And another couple:

www.worldnetdaily.com/index.php

www.countrysidemag.com/issues...ok.html

Maybe we should all cry out that they can have my carrot after the pry it from my cold, dead fingers.....

Regardless, and on a serious note, if the bill in the first article passes, just think of the impact on small hobby farmers at your Satruday's local farmer's market. The niche organic food growers will also be hit hard.

Some interesting points. I get a warm fuzzy feeling when people put such great faith in the font of wisdom called Washington,DC. The trouble with this sort of legeslation is when it is taken to extremes, like section 201:

"ensure that persons who produce, process, or distribute food meet their responsibility to prevent or minimize food safety hazards related to their products."

www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd

I see nothing there that limits the size of establishment 'producing food' or the type of food , although in the definitions, they specify slaughterhouses and other meat processors, which should come under existing legeslation covering such sundries as 'downer cattle' to try to deal with 'mad cow' disease. Such legeslation has been in place since Upton Sinclair's great novel on the Chicago slaughterhouses. If you think about the recent peanut butter issues and the spinach issues of the last few years, you can easily see how this could blanket other activities, especially since there is no limit on the size/number of employees (if any) of the 'food producers'.

If you think that this bill will somehow make you safer think again. Take the 'Mad Cow' issue of 3-4 years ago. One US company decided to test all it's animals slaughtered for BSE to insure market safety. In other words, an industrial food producing establishment wanted to move proactively to insure public safety. The government forbade them from implementing that testing. For more on the made cow issue read Rhodes' book, "Deadly Feasts". For more on this issue and regulatory disservice of your government these summaries:

rational-outrage.com/2008090...nda.html
news.illinois.edu/NEWS/06/0...adcow.html

I must admit my own experience in the chemical industry has left a bad taste in my mouth with dealing with regulation and regulatory agencies. My previous company used pheromones for mating disruption and trapping of insects. Even though the pheromones are much, much less toxic than traditional insecticides, didn't have the exposure problems for people spraying, or the run-off/ground water toxicity problems, and despite the fact that the pheromones don't kill a single bug, they are still regulated as an 'insecticide'. California was really bad for us in dealing with regulatory issues. Next time you hear a politician say they are for 'green chemistry/products', don't automatically believe it since the regulator apparatus they have installed doesn't favor it. If anything it it puts small companies at a competative disadvantage since those compliance costs are significant and you have to drop an spread 'em for all the agencies involved. Once at my previous company we were sited for a minor violation during a DEQ visit. When I pointed out to the agent that his requirement would make our distillation process less safe, increase exposure risk to operators and increase the likelyhood of a chemical spill, his reply was, "I don't care, this is what the law says you have to do."

I now work for a small pharma related R&D chemical supplier. One thing you quickly learn is that the USA has really screwball regulations that show a marked lack of bureacratic sense. For example, we produce organic waste (flammable) that we send off for incineration through a waste disposal/energy recovery company. eg. They burn it in a power plant. If that company or it's truck driver took the waste out into the desert and dumped it on the ground, WE would be the ones held ultimatelly liable as the 'creators' of the waste, not the company we paid in 'good faith' to dispose of it. In other words we would be liable for something we didn't do. The disposal company may be fined and possibly put out of business, but we would be put out of business.

Now if you say this legeslation will only deal with farms, be very careful. The USDA's defintion of a farm is currently defined, for statistical purposes, as any place from which $1,000 or more of agricultural products (crops and livestock) were sold or normally would have been sold during the year under consideration. This definition has been in place since August 1975—by joint agreement among USDA, the Office of Management and Budget, and the Bureau of the Census.

www.ers.usda.gov/Briefing/...ossary.htm

Instead of the 'victory gardens' of the 1940's, people today are growing 'recession' gardens. It may not take much to hit a $1000, especially as all the current stimulus spending will probably have a adverse inflationary consquence. One must always keep in mind that ultimatelly food control is people control. Yet I agree that people need some protection from tainted food. I might disagree on the best methods to achieve that end. Especially since governments in general have done very poorly in this regard. Look at the mess that government involvement did to the soviets from 1917 on. Look at the mess Mao made with his 'Great Leap Forward' farm programs. Look at how Robert Mugabe has turned the breadbasket of Africa 20 years ago into an agricultural disaster today. A few years ago I saw a small article that illustrates the problems of agricultural reliance on government:

www.seedsave.org/issi/proj...zstan.html

An other problem that may become an issue in the coming decades is the government has, and several international conglomerates foisted, 'terminator' seeds. The technology is only going to expand more. The idea is that seed collected from the plants you grow will not germinate. The dippy phrase used in the ag industry is to 'insure customer loyalty'. Even without the 'terminator' genes in plants, you will have problems if you try to collect seeds from hybrids today. The plants obtained from such seed will not often have the same charactoristics that made the hybrid desirable. For home gardens I mostly prefer open pollinated plants (except sweet corn) since often the flavor is better. Hybrids were orginally developed to boost commercially yeilds, ripen all at the same time to aid in mechanical harvest, look pretty in the produce section, store well, and ship well without bruising. Since my vegies don't travel further than my own backyard, I prefer to go for flavor. I even prefer a prolonged harvest over weeks or months. Here's some articles on that 'terminator' seed technology:

www.victoryseeds.com/news/te...ene.html
www.geo-pie.cornell.edu/issues...or.html
www.sourcewatch.org/index.php

During the 8 years I worked in ag chem, Monsanto introduced Bt cotton seeds that were supposed to be toxic to the bollworms that ate the plant. Thus even though the seeds were 3-5 times more expensive than regular seed, the savings from not having to spray the crops were substantial. Lots and lots of countries and farmers changed over and scrapped their own, home grown seed. In warmer climates the bugs adapted within a year. In the USA in about 1-3 years depending on location. Initially this hit my company hard since the cotton bollworm pheromone based products was large fraction of our business. Within a couple years demand was back up and since the farmers had scrapped their own seeds and didn't have stocks anymore, they were now dependant on Monsanto and still ended up with huge spraying costs on top of everything else. The crop yields in many areas have also been disappointing in that the local grown crops from which seed was collected for years or decades were adapted to local conditions, the Bt seeds didn't perform as advertised in much of the world and farmers are still pissed (if still in business). Many governments and their agencies are still pushing the Bt seeds because of trade agreements, legeslation they adopted and 'pro-ag' agencies they established. A short internet search will show you how screwed up things are in the Bt cotten area.

Then you have that Canadian rapeseed farmer in Canada who has been screwed over by Monsanto and his own government when his seed (that he grew and collected) was contaminated by some of the Monsanto stuff. A lower federal court sided with Monsanto:

www.percyschmeiser.com/decision.htm
www.sierraclub.ca/national/...trial.html
www.percyschmeiser.com/conflict.htm

You have to give this farmer credit in that he continued to fight and last year finally had things work out, but he had to fight all the way to the Canadian Supreme court before someone with a brain finally looked at the basis of the suit against him.

Now obviously Monsanto is not the devil and the root of all evil. However, some of their business practices have pushed the envelope of extortion, strong-arm tactics and anti-trust quite hard. Like everyone faced with a finite pie, they want the biggest piece they can get. They owe it to their owners (shareholders). When legeslation like this bill we are discussing is passed, the groups with the most special interest cash (like Monsanto) and their lobbyists tend to have a disproportionate effect in the legeslative outcome. Some little truck farmer keeping his 2 acre hobby farm going for Saturday market gardens isn't going to have much effect on the outcome of any type of legeslation, yet still be stuck with regulatory compliance and it's associated costs and hassles that he may be less able to obsorb. The real problem is that government leaders are insulated by the ramifications and the consequences of their decisions. If a crop failure occurs or some government policy reduces our food supply in this nation, I don't actually believe this means that lavish diners won't still be served in the White House. The band will keep on playing....

Another consideration is that there has even been a lot of consolidation in the home garden market in the last few years as this interesting article illustrates:

www.countrysidemag.com/issues...ok.html

In Jared Diamond's recent book, "Collapse" he talks about Norse settlements in Greenland and Iceland not adapting to climate (the Little Ice Age) and the change in trade of that time and dying out. Completely. The Inuit survived. Initially, the Norse leadership was insulated from the effects of their insistance of raising cattle (vs goats and hunting for sea mammals). Thus they acted in their own short term interest to the cost of their people and later to the extiction of their own children. He has several other examples of societies that collapsed in his book and the things they did to cause it.

If taken to extremes or enforced to extremes I am afraid this bill highlighted in the WND article could have a huge negative impact on SMALL 'market' growers and the organic food niche market. Even small producers of free-range meat chickens and rabbits would sudeenly fall under it's umbrella and have to deal with increased regulatory costs. Since my garden produce isn't offered for resale, will have less effect on me and other home gardeners, and be totally unenforcable in some ways at the home garden level: although I am sure sufficiently public examples could be made as a scare tactic. It could concievably effect how I grow stuff since I use a lot of animal manure and home-made compost in my garden (it's free and it helps with my heavy clay soil). I also have been keeping my chicken tractor on the garden all winter. As long as I am paying for chicken and rabbit feed, I want the poop where it can do some good and the eggs in the fridge.

I must admit that am sooooo shocked that this bill was sponsored by a congresswoman whose husband is a Monsanto employee. I would never suspect someone in congress would have ever any conflict of interest. Just like I am sure all of the President's friends and associates have paid their back taxes.

So the question is: do we need another food agency on top of the USDA and the FDA to essentially duplicate what those agencies are doing? Or is this legeslation like a condom to help us feel secure while being screwed?