H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009

[unswydd]

Thank God! This is getting a bit scary.

[herbalpagan]

I understand what you mean about nightmares! Over regulation is no better than under regulation and it always leads to some over zealous guy coming down on the wrong faction.:mad:
The part about it not affecting us, the home gardener, is in the Senate bill (might also be in the house version) and it said when talking about the "producer" as being one who produced, other than mainly for personal and home consumption.
Do you remember a while back how a couple of cows with mad cow disease got into the food chain and they had a hard time tracking where they came from? The government wanted all animals tagged and registered to prevent that. This is just the same thing, only it includes produce as well. Given the spinach problem (caused by feral pigs pooping in the spinach patch) that gave hundreds of people illness, some fine person decided that that registration the farmers with cows go through, should also included farmers who produce other stuff too. Basically a sound idea, but without being aware of the ripple effect it has on people like us. For your farmer's market folks, in actuality, it probably won't affect them other than perhaps some extra paperwork. It also hasn't gone through and with all the financial crisis, it probably won't. To the best of my knowledge, it truely did not say anything about home gardens being included and at one point specifically mentioned they were not included. I hope that lays your fears to rest.:)

[tony]

I can't say I read all of it, but where does it specifically exclude the home garden and small farm (a few chickens, pigs and goats)? I will share my vegetables and eggs with family and friends. Doesn't this make me a small farm, producing and distributing food? It talks a lot about transporting across state lines and if I'm correct, that's all the federal government can enforce.. I think.. But, it still prohibits a lot and is unclear what.

It does sound like it's aimed toward mid-sized farms. But again, where does it exclude us? Even if it's not directly enforced I don't want to give anybody an excuse to enter and search my property just because I'm growing tomatoes.

I'm not trying to disagree with you. I just want to see it with my own eyes.

There's other problems here too:

1. I can say goodbye the local farmer's markets that I frequent and enjoy. It will shut down all small local farms and send the business to Walmart and big farms.
2. Why do we need to waste more money on more useless, repetitious government. The big farms will have to raise prices to pay for the added expenses thus raising the price of food for us.

I'm not an expert and I usually don't speak up in public when don't know what I'm talking about. But this literally gave me nightmares last night.

Tony

[Lostinoz]

I heard this on another forum and reread and checked out both the house version and the senate version.
1. It will not affect the every day home gardener.
2. It's intent is to protect people from another spinach or peanut thing happening. Not that it will help much, since the government doesn't have enough money to handle following up on the people they should be checking up on now.
3. It will affect the small to mid level market gardener as they will have to get electronic equipment to track said product.
4. There is nothing all that unusual in the bill and most of it is in place already.

Thanks HP! I read through it and could not find a whole lot of fault with it, maybe there is some stricter guidelines and penalities, but that does not seem too unfair when dealing with food meant for the general public.

The only other thing I saw is that perhaps some of the wording left it open to interpretation regarding home producers. I will have to study it a bit more and research it, but it seems that as long as you are not marketing for profit your produce, then you should be within the guidelines (?)

Mostly I took from it that this is more "job" creation for government employees? Part of Obama's 3.5 million created or saved. lol

[herbalpagan]

I heard this on another forum and reread and checked out both the house version and the senate version.
1. It will not affect the every day home gardener.
2. It's intent is to protect people from another spinach or peanut thing happening. Not that it will help much, since the government doesn't have enough money to handle following up on the people they should be checking up on now.
3. It will affect the small to mid level market gardener as they will have to get electronic equipment to track said product.
4. There is nothing all that unusual in the bill and most of it is in place already.

[Lostinoz]

I am not familiar with the previous guidelines. How does this current bill change what we already have in place?

[tony]

Full Bill: http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill...?bill=h111-875

Here's video if you're too lazy to read like me ---->http://www.dailypaul.com/node/85235

Discuss.