Lepage signs food sovereignty law, the first of its kind in the country

[tommyrp12]

Lepage signs food sovereignty law, the first of its kind in the country (https://bangordailynews.com/2017/06/20/homestead/lepage-signs-food-sovereignty-law-the-first-of-its-kind-in-the-nation/?utm_source=BDN+News+Updates&utm_campaign=eb9b65df83-RSS_MORNINGUPDATE_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_715eed3192-eb9b65df83-82708977&goal=0_715eed3192-eb9b65df83-82708977)

https://bangordailynews.com/2017/06/20/homestead/lepage-signs-food-sovereignty-law-the-first-of-its-kind-in-the-nation/?utm_source=BDN+News+Updates&utm_campaign=eb9b65df83-RSS_MORNINGUPDATE_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_715eed3192-eb9b65df83-82708977&goal=0_715eed3192-eb9b65df83-82708977



With a stroke of his pen, Gov. Paul LePage last week enacted landmark legislation putting Maine in the forefront of the food sovereignty movement.
LePage signed LD 725, An Act to Recognize Local Control Regarding Food Systems, Friday legitimizing the authority of towns and communities to enact ordinances regulating local food distribution free from state regulatory control.
According to food sovereignty advocates, the law is the first of its kind in the country.
“This is a great day for rural economic development and the environmental and social wealth of rural communities,” said Rep. Craig Hickman, D-Winthrop. “The Governor has signed into law a first-in-the-nation piece of landmark legislation [and] the state of Maine will [now] recognize, at last, the right of municipalities to regulate local food systems as they see fit.”

Sponsored by Sen. Troy Jackson, D-Allagash, LD 725 does not include food grown or processed for wholesale or retail distribution outside of the community from which it comes.
Supporters of food sovereignty want local food producers to be exempt from state licensing and inspections governing the selling of food as long as the transactions are between the producers and the customers for home consumption or when the food is sold and consumed at community events such as church suppers.

[Suzanimal]

...

While the act was intended to protect people like the "one-cow farmer who feeds the people in his community the food they want to eat," its protections had limits.

"The law does not cover sales outside a given city or town that has a food sovereignty ordinance in place," I wrote in a column shortly after the law passed. "Neither does the law pre-empt federal law."

And it's that latter area that got Maine into hot water with the federal government, before the law ever took effect.

"Maine's Department of Agriculture is concerned that the law would keep it from inspecting any meat slaughtered and processed in a town that is food sovereign, negating an agreement it has with the USDA to meet federal standards," the Portland Press Herald reported last week.

Indeed, threats made by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) against the state forced Maine lawmakers this week to amend its food-sovereignty law.

In a July 6 letter from USDA to Maine's agriculture department, the federal agency threatened to pull its approval of slaughterhouses in the state, which could have temporarily shuttered five facilities in Maine and left Maine livestock farmers scrambling to find available out-of-state slaughter options.

The letter, written by the USDA's Alfred Almanza, says the agency is "concerned that the Food Sovereignty Act, if implemented as currently written, would contravene Federal food safety laws and regulations."

The USDA also threatened Maine—one of 27 states to run its own meat inspection system—with federalization of its slaughter regime.

At an emergency legislative session this week, Maine lawmakers amended the law to require cities and towns that adopt new ordinances under the Food Sovereignty Act to "comply with state and federal laws when developing local ordinances for meat and poultry production and sales."

That followed a committee vote to amend the law last week.

While the Press Herald contends "[t]he cause of the problem is [Maine's] food sovereignty bill," that's not really the case. The causes (plural) of the problem reside in Washington. These causes are the USDA, Congress, and the Supreme Court.

Maine's food sovereignty movement arose earlier this decade as a response to a state law requiring even the smallest poultry farmers to invest tens of thousands of dollars on needless processing costs.

"Show me a farmer who spends $30,000 to sell $1,000 worth of food and I'll show you a farmer who's out of business," I write in my recent book, Biting the Hands that Feed Us: How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable. "Food sovereignty ordinances sought to address the absurdities of laws like these."

The idea that local farmers might butcher and process their own meat for commercial sale—or use a local abattoir to do the same—rubbed the USDA all wrong. That's because of a 1967 federal law that granted the USDA ultimate oversight of all beef, poultry, and pork processing for commercial sale. While the USDA does carve out a few exceptions—for farmers who don't intend to sell their meat to a grocer or restaurant or other commercial outlet and instead sell to, for example, bulk meat to an individual buyer—few can use a custom, non-USDA slaughterhouse.

If it sounds bizarre to you that the USDA will fight for its power to regulate the sale of a single steak in some rural Maine town, that's not the half of it. The fact a law even exists that makes the USDA even believe the agency has such power is one part of the real problem.

...

http://reason.com/archives/2017/10/28/maine-food-sovereignty-bends-but-doesnt

[phill4paul]

I don't recall reading of a United States Dept. of Agriculture in the Constitution. I do remember reading something about "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.."

[Origanalist]

At an emergency legislative session this week, Maine lawmakers amended the law to require cities and towns that adopt new ordinances under the Food Sovereignty Act to "comply with state and federal laws when developing local ordinances for meat and poultry production and sales."

Well, so much for sovereignty.

[Origanalist]

I don't recall reading of a United States Dept. of Agriculture in the Constitution. I do remember reading something about "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.."

The fedgov has paid no attention to such trivial details as long as I've been alive and longer.

[tod evans]

Well, so much for sovereignty.

No shit eh?

Here you raise or purchase your cow/pig/goat/sheep and take it to the packing house where they kill/dress and package it for you...

Beef works out to about $3.00lb, pork less than 1/2 that.