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  • From: "Tradingpost" <tradingpost@lobo.net>
  • To: livingontheland@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: [Livingontheland] "HR 875" Myth Sows Terror Among Organic Gardeners
  • Date: Wed, 29 Apr 2009 11:58:03 -0600


"HR 875" Myth Sows Terror Among Organic Gardeners
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/09/hr-875-myth-sows-terror-a_n_185230.
html
April 15, 2009 at 12:27 PM


Rep. Rosa DeLauro knew she had a problem when her colleagues began asking
her on the House floor about her bill that was going to put small farmers
out of business. Her own offices in Washington and back home in Connecticut
are getting bombarded with calls from angry constituents demanding she stop
her assault on backyard organic farms.

What, they want to know, does she have against organic heirloom tomatoes?

"It was substantial and it wasn't just my office," DeLauro tells the
Huffington Post. "All of my colleagues -- I have colleagues who come up to
me on both sides of the aisle and they say to me, 'Rosa, what's this about
875?'"

H.R. 875, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, has become an Internet
phenomenon, the subject of alarmist e-mails warning gardeners that Congress
is plotting against their plots, that the vote is coming any day, and we
must take action! The outraged constituents span the political spectrum.

The bill, it's argued, is being pushed quietly by big agribusiness,
herbicide and pesticide behemoths such as Monsanto, who want to outlaw
organic farming using backdoor food-safety rhetoric. The richest irony, for
anyone who has followed DeLauro's career, is that she's as far from a
friend of Monsanto as can be conjured.

The anti-875 movement latched onto DeLauro's definition of a "food
production facility" as "any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture
facility, or confined animal-feeding operation." The bill makes such
facilities subject to safety inspections, leading to fears that
clipboard-wielding bureaucrats will soon be strolling through your lettuce
patch.

"Didn't Stalin nationalize farming methods that enabled his administration
to gain control over the food supply? " recalled one libertarian blogger at
CampaignforLiberty.com. "Didn't Stalin use the food to control the people?"

Yeah, Stalin did. But DeLauro has no plans to collectivize agriculture in
the United States. The opposite, actually.

"The intent of the bill is to focus on the large, industrial processes such
as the peanut processing plant in Georgia that was responsible for the
salmonella outbreak that killed nine people," she says. She emphasizes that
the Constitution's commerce clause prevents the federal government from
regulating commerce that doesn't cross state lines. DeLauro says she's open
to making technical changes to the bill if any small farmers remain
concerned that the bill is aimed at them.

Currently, 15 separate federal agencies are involved in regulating food
safety and there is no system in place to get to the source of an outbreak
once it happens. We still don't know what contaminated the tomatoes leading
to a previous salmonella outbreak, one which was originally blamed on
spinach -- to the great detriment of spinach growers. DeLauro's bill would
put one agency in charge and try to organize the chaos that is the current
system.

"This notion that we're destroying backyard farms is absurd. It's
ludicrous," she says. "I chair the agriculture subcommittee of
appropriations. Why would I be putting farmers out of business?"

DeLauro says she has been told that the disinformation campaign "was a
libertarian operation somewhere in the country, but we're trying to figure
it out."

In the meantime, she sent a letter to all of her colleagues explaining what
the bill does and is planning a more public campaign to clear the air. She
has marshaled organic farming organizations in her defense. Her homepage
directs people to "get the facts on H.R. 875."

For a long time, DeLauro figured that the campaign was too absurd to take
hold - similar to the assumption John Kerry made about charges he lied
about his war record. The bill wasn't even new, she reasoned, having
introduced the same thing the year before.

"I made an assumption, maybe it was the wrong assumption, my God," she
says. "I guess it was naïve in a way." As the calls and questions from
colleagues mounted, she decided she had to respond. "It was significant
enough that I said to myself, 'Whoa, this is beyond anything I'd dreamed
could catch on.'"

Watching a viral Internet campaign take shape can be a bizarre experience,
she says. "You have a sense of who you are and what you're about. But that
may be thinking too much about who you are and what you do. You have to
explain to people; you have to tell them; you have to retell them."

UPDATE: A couple legal minds have written me noting that DeLauro's reliance
on the interstate commerce clause to circumscribe her legislation and
exempt backyard gardens won't be enough, because the Supreme Court has
stretched the reach of the clause to absurd lengths. Here's one. I've
actually written about the reach of the commerce clause in the past and
tend to agree with the critics that DeLauro's bill does need some technical
corrections, which DeLauro had said she'd be willing to make if needed.
DeLauro's office says that those clarifications are in the works and will
be ready in the next few weeks.






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