Ganoderma Posted March 25, 2009 Report Posted March 25, 2009 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. Quote
belovelife Posted March 25, 2009 Report Posted March 25, 2009 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 protectionwhereas if food is found to be harmful to humansit becomes confiscated etc. all depending on what type of food provider you arebut if you are a large food provider (type I )you should be checked rats and coocarachas and stuffyou 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 govermentto allow for more efficient food protection Quote
CraigD Posted March 25, 2009 Report Posted March 25, 2009 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: Quote
belovelife Posted March 25, 2009 Report Posted March 25, 2009 i read the whole thingbasically it doesn't introduce new rules (save a few tolerances and defining foregn nationroles in food inspection)it set 5 catagoriesappoints a new directorunifies a few departments and it emphisises protection from intentional addition of hazerdous materialprobly united with the nsa on that (you know intel and stuff) then it defines court proceedingand allows for payback plus interest if found innocent Quote
Moontanman Posted March 26, 2009 Report Posted March 26, 2009 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. Quote
Ganoderma Posted March 26, 2009 Author Report Posted March 26, 2009 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. Quote
belovelife Posted March 26, 2009 Report Posted March 26, 2009 i know, i've read some of the concerns from friends that have dealings with such companiesthe argument is not that it directly endangers oragnic growing teqniquesbut on large scale growing farmsanyone can grow their own foodbut 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 productionyou are under more scrutanyso you would not be under as much scrutiny as a level Vas 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 farmingit 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 lifethen 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 withonly organic should be eaten now as a world production viewwhile farming one plant in a given area with minimal genetic differencesproduces massive quantities of food, it also allows for specific weaknessesso 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 productionbut protects the population in the way the orginazation sees fit it is already going on with the FDAthis is not new stuff, only reorginizing Quote
belovelife Posted March 26, 2009 Report Posted March 26, 2009 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 importantbut as an individual, to find lookholes you actually have to refrencemany articles of law, and dictionaries in the year that the leglislation was writtenalthough most leglislation is defined in courts by the current meaning of the wordthe 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 leglislationX=1and 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 Quote
belovelife Posted March 26, 2009 Report Posted March 26, 2009 oh yea, one thing about this leglislation that i found, is the potential for a crop to be burnedby possible contamination properties in realtionship to large scale farming say you have an organic farmand 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 foundand 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 Quote
Cedars Posted March 27, 2009 Report Posted March 27, 2009 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. Quote
freeztar Posted March 27, 2009 Report Posted March 27, 2009 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. Quote
belovelife Posted March 27, 2009 Report Posted March 27, 2009 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 thatre-read my posts actually it was stated several times in different sections of the bill Quote
Ganoderma Posted March 27, 2009 Author Report Posted March 27, 2009 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? Quote
belovelife Posted March 27, 2009 Report Posted March 27, 2009 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 goesit 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 Quote
Moontanman Posted March 27, 2009 Report Posted March 27, 2009 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. Quote
Moontanman Posted March 27, 2009 Report Posted March 27, 2009 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. Quote
Michaelangelica Posted March 27, 2009 Report Posted March 27, 2009 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. Quote
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