As a concerned citizen and gardener who sees a threat to small farms due to regulations which will make it cost prohibitive for them to operate:

The latest food Bills S425 and HR875 bills are carefully worded to benefit corporate farming conglomerates, chemical corps, and GMO seed producers such as Monsanto, ADM, Cargyle, and others. The added bureaucracy, regulations, inspections and fines would make it difficult for the small farmer to compete.

I have been contacting small farmers and many are, at first, leery that this is true. Advertising works and agribusiness and the Monsantos have a big budget devoted to "advertising". It looks like they really want these to go through. Even some farm organizations (in the pockets of the corporate run government) which are opposing it have been posturing themselves against the realistic appraisals of how bad this will be. They are doing a very good job of setting things up to force acceptance of this with only minor concessions.

Once the Bills have been carefully looked at, it becomes obvious to them they should not be implemented. I have read both these Bills and they serve the corporate farming conglomerates, chemical corps, and GMO seed producers agenda. These Bills are overlapping and have vague definitions to give wide reaching scope.

Please do not support these Bills. They are NOT truly public safety related. They are designed to benefit large agribusiness and hurt small farming. If these Bills are implemented,they will make the 80s farm crisis look like a walk in the park.

Anyone interested in more information and a detailed breakdown of these Bills may email me - pturner1@columbus.rr.com

What is hard on the small farmer, may well be hard on many of us.
Paul Turner

I am afraid I have to agree with Wayne in that you are now cutting and pasting from your own previous postings here Paul. You aren't even checking the paste jobs for your previous inaccuracies. You are STIL claiming that it is S424 when you have already acknowledged that it is S425 that is the problem.

Is Monsanto Planting Seeds In the White House?

President Obama is considering appointing Michael Taylor to head the new Food Safety Working Group.

"Mr. Taylor is a lawyer who began his revolving door adventures as counsel to FDA. He then moved to King & Spalding, a private-sector law firm representing Monsanto, a leading agricultural biotechnology company. In 1991 he returned to the FDA as Deputy Commissioner for Policy, where he was part of the team that issued the agency's decidedly industry-friendly policy on food biotechnology and that approved the use of Monsanto's genetically engineered growth hormone in dairy cows.

Taylor was responsible for writing the rBGH labeling guidelines for the FDA. The guidelines specifically prohibited dairies from stating that their products contained or were free of rBGH.

The appointment of Michael Taylor to the Food Safety Working Group would really belie Obama's pledge not to appoint lobbyists to positions within his administration."

http://www.opednews.com/articl...ller-090324-445.html

Hooray,

We can start another Revolution.

A Good Revolution.

Which will make this depression/recession
look like a stick of candy.

We don't need the Government to
tell us what to do.

Prohibition will be nothing,
compared with Our Food Revolution.

OK let get going.

LOL,
bill in socal

quote:

Originally posted by WilsonPWT:
Is Monsanto Planting Seeds In the White House?

President Obama is considering appointing Michael Taylor to head the new Food Safety Working Group.

"Mr. Taylor is a lawyer who began his revolving door adventures as counsel to FDA. He then moved to King & Spalding, a private-sector law firm ......

The appointment of Michael Taylor to the Food Safety Working Group would really belie Obama's pledge not to appoint lobbyists to positions within his administration."

Perhaps you are unaware that there is a difference between being a lawyer and being a lobbyist. If you are, then would you please outline the lobbying activities Mr. Taylor has engaged in on behalf of Monsanto since 1991?

While you are at it, would you also please outline your knowledge of the work Mr. Taylor performed for the Monsanto account of King and Spalding? (He was one of about 800 lawyers the firm employed around the world.) Please be specific about his iactual involvement with Monsanto.

This shouldn't be too much to ask of you if you wish us to take your numerous cut and paste articles seriously.

Wayne

quote:

Is Monsanto Planting Seeds In the White House?

President Obama is considering appointing Michael Taylor to head the new Food Safety Working Group.

"Mr. Taylor is a lawyer who began his revolving door adventures as counsel to FDA. He then moved to King & Spalding, a private-sector law firm representing Monsanto, a leading agricultural biotechnology company. In 1991 he returned to the FDA as Deputy Commissioner for Policy, where he was part of the team that issued the agency's decidedly industry-friendly policy on food biotechnology and that approved the use of Monsanto's genetically engineered growth hormone in dairy cows.

Taylor was responsible for writing the rBGH labeling guidelines for the FDA. The guidelines specifically prohibited dairies from stating that their products contained or were free of rBGH.

The involvement of Michael Taylor as a lawyer and lobbyist for Monsanto is up for debate and perhaps the author of the story would shed more light on this.
http://www.opednews.com/articl...ller-090324-445.html

"In 1994, Mr. Taylor moved to USDA to become administrator of its Food Safety and Inspection Service... After another stint in private legal practice with King & Spalding, Mr. Taylor again joined Monsanto as Vice President for Public Policy in 1998.

The man has moved in and out of roles at the federal government and Monsanto so many times he probably has whiplash." Asher Miller
Executive Director of Post Carbon Institute

http://www.opednews.com/articl...ller-090324-445.html

Having had a friend who worked many years for Pioneer, I fear them, Monsanto and ADM.
Having another friend who is an attorney and sustainable living advocate, he says the devil is in the details and the problems with these bills are not what is specifically written into them. The problems arise from the "regs", or regulations which are written by bureaucrats who come under the sway of corporate America easily. These guys fall over backwards to write what the corporate board members want in those regs. How do they know the corporate wishes? They talk about them over golf weekends in Hilton Head or while they're attending March Madness via the company jet or on the company tab.
Lots of folks laughed at my grandpappy back in 1936 when he predicted that hemp would be made illegal. And does anyone know how that came about? Anyone ever see the research on the economic impact of that action in states where hemp was a major crop?

Below is from Alex Tiller. He runs a national farm management company.

"the bill as it stands would be a terrible idea, one that does nothing to enhance food safety but instead makes it impossible for small producers to compete with the big companies, often imposing what amounts to de facto bans on organic produce or naturally-gathered food and game. "
http://blog.alextiller.com/Blo...ID=2729&PostID=58102

And this is from LeaveMyFoodAlone.org:
"HR 875, in its current form, the bill could prevent small local organic farms and community gardeners from growing and selling you nutritious, truly fresh, organic produce. It would crush our small local food producers by imposing heavy government regulation that only large corporations could adhere to."
http://www.leavemyfoodalone.org/

The first of the two links worked for me. It leads to the PDF file of S.425, the Senate version of HR 875. Thanks a lot for sharing.

Below is from "A Walk Through HR 875", written by Sue Diederich and Linn Cohen-Cole

THEY NEVER MENTION SEEDS BUT THIS IS PRECISELY HOW THEY WILL CRIMINALIZE SEED BANKING AND ALL HOLDINGS OF SEEDS.

[Notice they mention harvesting, sorting and storage operations, then watch below.

To follow how this will be done, you must understand that:

1. there is a small list inside the FDA called "sources of seed contamination"
2. in which they have now defined "seed" as food,
3. so seeds can be controlled under "food safety."
Those seeds (so far) include:

seeds eaten raw such as flax, poppy sesame, etc.;
sprouting seeds such as wheat, beans, alfalfa, most greens, etc.;
seeds pressed into oils such as corn, sunflower, canola, etc.;
seeds used as animal feed such as soy ....

That is most seeds. Seeds are essential to life and thus to freedom.

The "sources of seed contamination" include six items:
agricultural water, manure (but NOT chemical pesticides or fertilizers) harvesting, transporting and seed cleaning equipment seed storage facilities

What you must realize is that seed cleaning equipment is THE single most critical piece of equipment for sustainable agriculture. It is how we save organic seed. It is the machinery used after plants "go to seed" to separate out (sort) the seeds from the plant material so the farmer can collect (harvest) and then save (put in storage) seed for the next year at little cost. With his own seed, the farmer stays free of patented, genetically engineered, corporately privatized seeds.

You must also understand that Monsanto is getting rid of the people who do the seed cleaning and many other means of our having access to seed .

This year, 2009, seed cleaning equipment is now illegal in some parts of the country which tips us off to both the intent to control seeds in this way and to how they could do things under this bill.

How can they make such vital equipment illegal? Quietly, and by saying it contaminates food.

"Contaminate" is their favorite word since the public fears the deadly contamination that industry itself - not farmers - has caused. Scare the public and thus push for "food safety standards" to be set.

And to eliminate seed cleaning equipment, they have now set the standards so seed cleaning (the simple separation of seed from plant) will now require a million to a million and a half dollar building and/or equipment ... per line of seed.

So, a farmer who has been seed cleaning flax for 40 years with a hand made seed cleaner can't sell flax on the market anymore, though there are NO instances of anyone ever having gotten sick from seed cleaning equipment. A farmer who has been cleaning wheat, corn and soy each year with the same perfectly fine equipment would now need three to four and half million dollars for three pieces of equipment to continue."