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GovTrack: H.R. 875: Text of Legislation, Introduced in House

 

  Quote
HR 875 IH

 

111th CONGRESS

 

1st Session

 

H. R. 875

 

To establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes.

 

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

 

 

 

I will let you flip through it and draw your own conclusions.

Posted

i read this, what conclutions are you talking about

 

although i know alot of people are trying to get organic farming

protected in this legislation

 

but it also insinuates protection

whereas if food is found to be harmful to humans

it becomes confiscated etc.

 

all depending on what type of food provider you are

but if you are a large food provider (type I )

you should be checked

 

rats and coocarachas and stuff

you know that the amount of rat poo in you diet is regulated by

similar litigation

 

also this is meant to unite several factions of the goverment

to allow for more efficient food protection

Posted
  Ganoderma said:
GovTrack: H.R. 875: Text of Legislation, Introduced in House

 

I will let you flip through it and draw your own conclusions.

HR 875 is an 80 page document! :( Reading it sufficiently for a reasonable level of comprehension is likely to take hours, while flipping through it is likely to result in a poor comprehension of it. :(

 

Ganoderma, do you wish to discuss something specific about this bill? Can you provide more specific quotes and comments? :naughty:

 

Skimming the bill, I don’t see anything in it that would prohibit gardening. What in the bill leads you to comment “goodbye (gardening)”? :hyper:

Posted

i read the whole thing

basically it doesn't introduce new rules (save a few tolerances and defining foregn nation

roles in food inspection)

it set 5 catagories

appoints a new director

unifies a few departments

 

and it emphisises protection from intentional addition of hazerdous material

probly united with the nsa on that (you know intel and stuff)

 

then it defines court proceeding

and allows for payback plus interest if found innocent

Posted

I've received several messages on the net claiming this bill will out law organic farming and back yard farming. It is so long most people will accept it as being what is claimed instead of reading it. Typical fear mongering tactics.

Posted

i must admit i am no lawyer, so i cannot pick apart the bill as is, but the main backer being Monsanto, make some MORE than nervous.

 

It's not so much the gun i am scared of, as the person holding it.

 

How are these laws able to be manipulated into allowing various companies to push tehir products. making new "super foods" that are immune to various diseases, what then would become of the traditional ones, which could be considered unsafe in comparison.

 

i know, all speculation, but with certain companies that push a bill, i get really worried, Monsanto is one of them. they have a poor history with things like human compassion and greed.

Posted

i know, i've read some of the concerns from friends that have dealings with such companies

the argument is not that it directly endangers oragnic growing teqniques

but on large scale growing farms

anyone can grow their own food

but once it his public commerce, is when this bills rules come into effect

(i do have experience reading and interpreting litigation and legislation)

and as your company increases production

you are under more scrutany

so you would not be under as much scrutiny as a level V

as you would in a level I, based on the amount of production/distribution

 

now the thing is that alot of countries still only do organic farming

it is the industrial nations that use GMO

(like the tomatoe crossed with a fish to give the tomatoe more lusture)

 

but this bill also stipulates that if the food in production causes harm to human life

then it is confiscated and the facility is closed (via a trial)

 

this is a huge debate currently going on in the world of agriculture

 

on the view of the population that i associate with

only organic should be eaten

 

now as a world production view

while farming one plant in a given area with minimal genetic differences

produces massive quantities of food, it also allows for specific weaknesses

so the solution would be to modify the organism to have genetic defences

 

while this is still relatively new (besides common "creme of the crop" selective breeding)

we still are not 100% of the outcome of the GMO food on the human population

 

also conversly, GMO food can be formulated to enhance the delivery of nutrients

 

so the debate goes on

 

in this litigation it neither hurts nor enables organic food production

but protects the population in the way the orginazation sees fit

 

it is already going on with the FDA

this is not new stuff, only reorginizing

Posted

oh yea, in litigation, loopholes are defined after the leglislation is passed,

and it is defined by lawyers debating the meaning of the word "the"

so in any litigation, wording is important

but as an individual, to find lookholes you actually have to refrence

many articles of law, and dictionaries in the year that the leglislation was written

although most leglislation is defined in courts by the current meaning of the word

the meaning may differ slightly then the meaning of the word when written

 

so a "loophole" could be inserted simply by altering the meaning of the word

in the dictionary that the court defines its language in

 

this is a major concept

 

that is why (like a program) certain words are defined in the beginning of the leglislation

X=1

and then further in the litigation it refers to definitions given in other sections of the whole

of the leglislation (the whole rule as to say)

so it is not in only one section of the law to define words and or loopholes

 

but in the concepts of the ideas invloved

Posted

oh yea, one thing about this leglislation that i found, is the potential for a crop to be burned

by possible contamination properties in realtionship to large scale farming

 

say you have an organic farm

and potentially the wind or bees or whatever could contaminate a huge crop

with the pollen from your crop

 

then this does allow for your crop to be investigated

 

this is the only major loophole that i found

and it should be looked into

 

the idea would be large scale farmers filing a complaint that a small farmers crop

is polluting the genetics of their crops

 

although i think that the more varyation of the genetic makup of a crop is fundimental

big buisness may not feel the same way

Posted

A few days ago michaelAngelica posted this here (starting Post #16):

 

http://hypography.com/forums/earth-science/18502-is-conventional-agriculture-feasible.html

 

I took the time to skim the bill and posted my response to it. Lemit also posted responses to it.

 

This has nothing to do with backyard gardening!

 

This legislation is geared towards Tyson chicken, Hormel meats, Oscar Meyer, Birds Eye, Kraft, Fischer Peanuts, Nestle, Crystal Farms, Land o' Lakes, etc. Most of the above listed places ALREADY document and test and recall. Nothing will change in their current operations. The already have labs and employ persons to test for a multitude of pathogens.

 

Look at the link to the other thread and note the bold/underlines. Cross reference your individual state Dept of Agriculture, Dept of Commerce and see what regulations all ready exist before jumping to assumptions that OMG the government is getting involved.

 

The US Feds have been TOO lax on protecting the food supply in the USA. Protecting the consumers from outside AND internal food supply issues.

Posted

One of the things I noticed while scanning the proposal, which has not been mentioned, is protection of the US food supply from intentional contamination (terrorism). The proposition looks good all around to me and long overdue.

Posted
  freeztar said:
One of the things I noticed while scanning the proposal, which has not been mentioned, is protection of the US food supply from intentional contamination (terrorism). The proposition looks good all around to me and long overdue.

 

i did mention that

re-read my posts

 

actually it was stated several times in different sections of the bill

Posted

the burning crop scenarios, and related topics, are what got me paranoid. I dont have a source handy, perhaps others do. but i remember a few years back monsanto being accused of destroying fields they found to be growing their patented crops without the people buying the seeds, or the plants reseeding themselves. these "types of situations" are the ones i am wondering.

 

if my farms TMV prone tomato plants are spreading pollen to the big field next door, does that make my farm a possible target?

 

I understand the need for food production, really do. but i also feel strongly in the right to grow food, even if it is not the choicest, or even a pathetic geno/phenotype.

 

or other un altered crops that are not "up to par" with current views of what should be, could this be means of an investigation?

Posted

in the wording, up to par means that it doesn't make humans get sick

 

i know that instance of the burnign of the crops, it was because the bees or whatever polinated someone's crop with the pollen from the GMO crop

 

it was bad news

 

as far as your crop goes

it should be safe, unless you enter the commerce field

 

(i'm not sure), but it think the leglislation is intended only towards commercial growers

 

but in the litigation process, it may be difined in other ways

 

so basically the leglislation isn't bad

 

but in the litigation process the definitions that follow are the main point to be concerned with

 

that is why the orginazations spreading the worry for organic farming want specific protection for organic crops

 

although, how do you protect a crop from pollen

 

if you have a GMO crop next door, and you collect and use your own seeds, then more then likely you are no longer growing organic crops, but an organic/GMO hybrid

 

then again, if you stipulated protection from GMO pollen

 

then the GMO would want protection from your pollen

 

a vicious circle

 

thats why some say that keeping the old seeds in seed banks is important to protect humanity

 

and that 90% of the corn in the world is GMO, through pollen dispersal

 

or something similar anyway

Posted

I think it's important to understand that not all crops are the result of pollen crosses. Tomatoes as mentioned do not even need to be pollinated to set fruit and usually self pollinate, simply touching the blossom will cause tomatoes to set fruit. I have never seen tomato plants cross pollinate and produce intermediate plants when planted in the same garden. The GM plants that have been sited as spreading their "genes" beyond the field they were planted in were corn. Corn is unusual in that it has to be kept isolated to keep different types of corn from causing different seeds on adjacent plants. If you plant sweet corn near field corn the two will cross and produce intermediate ears of corn. Most vegetables to not work this way and fear of GM plants crossing with more common in bred plants isn't a big problem. Corn is unusual in it's affinity to cross pollinate different strains possibly caused by all corn being closely related. You will not see different types of beans crossing each other in the field and causing the resulting beans to be a cross between say pole beans and butter beans. Another thing that needs to be said is that GM doesn't automatically mean something bad. Yes some GM plants have been somewhat less than savory but GM like any other technology is only as good or bad as the people who use it. IMHO the people who thought they could plant odd types of corn and not expect them to cross pollinate and share genes were simply stupid and weren't real farmers and had no clue as to how things really work. I remember more than 40 years ago being told by my grandpa that it was important to grow different types of corn as far apart as possible to keep the resulting corn from being a cross between the two, funny that modern people who were developing new types of corn didn't know this simple truth.

Posted

Oh yeah belove, the corn crosses were the result of wind blowing the pollen of corn, most of the time bees only visit one type of plant at a time and so seldom cross pollinate different plants.

Posted
  Ganoderma said:
GovTrack: H.R. 875: Text of Legislation, Introduced in House

 

 

 

 

 

I will let you flip through it and draw your own conclusions.

Well would they come and fix the toxic waste left by Union Carbide , now Dow:D in Sydney Harbour in the1960s-80s?;)

Now even the sharks won't eat the SH fish; they are eating people instead.

The Government :hihi: doesn't want to know.

 

Eaten any Vietnamese prawns lately? That's were most -but not all-of the Agent Orange they were producing ended up.

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