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market-farming - Re: [Market-farming] [Syrupmakers] Very dangerous bill, S 510....very scary Monsanto .....

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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] [Syrupmakers] Very dangerous bill, S 510....very scary Monsanto .....
  • Date: Thu, 29 Apr 2010 14:33:25 -0400


On Apr 28, 2010, at 6:54 PM, WGPittard AT aol.com wrote:


Sent to friends of mine to include one who is running for Congress in 11th District Florida (Tampa Area).
 
A good man. We are both retired Army, we are both veterans.
 
His name is Mike Prendergast. 
 
If you know anyone - - help vote for him.
 [/. . . ] the Democrats have been at work behind the scenes to expand more government control. [.. . . ]   
 Don't believe me Google it.  If you Snopes it - - -  It says mostly false - - -[. . . ]
Starting to think that snopes is communist as well.

OK folks: first of all: can we try to avoid having this list degenerate into people making general snarling statements about political parties? I am not going to get into a debate here about what the Republicans (or any other party) want political control over versus what the Democrats want political control over; I'm sure that almost nobody on this list wants to hear it. Bear in mind that, whatever your political opinions are, there are plenty of people on this list who disagree with them. We're supposed to be talking about market farming. 

That said: discussions of what's actually in the proposed S 510 are in my opinion relevant, as poorly written bills about food safety could indeed affect market farmers. However, I'd recommend actually reading the bill itself, or if you can't stand to do that try reading multiple sources well informed on the bill. 

Believe it or not, many legislators are far more likely to listen to you if you complain about what's actually in the bill, and not what isn't in it. I haven't time now to go through all the claims that have recently shown up on this list to try to sort out the nonsense from the actual potential problems, but, for instance:

I would have to purchasea Federal Licence (as much as $500.00) to sell sweet corn to you in the summer time - 

To quote the NOFA page cited below:

"Under current FDA regulations, which S. 510 does not propose to alter and which H R 2749 as passed would codify into law, any farm is defined as a facility if it either co-mingles products from several farms or does any one of a very wide variety of activities to prepare the product for market including washing, cooling, trimming, labeling, or packaging. These farms, regardless of size or type of production, would be subject to FDA registration, preventive controls, inspections, and, if the House were to prevail, special taxes. An outright exemption is  made if the farm "facility" direct markets more than 50 percent of the processed food to consumers"

While this may indeed pose difficulties to some actual small farms, if all you're doing is selling sweet corn (or anything else) direct market, you'd be exempted. 


The only snopes page I found is actually not on S 510 but on the house bill HR 875, and even that page hasn't been updated for over a year; (if you did find a snopes page on S 510, could you link to it? or did you read the page without noticing which bill it was discussing?) but how about National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition?


or how about Northeast Organic Farming Association, a group that's full of small farmers, direct marketers, and customers thereof?


Neither of them are happy about a number of things actually in this bill; both of them (among others) are working hard to improve it, and have had some influence.






-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale





  • Re: [Market-farming] [Syrupmakers] Very dangerous bill, S 510....very scary Monsanto ....., Road's End Farm, 04/29/2010

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