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  • From: Mike Rock <mikerock AT mhtc.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [Market-farming] [Fwd: S.510 farm bill]
  • Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2010 14:57:15 -0500

The <marketfa AT marketfarmshoptalk.com> address bounced.


Liz,
Here is the first article, and a second you might find interesting.

I also got a response from a friend on another list, syrup makers and
corn grits grinders. Interesting.

It is predicted the the Bill will be signed next month. I went ahead and
got my NC GAP Tier 1 certification this year. Since many customers expect
it. That part of the Bill will not go away and may become a requirement in
Farmers Markets bylaws in your state. Makes sense if you observe some of
the habits of the vendors and customers. Most FM vendors are small
enterprises and mostly have little or no idea of safety and cleanliness at
the market tables. Many markets don't even have a place to hand wash.
Change is coming. Be ready.
Ron

He's from NC too..
I guess he might have a point.

Most respectfully,
Mike Rock

--- Begin Message ---
  • From: Kevin Rock <kevinrock AT earthlink.net>
  • To: "mikerock AT mhtc.net" <mikerock AT mhtc.net>
  • Subject: Have you read this?
  • Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 19:57:57 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
Have you read this?


<http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2010/04/24/s-510-is-hissing-in-the-grass/#more-1828>

By Steve Green

S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010, may be the most dangerous
bill in the history of the US. It is to our food what the bailout was to our
economy, only we can live without money.

“If accepted [S 510] would preclude the public’s right to grow, own, trade,
transport, share, feed and eat each and every food that nature makes. It
will become the most offensive authority against the cultivation, trade and
consumption of food and agricultural products of one’s choice. It will be
unconstitutional and contrary to natural law or, if you like, the will of
God.” ~Dr. Shiv Chopra, Canada Health whistleblower

It is similar to what India faced with imposition of the salt tax during
British rule, only S 510 extends control over all food in the US, violating
the fundamental human right to food.

Monsanto says it has no interest in the bill and would not benefit from it,
but Monsanto’s Michael Taylor who gave us rBGH and unregulated genetically
modified (GM) organisms, appears to have designed it and is waiting as an
appointed Food Czar to the FDA (a position unapproved by Congress) to
administer the agency it would create — without judicial review — if it
passes. S 510 would give Monsanto unlimited power over all US seed, food
supplements, food and farming.
History

In the 1990s, Bill Clinton introduced HACCP (Hazardous Analysis Critical
Control Points) purportedly to deal with contamination in the meat industry.
Clinton’s HACCP delighted the offending corporate (World Trade Organization
“WTO”) meat packers since it allowed them to inspect themselves, eliminated
thousands of local food processors (with no history of contamination), and
centralized meat into their control. Monsanto promoted HACCP.

In 2008, Hillary Clinton, urged a powerful centralized food safety agency as
part of her campaign for president. Her advisor was Mark Penn, CEO of Burson
Marsteller*, a giant PR firm representing Monsanto. Clinton lost, but
Clinton friends such as Rosa DeLauro, whose husband’s firm lists Monsanto as
a progressive client and globalization as an area of expertise, introduced
early versions of S 510.
S 510 fails on moral, social, economic, political, constitutional, and human
survival grounds.

1. It puts all US food and all US farms under Homeland Security and the
Department of Defense, in the event of contamination or an ill-defined
emergency. It resembles the Kissinger Plan.

2. It would end US sovereignty over its own food supply by insisting on
compliance with the WTO, thus threatening national security. It would end
the Uruguay Round Agreement Act of 1994, which put US sovereignty and US law
under perfect protection. Instead, S 510 says:

COMPLIANCE WITH INTERNATIONAL AGREEMENTS.

Nothing in this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) shall be construed in
a manner inconsistent with the agreement establishing the World Trade
Organization or any other treaty or international agreement to which the
United States is a party.

3. It would allow the government, under Maritime Law, to define the
introduction of any food into commerce (even direct sales between
individuals) as smuggling into “the United States.” Since under that law,
the US is a corporate entity and not a location, “entry of food into the US”
covers food produced anywhere within the land mass of this country and
“entering into” it by virtue of being produced.

4. It imposes Codex Alimentarius on the US, a global system of control over
food. It allows the United Nations (UN), World Health Organization (WHO), UN
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and the WTO to take control of every
food on earth and remove access to natural food supplements. Its bizarre
history and its expected impact in limiting access to adequate nutrition
(while mandating GM food, GM animals, pesticides, hormones, irradiation of
food, etc.) threatens all safe and organic food and health itself, since the
world knows now it needs vitamins to survive, not just to treat illnesses.

5. It would remove the right to clean, store and thus own seed in the US,
putting control of seeds in the hands of Monsanto and other multinationals,
threatening US security. See Seeds – How to criminalize them, for more
details.

6. It includes NAIS, an animal traceability program that threatens all small
farmers and ranchers raising animals. The UN is participating through the
WHO, FAO, WTO, and World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) in allowing
mass slaughter of even heritage breeds of animals and without proof of
disease. Biodiversity in farm animals is being wiped out to substitute
genetically engineered animals on which corporations hold patents. Animal
diseases can be falsely declared. S 510 includes the Centers for Disease
Control (CDC), despite its corrupt involvement in the H1N1 scandal, which is
now said to have been concocted by the corporations.

7. It extends a failed and destructive HACCP to all food, thus threatening
to do to all local food production and farming what HACCP did to meat
production – put it in corporate hands and worsen food safety.

8. It deconstructs what is left of the American economy. It takes
agriculture and food, which are the cornerstone of all economies, out of the
hands of the citizenry, and puts them under the total control of
multinational corporations influencing the UN, WHO, FAO and WTO, with HHS,
and CDC, acting as agents, with Homeland Security as the enforcer. The
chance to rebuild the economy based on farming, ranching, gardens, food
production, natural health, and all the jobs, tools and connected occupations
would be eliminated.

9. It would allow the government to mandate antibiotics, hormones,
slaughterhouse waste, pesticides and GMOs. This would industrialize every
farm in the US, eliminate local organic farming, greatly increase global
warming from increased use of oil-based products and long-distance delivery
of foods, and make food even more unsafe. The five items listed — the Five
Pillars of Food Safety — are precisely the items in the food supply which are
the primary source of its danger.

10. It uses food crimes as the entry into police state power and control.
The bill postpones defining all the regulations to be imposed; postpones
defining crimes to be punished, postpones defining penalties to be applied.
It removes fundamental constitutional protections from all citizens in the
country, making them subject to a corporate tribunal with unlimited power and
penalties, and without judicial review. It is (similar to C-6 in Canada) the
end of Rule of Law in the US.




--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
  • From: Kevin Rock <kevinrock AT earthlink.net>
  • To: "mikerock AT mhtc.net" <mikerock AT mhtc.net>
  • Subject: Meat prices?
  • Date: Mon, 26 Apr 2010 20:03:01 -0700 (GMT-07:00)
I wonder how this fits with the article I just sent you?
K.


<http://preview.bloomberg.com/news/2010-04-25/carnivores-dilemma-widens-as-pork-signals-record-meat-prices.html>

Carnivores' Dilemma Widens as Pork Signals Record Meat Prices
By Whitney McFerron - Apr 26, 2010

U.S. meat prices may rise to records this summer after farmers reduced hog
and cattle herds to the smallest sizes in decades, the result of surging feed
costs linked to demands for more ethanol.

Wholesale pork jumped as much as 25 percent this month to 90.68 cents a pound
last week, the highest since August 2008, U.S. Department of Agriculture data
show. Beef climbed 22 percent this year to $1.6896 a pound on April 23, the
most expensive since July 2008. Chicken’s gain in March was the most in 20
months.

Demand for pork chops, steaks and chicken breasts is rising as the economy
improves, backyard barbecues resume and China and Russia allow more U.S.
imports. Domestic supplies may drop to a 13-year low because of culls to stem
losses caused by corn prices that doubled after former President George W.
Bush set targets to increase ethanol use.

“Ethanol-induced prices in meat are just now getting to the marketplace,”
said Steve Meyer, the president of Paragon Economics, a meat industry
consultant in Des Moines, Iowa. “Consumers are going to see the highest
prices they’ve ever paid in meat and poultry because of the decisions made to
make corn into ethanol.”

Hog futures have almost doubled from a low in August to 85.175 cents a pound
on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange on April 23. The price may reach $1 by
June, said Tom Cawthorne, director of hog marketing at broker R.J. O’Brien &
Associates in Chicago. CME cattle jumped 14 percent in the past year.

Meat-Price Outlook

Retail prices may hit records in the next 90 days as U.S. demand peaks during
summer grilling season, said John Nalivka, a former USDA economist and the
president of meat consultant Sterling Marketing Inc. in Vale, Oregon. The
previous records were in 2008 for pork at $3.026 a pound in September, based
on monthly averages tracked by the USDA since 1970, and for beef at $4.526 a
pound in August. Chicken’s peak was $1.857 a pound in May 2009.

More expensive pork and beef may revive food inflation that dropped last year
for the first time since 1961. Meat prices tracked by the United Nations Food
and Agriculture Organization are up 5 percent this year, even as food costs
fell 5.8 percent.

The rally also means a boost for livestock producers including Smithfield
Foods Inc., the world’s largest pork processor. The Smithfield,
Virginia-based company said April 21 that its hog-rearing unit will be
profitable in the fiscal year that begins in May, its first period without a
loss since 2007.

Consumers May Balk

Prices may be peaking, if futures markets are a guide. Hogs for settlement in
May through August are trading between 85 cents and 87.4 cents a pound, a
narrow range that may signal prices are near their top, said Ron Plain, a
livestock economist at the University of Missouri in Columbia.

Consumers may choose cheaper food with the unemployment rate in March at 9.7
percent, near a 26-year high.

“The key question is if the U.S. economy is strong enough to sustain higher
grocery store prices for meat,” Plain said. “We had been expecting a late
summer peak, but I’m afraid we may end up with a late spring peak.”

Supermarkets have been “holding the line” on consumer costs, Paragon’s Meyer
said. In March, retail beef on average was little changed from a year
earlier, 4.8 percent below its record high, USDA data show. Pork was 1
percent lower than the same month in 2009 and 3.7 percent from its peak,
while chicken was 9.6 percent below the record high set last year.

‘Cycle Has Turned’

Producers are optimistic for the first time in more than two years because
output is falling as demand accelerates.

“The cycle in hog production has turned,” Smithfield Chief Executive Officer
C. Larry Pope said on a March 26 conference call with analysts. “We have been
through a long period of prolonged losses in the live-production side of the
business. We’ve been talking about that for a long, long time. We are seeing
a period in which our costs are going down and our hog prices are moving up.”

Smithfield cut its hog-breeding herd by 13 percent since early 2008. As of
March 1, the total U.S. sow herd shrank by 7.1 percent in two years to 5.76
million animals, the fewest in at least 47 years, USDA data show. Cattle
farmers slashed herds in January to the smallest in 51 years, and the
government estimates that supplies may not rebound until 2013.

Elaine Johnson, an analyst at CattleHedging.com LLC in Westminster, Colorado,
estimates that U.S. per-capita supplies of beef, pork and poultry will be the
smallest since 1997. It takes 10 or 11 months to raise a hog from conception
to slaughter weight and about three years for cattle.

‘Mighty Good’ Price

“Pork prices will continue to gradually creep up,” said Zack McCullen III,
the vice president of swine production at Prestage Farms Inc., the
fifth-largest U.S. hog farm. “If you look at futures this week, they look
mighty good. I think they’ll definitely hold up for a while.”

Clinton, North Carolina-based Prestage, which produces about 650 million
pounds of pork annually, cut its sows 10 percent last year, McCullen said.
“Ethanol was the main driver in corn prices going up to historical levels,”
he said. “Ethanol was the pork producers’ biggest problem.”

The hog industry lost about $6.2 billion from October 2007 until last month
on rising feed costs and lower export demand caused by swine flu, Missouri’s
Plain said. Profits returned as corn futures on the Chicago Board of Trade
dropped from a record $7.9925 a bushel in June 2008 to $3.61 on April 22.

Ethanol refiners are using more of the U.S. harvest than ever. An estimated
4.3 billion bushels, or 33 percent, of last year’s crop will be used for
fuel, compared with 3.049 billion bushels, or 23 percent, in 2008, USDA data
show.

Ethanol Mandate

Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act in 2007, increasing the
ethanol mandate to 15 billion gallons a year by 2015 from about 10.5 billion
in 2009, in a bid to cut dependence on foreign fuel and curb emissions.

Ethanol producers say their industry is unfairly blamed for the record feed
costs of 2008. The surge reflected “wild speculation in the markets and the
surge of index funds” rather than the jump in corn use for fuel, said Chris
Thorne, a spokesman for Growth Energy, a Washington-based ethanol trade
group. “Grain producers in this country will more than meet all expected
demand for export, for food, for livestock feed and certainly for fuel.”

The USDA estimates farmers harvested a record 13.131 billion bushels of corn
last year.

Bullish Speculators

Speculators remain bullish. Hedge funds and commodity index funds held record
positions in cattle futures on April 20, while reducing net-long positions in
hogs by 0.6 percent from a record on April 13, government data show. In
September, speculators had a record bet against hogs, after prices reached a
six-year low in August.

Even with lower feed costs in 2010, hog farmers may not expand herds for
another two years, partly because banks tightened lending requirements during
the recession, said Neil Strother, whose farm in Wilson, North Carolina, owns
about 5,000 sows. Strother said he liquidated 15 percent of his herd last
year.

“From the largest producer to the smallest producer, none of us want to see
production ramp up right now,” he said.

Dwindling Inventories

Rising overseas demand may erode inventories for pork that in March were the
lowest for that month since 2007, the government said on April 22. Beef
stockpiles in March were the lowest for any month since July 2005, and the
USDA forecasts exports will jump 9.7 percent this year.

Brett Stuart, managing partner at Global AgriTrends, a consulting company in
Denver, expects pork exports to China, including Hong Kong, to climb 22
percent this year from 2009. The government predicts total U.S. pork exports
will increase 5.7 percent this year. In March, China lifted a ban on U.S.
pork put in place after the swine-flu outbreak last year.

“We’ve been living a little on borrowed time as consumers,” said Bill Lapp, a
former chief economist for ConAgra Foods Inc. who is the president of
consultant Advanced Economic Solutions in Omaha, Nebraska. “The confluence of
reduced production and improving export markets are supporting wholesale
prices and eventually that’s going to turn into higher consumer prices.”

To contact the reporter on this story: Whitney McFerron in Chicago at
wmcferron1 AT bloomberg.net.




--- End Message ---


  • [Market-farming] [Fwd: S.510 farm bill], Mike Rock, 04/27/2010

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