allergies their children have.  On the surface, giving the school administration advance notice of an allergy seems like a good thing; however, as Truth Squad has previously reported, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) “Fusion Centers” across the country are consolidating and standardizing the databases of local and federal agencies in an attempt to fight foreign and domestic terrorism. These “fusion centers” violate the 4^th & 5^th Constitutional Amendments and set up frightening Stasi-like government lists, with no judge, no jury, no due process. Do you want your child in the DHS database?

Since the bill was first introduced in March of 2009, articles written about it have done their best to squelch any fears consumers might have of losing their favorite local farmers’ markets by supposing they would not be included.  This created false hope: Within the US, “very small businesses” are to be regulated, including farmers markets, farm stands and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA’s).  In fact, the only exclusion is food grown for personal consumption.  In other words, our only hope is to each learn how to grow our own food, because the day is coming when that will be the only food safe to eat.

[caption id="attachment_196" align="alignleft" width="300" caption="Police raid organic market with guns drawn. "][/caption]

“If you control the food, you can control the people.” – Henry Kissinger