Sunday, March 15, 2009

CPSIA Meets the Food Industry

First there was CPSIA -- to tell us what children's products we could and could not make, sell, or buy. Now Congress is going after our food supply...All in the name of "protecting us", of course!

The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, House Bill 875, has 40 co-sponsors and was referred to the Committee on Energy and Commerce and the Committee on Agriculture on February 4, 2009.

It has such a "safe sounding" title:
Title: 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. (emphasis mine!)

Just like "any" became a big problem in CPSIA -- this section "and for other purposes" should concern us.

There are two portions of the first directions that jumped out at me right away were: Directs the Administrator to: (1) administer a national food safety program; and (6) establishing a national traceability system for food.

I don't believe a national food safety program would be one of the constitutionally granted roles of the federal government. And a tracing system for our food? I'm not liking that idea.

I believe there are some other issues with the law, those are just the ones I know of right now. Definitely a good law to contact our representatives about voting against!

4 comments:

  1. It boggles my mind that they think we *can* trace all our food. It's like these members of Congress were absent from school the day they took the field trip to the farm to find out where food comes from. Do they think tomatoes come equipped with GPS or something, and that all we'd have to do is activate it and we'd know where each tomato went when it left the farm? and where each of those tomatoes went thereafter? Do they not know that the tomatoes get mixed up with tomatoes from other farms and then parts of them get shipped off to make salsa and others to be canned and still others to be ground up into barbecue sauce and ketchup? How the hell do they think we can track the damn things?

    Geez, some people's kids...

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  2. I'm glad to see you posting about this, and I will definitely be doing some reading of my own, and look forward to hearing more of your thoughts.

    And have you heard our president thinks it is one of the governments most important jobs to regulate food safety? http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20090314/ap_on_go_pr_wh/obama_food_safety

    A highlight from the article: "Protecting the safety of our food and drugs is one of the most fundamental responsibilities government has." - President Obama

    Another blog about this bill... http://www.campaignforliberty.com/blog.php?view=12671

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  3. I'm so mad -- again -- that I could spit nails. In the article about Obama's food safety stance that Melissa mentioned, the President claims: "The nation's food safety system is a 'hazard to public health' and overdue for an overhaul,' as he filled the top job at the Food and Drug Administration." AARGH!!! Give me a break. I couldn't read much more of the article.

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  4. My sentiments exactly, Aunt Cathy! Unfortunately this bill sounds like the sort of thing his administration will put a ton of support behind and push through before it can really be looked at. The biggest good news is that the word is getting out while it is still in committee.

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