North American Fruit Explorers mailing list at ibiblio

[Ginda Fisher <list@ginda.us>]

It's not just that.  The laws are sort of haphazard right now.  Meat is USDA.  USDA is also responsible for stuff like encouraging agriculture.  Peanuts are FDA.  FDA mostly cares about drugs, that's where most of the risk and most of the money is.  Fish may be regulated by yet another dept (or maybe it's something else, but I'm pretty sure there are three different govt. agencies with some oversight re food.)  People have been saying for years that it would make more sense to have a single department in charge of food safety instead of splitting up the job among different groups that don't care that much about it.  As far as I can tell, H.R. 875 is mostly trying to do just that, and not a lot more.  A reorganization of existing govt functions.  Now, it's possible something else is lurking in there, but no one here seems to have pointed out such details, as far as I can tell.

Ginda

On Mar 15, 2009, at 10:44 PM, Matthew Oller wrote:

Oh,dear me.Laws aren't being enforced.Let's make more as a consequence.That will make me feel safer!

--- On Sun, 3/15/09, Betty Mayfield <bmayfield@opusnet.com> wrote:

From: Betty Mayfield <bmayfield@opusnet.com>
Subject: Re: [NAFEX] H.R. 875 more trouble from the government for small producers
To: "North American Fruit Explorers" <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>
Date: Sunday, March 15, 2009, 9:26 PM

To the list,

Nine people are dead because of a filthy peanut plant in Georgia. A proposal to let the FDA concentrate on drugs and remove food to a separate agency might prevent future food-borne disease outbreaks.

To read today's story in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about the investigation,  put "peanuts salmonella Atlanta" into Google.

Betty Mayfield

At 02:27 PM 3/15/2009, Dennis Norton wrote:

(snip)

Every operation serving or selling food needs to have a food safety system in place that is designed specifically to guarantee the food being served is safe to eat. This specific food safety system is called HACCP for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point. HACCP is a system comprised of 7 principles that are to be applied to a written food safety program focusing on the food in your operation.
(snip)
 This bill wants to establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes.  It will be the Food Safety Administration that will inforce HACCP requirements.
(snip)
 The government is simply going to remove any of these responsibilities from the USDA and give them to the FSA.  Not more government......simply a division of government.
Dennis Norton
Royal Oak Farm Orchard
Office (815) 648-4467
Mobile (815) 228-2174
Fax (609) 228-2174
http://www.royaloakfarmorchard.com
http://www.theorchardkeeper.blogspot.com
http://www.revivalhymn.com

----- Original Message -----

From: Deb S

To: nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Sent: Sunday, March 15, 2009 9:49 AM

Subject: [NAFEX] H.R. 875 more trouble from the government for small producers

Take a look at this bill

http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=h111-875

It looks like it is more privacy invasion as the government under the guise of food safety wants to register every "food establishment" (which looks like it includes anyone who produces any food on their property). 

If you find it very disturbing as I did, here's the link to write your Congressional rep and tell them so

https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml

_______________________________________________
nafex mailing list
nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Reproduction of list messages or archives is

_______________________________________________
nafex mailing list
nafex@lists.ibiblio.org

Reproduction of list messages or archives is not allowed.
This includes distribution on other email lists or reproduction on web sites.
Permission to reproduce is NEVER granted, so don't claim you have permission!

**YOU MUST BE SUBSCRIBED TO POST!**
Posts from email addresses that are not subscribed are discarded.
No exceptions.  
----
To subscribe or unsubscribe, go to the bottom of this page (also can be used to change other email options):
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/nafex

File attachments are NOT stripped by this list.
TAKE STEPS TO PROTECT YOURSELF FROM COMPUTER VIRUSES!
Please do not send binary files.
Use plain text ONLY in emails!

NAFEX web site:   http://www.nafex.org/