S510 BILL AND WHY THE CONTROVERSY

There is extreme controversy over this S510 bill by advocates for and against. My son, however is very concerned and is up to speed on it. He has requested me to put this on my website for awhile now.  Not understanding this whole bill, I put it on the back burner.  Helping to stop this bill on my part with my little blog would not make a dent even if I agreed with him and blasted my website every day to oppose it. He does however keep me on my toes to research further

Finally, I sat down to review this bill. I shortened it for quick reading. To read the full bill go to  http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-510

This is what I gathered.  Simply Federal Government wants to regulate the inspections and control of how and where we get our foods. Seems reasonable. If the Secretary has reason to believe food is unsafe they have the right to inspect and collect records, data, fees, etc.

The bill wants to protect us against hazards from foods in processing plants and instituting preventing controls to preserve our health.  The Cen­ters for Dis­ease Con­trol and Pre­ven­tion es­ti­mate that food born dis­eases cause ap­prox­i­mate­ly 76 mil­lion ill­ness­es each year in­clud­ing ap­prox­i­mate­ly 325,000 hos­pi­tal­iza­tions, and 5,000 deaths in the US. These num­bers are stag­ger­ing.

Sen­a­tor Tom Harkin mentioned about re­cent food out­breaks linked to spinach, pep­pers, peanut prod­ucts, and cook­ie dough dra­ma­tized two things. First our cur­rent reg­u­la­to­ry sys­tem does not ad­e­quate­ly pro­tect Amer­i­cans from widespread food born ill­ness­es, and sec­ond the dan­gers as­so­ci­at­ed with food born out­breaks are pro­found.

Sen­a­tor Kay Hagan said "We're talk­ing about peo­ple's livli­hood. One false re­call could put a fam­i­ly out of busi­ness" But small farm­ers say they are not a part of the prob­lem and do not share the same safe­ty con­cerns as larg­er farms. This is what most small food businesses are fearing. Op­po­nents of the bill are con­cerned about the ef­fects new reg­u­la­tions would have on small farm­ers

The amend­ments would ex­empt small pro­duc­ers that sell pri­mar­i­ly di­rect­ly to con­sumers, ho­tels, and restau­rants from new reg­u­la­tions. ‘(A) IN GENERAL- In the event of an active investigation of a foodborne illness outbreak that is directly linked to a qualified facility subject to an exemption under this subsection the secretary may withdrew the exemption. Further the exempted facility (small business) must have adequate labels on their food packages showing name of business, address and here the food was manufactured. If they exceed their gross receipts to 500,000 the exempt is withdrawn

Sen­a­tor Pat Roberts says,"If we give any agen­cy in the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment new au­thor­i­ty ob­vi­ous­ly they are going to try to use it, and we could some­times get into a prob­lem and sim­ply shut down any small fa­cil­i­ty or pro­duc­er re­gard­less of the prod­uct." Crit­ics are con­cerned the FDA will not be able to ef­fec­tive­ly reg­u­late such a broad spec­trum of farms.The cost of hiring more employees to regulate this bill will increase our deficit. Didn't we hear Obama say he will cut expenses?

San­dra Eskin, the di­rec­tor of the Pew Char­i­ta­ble Trusts’ Food Safe­ty Cam­paign, said a reg­u­la­to­ry up­date is long over­due. The last time that the FDA’s law re­lat­ed to food was changed in any ma­te­ri­al way was 1938. Over the course of the fol­low­ing decades, we’ve seen our food sup­ply ex­pand and change marked­ly but the law has not kept up.

 Bottom line, those that oppose feel the government is taking too much control over our foods.  They are still sensitive about genetic modified foods that the government has endorsed and the fact we have little control to choose which foods are or not GM.  No labeling is mandatory which makes it difficult for us to choose whether to consume it or not.  I think they should have at least put labeling for GM foods in the bill.  What do you think?

Then there is the conspiracy theory  Some feel the government plants bad things for us only to invent new laws to regulate where we have little control.

 http://www.infowars.com/senate-bill-s510- Read this and you will surely go mad

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.

Woman in India objecting to government foods


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.?

This bill has been passed in the Senate. The bill now goes on to be voted on in the House. Keep in mind that debate may be taking place on a companion bill in the House, rather than on this particular bill. Dec 2, 2010 6:43AM]

Last Action: Nov 30, 2010: Passed Senate with an amendment by Yea-Nay Vote. 73 - 25. Record Vote Number: 257.





Now that you have the scoop. what is your reaction to this?