Are you a backyard grower of heirloom tomatoes you sell on your own property or at a local farmer’s market? If so, you will be in for a whopper of a surprise if Senator Durbin’s Senate Bill 510 (S.B. 510) passes: you will be receiving a visit from inspectors.

Products not grown according to designated standards will be considered adulterated and your business records will be subject to warrantless searches by inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), all this without any evidence that you have violated any law.

Wonder why the National Guard or Federal agents have effectively imposed martial law by quarantining your town? Under S.B. 510’s House counterpart bill, H.R. 2749 (Section 133b, “Authority to Prohibit or Restrict the Movement of Food), sponsored by Congressman Dingell, the Secretary of Health and Human Services will have the power to prohibit all movement of all food within a geographic area, whether the food is in your grandmother’s grocery bag in her Toyota Hybrid or on a flatbed. No court order will be needed, just a phone call to the appropriate state official and a public announcement will be sufficient.

Upset that raw milk or raw milk cheeses (like feta) are no longer available in the U.S.? This could well happen thanks to the “performance standards” powers that would be granted to the FDA by S.B. 510, especially since the agency has made it clear that it is vehemently opposed to the consumption of raw milk products.

Amazed that U.S. food safety regulations strangely match those of other countries? Well, Section 306 of S.B. 510 would require “Recommendations to harmonize requirements under the Codex Alimentarius.”

And what about food supplement manufacturers, suppliers, distributors and health food stores? Will they be ensnared in this bill’s draconian, 1984-esque net? Very possibly so.

S.B. 510 (which would cost Americans $825 million in 2010 alone) and the House of Representatives version of this bill, H.R. 2749, which did pass, both do not address the root causes of the U.S.’s food safety problems, which were highlighted in both a recent campaign by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) and by a letter to 99 U.S. senators by the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF USA):

1. Current food policies promote and facilitate the consolidation and elimination of independent farmers, artisanal food producers and ranchers and this is inherently dangerous to both food safety and food security.

2. Sound U.S. food safety standards were weakened when Congress bowed to international standards that prohibit it from targeting food safety problems originating in foreign countries with stricter standards — unless Congress first applies the stricter standard to the U.S., regardless of whether the stricter standards are applicable to, or already addressed elsewhere in, the U.S. food production system.

3. Congress’ adoption of the internationally touted HACCP (hazards and risk-assessment-based) food safety system hampers Congress’ ability to ensure that even existing food safety requirements are properly followed.

Citizens for Health, R-CALF USA and other groups are urging the U.S. Senate to take the following steps to improve food safety:

1. Correct and reverse the fundamental deficiencies in our U.S. food system that make genuine food safety in the U.S. unattainable.

2. Re-establish food safety standards that were weakened when Congress bowed to international standards, and then order agencies responsible for food safety to begin hands-on inspection and enforcement of U.S. food safety standards for all imported food and for food processing facilities where food contamination is known to frequently occur, such as in large-scale, commercial slaughterhouses.

3. Do not grant international standards more weight than is accorded any other standards.

4. Do not presume that international standards — designed specifically to facilitate trade — are appropriate standards to be forced on U.S. farmers, artisanal food producers and ranchers or that corporate food producers can adequately police themselves under HACCP. International standards must not be referenced in U.S. food safety statutes and HACCP must be reformed.

5. Take no action that would impose any additional regulatory burdens on any U.S. farmer, artisanal food producer or rancher, including any requirement to register them with the federal government or participate in a federally mandated food traceability program.

6. If Congress suspects that a particular segment of U.S. production agriculture is contributing to food safety problems, a formal risk and hazard analysis must be conducted to determine the specific practice or practices that caused or contributed to the food safety problem and the specific type of operation involved in that practice to determine the specific corrective actions needed.

The problem is that the U.S. has lowered its import standards to facilitate higher-risk food imports.

The U.S. has abrogated its duty to inspect and enforce food safety standards, both here and abroad, by allowing processing plants to regulate themselves under the failed HACCP system; and it has embraced policies that have driven independent U.S. farmers and ranchers out of business by the hundreds of thousands, replacing them with corporate-owned, industrialized food production units that are known to cut food safety corners to maximize corporate profits.

So what do we need to do?

We need to demand food safety by killing this misguided bill or having it re-written from scratch, excluding dietary supplements since they already have robust safety regulation via the federal Serious Adverse Events (AER) law and Good Manufacturing Practices (cGMPs) and focusing, instead, on the fundamental problems outlined above. Visit Citizens for Health (www.citizens.org) in early October for an opportunity to send a letter opposing S.B. 510.

As of this writing, our nation is over $11.8 trillion in debt.

Let’s not add $828 million more (actually several trillion dollar over the next few years) for a bureaucratic monster to be foisted upon an already deeply flawed U.S. food-safety system.

S.B. 510 is sadly, and ironically, not about food safety, although I wish it were.

It’s about food madness, pure and simple, and it must be stopped.
.-= James J. Gormley´s last blog ..Lawmaking and the GAO Report: A Dose of Reality =-.