Food Freedom Laws Needed to Rebuild Economic Prosperity

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Those of us who seek to restore the old-fashioned practices of food production and distribution in our local communities are concerned about food safety.

We are not anti-regulation – we are instead pro-common-sense when it comes to food that is produced and sold locally.

We are simply seeking to restore a way of life that has successfully promoted economic vitality, physical health, and a sense of community and belonging that used to characterize America.

Such a way of life has been stripped away by mega size grocery stores, corporate dominated agriculture and food processing, and by over-reaching food regulations.

The combined effect of these factors is destroying small locally owned businesses and small family farms. These destructive forces are crawling through our country, and are destroying the fabric of community life.

The adoption of food freedom laws are one of the positive steps that we can take to rebuild economic prosperity, and reestablish personal relationships between local food producers and local food consumers.

This article will examine the food freedom movement and will consider whether the allegations of corporate interests are valid. Should we be free to buy and sell food directly from our neighbors, or will such practices kill us? I am not being overly dramatic with my language here. Allegations against local food freedom advocates are highly charged with emotional rhetoric, and warn of unescapable illness and death.

Full Article.

[tod evans]

No new laws!

Repeal laws that permit government interference instead.

[Created4]

No new laws!

Repeal laws that permit government interference instead.

I think Maine gets it right:

In Maine, the food freedom movement truly began at the local level.

The dominant political structure in most of Maine is local town government. County government plays a limited role in managing the rules by which people live.

There is a very different form of local decision making in Maine. In the small towns of Maine, all of the adults gather once a year in a town meeting to discuss and adopt the town budget and to make rules for the people of the town. This is possible because many towns only have 500 to 2,000 residents. Government is truly by the people for the people.

It was in this context that Maine’s food freedom movement was born. In the towns which pursued food freedom, they used the term food sovereignty to describe the rights they established for their communities.

Maine is also somewhat unique in that it has what is known as a home rule amendment to the state constitution. The home rule amendment establishes a legal framework through which Mainers can exercise the right to make their own rules for their towns without state legislative approval.

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More from the article:

New Englanders didn’t fear their government because, in a very real sense, they were the government.

After the American Revolution, strong local government took on new importance. Many Americans shared Thomas Jefferson’s fears that the new republic would be destroyed from within, that a homegrown aristocracy would spring up to replace the one the revolution had just overthrown. Jefferson argued that the best way to avoid tyranny was to devolve as much power as possible to local communities, and that the most resilient democracy would be a network of small towns wherein people were self-employed producers – farmers, fishermen and tradesmen – and inherited privilege, by wealth or birth, was not to be tolerated.

Jefferson made his arguments from the Virginia Tidewater, a region with an aristocratic tradition and an almost total absence of towns, self-governing or otherwise.

Although New Englanders were opposed to his political party, Jefferson extolled the virtues of their town meeting system, calling it “the wisest invention ever devised by the wit of man for the perfect exercise of self-government, and for its preservation.”

I asked Betsy Garrold to describe what happens when a town in Maine passes the food sovereignty ordinance. She stated:

If a town passes the ordinance, they get a letter from the Maine Municipal Association and the state of Maine that basically says this isn’t legal, and all of the towns have chosen to ignore those letters.

I don’t foresee the Agriculture Department ever suing a town, though they might decide to sue another [local food] producer, especially because of the way the Maine Supreme Court ruled in the Dan Brown case. [9] I think they know they don’t really have a leg to stand on. So, in the 18 towns people are selling food among themselves with no interference.