Even with bill’s passage all hope is not lost by any means. Because of Democrat foolishness, the
Senate bill includes provisions about taxes, a House prerogative. So the House Democrats will probably stop the Senate bill for a bit.
The bill has to be reconciled with the House version once all these mistakes are rectified, if they can be rectified.
The House version of the bill is much, much harsher to small farmers. I might, therefore, be asking you all to write and call as the reconcilation process goes forward.
There are several other ways to stop the worst of this bill. One is when the UDSA/FDA/HSA/DHS (Why the heck is Homeland Security involved?) actually make up the rules.
There will be hearings, committees, ‘listening’ sessions and more. Although the path to public involvement in these hearings is convoluted and arcane, it can be done.
For example, up until last year small farmers, and anyone who owned a horse, goat, sheep, cow, chicken, duck, or pig as a pet, had
NAIS looming before them.
NAIS, the National Animal Identification System, was to mandate an RFID for every ‘farm’ animal in this country. It was meant to facilitate
disease outbreak tracing and enhance the ability for American meat producers to sell their products overseas.
NAIS mandated one RFID per ‘lot’ of animals. So a ‘lot’ of 10,000 chickens hatched, raised and slaughtered together would need one RFID tag. That’s great for a CAFO. But for a small farmer, who hatches maybe 100 chickens here, 100 there, or even less, it’s disaster. Each chicken or small lot would need a number. The system worked the same for horses, cattle, goats, etc. So I, with my 17 18 (keep forgetting the little one) goats, would pay 18 times what someone with 1,000 goats kidded at once would pay. Yea, that’s fair. The NAIS rules also meant a ton of other impositions. Farmers would be required to report any movement of animals within 24 to 48 hours. If you rode your horse down a trail, every farm you passed would have to report your movement into and off of their property. Take your pet goat to the vet in your car? Report that movement within 24 to 48 hours or face a fine. Animal die? Report it. Animal born? Report it. Animal moved to a different pasture through a common area? Report it. In order to facilitate all this reporting your property would be registered as a ‘premises’ and given a ‘premises number’. Legally, the owner of a premises has a different set of rights, lesser rights, than the owner of property.
When the particulars came out the government ignored the unrest. Then the listening sessions started, and they had to add more, and more. Comments on the Federal register grew long and loud. The listening sessions were attended by people 80% to 95% against NAIS. People dared the government to pass it, promising stubborn, non-violent resistance.
NAIS died last year,
supposedly. Funding was dropped by Congress and the FDA/USDA stopped pushing it. However, elements of it are in the S 510 bills.
We can do this again with the Food Safety Act. We can make it palatable and workable for the little farmers. People power CAN fight against corporate ruled government if we are united. Unity is the key. With NAIS all sides came together to fight it. I was on mailing lists with people who became rabid tea-partiers. I didn’t agree with their solutions for everything, but I, and other liberals like me, did agree with how to fight NAIS. And so when someone made a political comment, the rest of us chastised them. ‘The list is only about NAIS, keep the rest out of it. We need everyone to fight it.’ This kind of unity is going to have to happen more and more, to fight against government take-over of our rights to privacy, freedom of speech, travel, and more. I welcome it.
Added the following to discuss the
Washington Post article mentioned by BB in her great news roundup. These are my admittedly argumentative thoughts on the points in the article. I think the Food Safety bills could be good, but they need to be gone over very carefully and the wording needs reflect reality. It’s too vague right now.
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