Posted 07:00 PM ET
Big Government: A questionable food safety bill in search of a crisis passed the Senate, but may hit a snag in the House. This power grab of the nation's food supply may end up benefiting a certain Hungarian billionaire.
Why would the Senate take up precious time in the lame duck session considering a food safety bill?
Just as ObamaCare wasn't really about health care reform but about government power, S510 is not really about food safety but about government control of agriculture and the nation's food producers. The Food Safety Modernization Act would give the Food and Drug Administration unprecedented power to govern how farmers produce their crops. The FDA would be able to control soil, water, hygiene, and even temperature, on farms. Through the law, the agency could regulate animal activity in the fields.
"This legislation means that parents who tell their kids to eat their spinach can be assured it won't make them sick," said Sen. Tom Harkin, D-Iowa, who wrote the bill, referring to a recent e-coli outbreak traced to spinach.
A crisis is a terrible thing to waste, even if you have to manufacture one. As the Heritage Foundation reports, the nation's food supply is the world's safest and getting safer all the time. Incidences of food-borne illnesses, despite headlines about massive egg recalls, have been declining for more than a decade.
In 1996, there were 51.2 cases of confirmed food-borne bacterial contamination per 100,000 people.
By 2009, this fell by a third to 34.8 cases per 100,000 people. So it would seem it's getting safer for kids to eat their spinach. But then again, this bill isn't about spinach.
S510 transfers authority over food regulation enforcement from the FDA to the Homeland Security Department, which brought us the TSA, naked body scanners and the groping of our junk. The bill requires the EPA to "participate" in regulating the food chain.
The bill expands government authority and control over America's 2.2 million farms, 28,000 food manufacturing facilities, 149,000 food and beverage stores, and 505,000 residents and similar facilities. It increases inspections of all food "facilities."
Because it taxes them for the privilege, the House must pass a new version of the bill to be sent back to the Senate. The Constitution requires all tax bills to originate in the House, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who opened the session with a five-minute soliloquy on football, should have known that.
One interesting feature of the bill is a bunch of new regulations regarding seeds and seed cleaning that requires expensive equipment. Smaller concerns might not be able to handle the added burden, concentrating the handling of seed production in the hands of corporate giants like Monsanto.
Curiously, George Soros' hedge fund has just bought 897,813 shares (valued at $312.6 million) of Monsanto. His hand seems to be in anything that weakens individual freedom and destabilizes currencies and free governments, and makes him money in the process.
Governments at all levels have been busy telling us what we should eat and how our restaurants should prepare our food. Trans fats are bad and must be banned, as must vending machines that dispense candy bars and soda. There's talk of putting federally funded salad bars in our public schools.
So much for the pursuit of happiness — we're from the government and we have ways to make you healthy. Thomas Jefferson once said: "If people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny."
Well, ObamaCare has taken care of the medicine part, and now government is after our spinach, too.
You can have our turnips when you pry them from our cold, dead hands. Bon appetit, America.
Source: Investors.com
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