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Oh for Pete's Sa— NO ONE IS TARGETING YOUR FARMERS' MARKET, DAMN IT!
The latest hysteria making the rounds:
Somebody with really poor reading comprehension has declared that HR 875, aka The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, is gonna make your personal garden illegal, drive your local farmers' market out of business, and kill organic farming.
And then it got picked up as a meme across the internet on both the wingnut right and that paranoid left.
Now it's hitting the mainstream.
Excuse me. I'll be heading over to the closest wall to wham my head against it. Repeatedly.
How is it possible that so many people lack the commonsense that God gave an earthworm? In a world with Google, and with internet access to THOMAS, you would think that maybe, just maybe, somebody would've, I dunno, actually checked the text of the bill to see if it actually says what everyone is saying it says.
I mean, THINK ABOUT THIS! Congress, the U.S. Congress, is gonna shut down farmers' markets? They're gonna make you now get permission to grow tomato plants in your own yards?
You believe this? Seriously?
One question genius: How the hell are the Federales supposed to patrol your yard to make sure you're not growing yummy cherry tomatoes near the back fence, hunh? They can't even catch Whitey Bulger after a 14-year chase. What makes you think they give a shit about raiding farmers' markets and your personal garden?
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. This blatant heard-like behavior over stupid shit that's easily checked just gets me all...all...GRRRRR! AGGGGGH!
Do you know what this bill does? It establishes a Food Safety Administration to be created under the Department of Health and Human Services because, clearly, the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, aka the "Food" part of the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), can't keep the hell up on a food safety front.
And considering the past few years has been nothing but one food recall and one food warning after another, yeah, I really, really think it's high time we had governmental oversight of the actual food distribution chain in the U.S., complete with a full-time focus on food safety issues.
What the bill does not do:
First off, the word "garden" does not appear once in the entire bill. Not. Once. No one gives a damn about your personal garden where you grow your own personal food. You want to plant it in the soil, raise it, and then eat it? Go to town. No one cares. Congress sure as hell doesn't, the FDA begs you to do them another favor, and this new Food Safety Administration is worried far more about imported food and food distribution than what you plant your own yard.
Regarding the farmer's markets: No one cares, either. Really, they don't. In fact, this bill is gonna help your local farmer with his or her locally grown produce more than you can imagine. This bill is like Christmas for them. Why?
Because the bill, and the proposed Food Safety Administration, is only concerned about one thing: foreign-grown food and the food supply chain in the U.S.
The regs governing local farms, growing local food, sold to local people is not going to change one whit. In fact, the bill will make it harder for foreign-grown food to compete with local farmers because foreign-grown food is about to get whammed a shitload of regulations, all under the hairy eyeball of the new Food Safety Administration.
Farmers' market fans, rejoice! This bill basically all but guarantees that your local farm ain't going anywhere — and if it does, it's not at the sword point of federal regulations.
And finally, the bill does not even mention organic farming. It doesn't care about organic farming. It doesn't involve itself with organic. Organic farming is already regulated, and that's not going to change one whit either.
So, will everyone just chill already about this and stop claiming that your garden, your farmers' market, and organic produce are going the way of the dodo, because that's false, wrong, and stupid.
If you thought more than 10 seconds about it, you'd know it was stupid.
But, hey. What the hell do I know, right? You want proof? Read the bill your own damn self.
Whenever crap like this happens, I have the overwhelming urge to re-enact this scene from The Muppet Show. I would be cosplaying Kermit, of course.
Somebody with really poor reading comprehension has declared that HR 875, aka The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, is gonna make your personal garden illegal, drive your local farmers' market out of business, and kill organic farming.
And then it got picked up as a meme across the internet on both the wingnut right and that paranoid left.
Now it's hitting the mainstream.
Excuse me. I'll be heading over to the closest wall to wham my head against it. Repeatedly.
How is it possible that so many people lack the commonsense that God gave an earthworm? In a world with Google, and with internet access to THOMAS, you would think that maybe, just maybe, somebody would've, I dunno, actually checked the text of the bill to see if it actually says what everyone is saying it says.
I mean, THINK ABOUT THIS! Congress, the U.S. Congress, is gonna shut down farmers' markets? They're gonna make you now get permission to grow tomato plants in your own yards?
You believe this? Seriously?
One question genius: How the hell are the Federales supposed to patrol your yard to make sure you're not growing yummy cherry tomatoes near the back fence, hunh? They can't even catch Whitey Bulger after a 14-year chase. What makes you think they give a shit about raiding farmers' markets and your personal garden?
Jesus Christ on a pogo stick. This blatant heard-like behavior over stupid shit that's easily checked just gets me all...all...GRRRRR! AGGGGGH!
Do you know what this bill does? It establishes a Food Safety Administration to be created under the Department of Health and Human Services because, clearly, the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, aka the "Food" part of the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA), can't keep the hell up on a food safety front.
And considering the past few years has been nothing but one food recall and one food warning after another, yeah, I really, really think it's high time we had governmental oversight of the actual food distribution chain in the U.S., complete with a full-time focus on food safety issues.
What the bill does not do:
First off, the word "garden" does not appear once in the entire bill. Not. Once. No one gives a damn about your personal garden where you grow your own personal food. You want to plant it in the soil, raise it, and then eat it? Go to town. No one cares. Congress sure as hell doesn't, the FDA begs you to do them another favor, and this new Food Safety Administration is worried far more about imported food and food distribution than what you plant your own yard.
Regarding the farmer's markets: No one cares, either. Really, they don't. In fact, this bill is gonna help your local farmer with his or her locally grown produce more than you can imagine. This bill is like Christmas for them. Why?
Because the bill, and the proposed Food Safety Administration, is only concerned about one thing: foreign-grown food and the food supply chain in the U.S.
The regs governing local farms, growing local food, sold to local people is not going to change one whit. In fact, the bill will make it harder for foreign-grown food to compete with local farmers because foreign-grown food is about to get whammed a shitload of regulations, all under the hairy eyeball of the new Food Safety Administration.
Farmers' market fans, rejoice! This bill basically all but guarantees that your local farm ain't going anywhere — and if it does, it's not at the sword point of federal regulations.
And finally, the bill does not even mention organic farming. It doesn't care about organic farming. It doesn't involve itself with organic. Organic farming is already regulated, and that's not going to change one whit either.
So, will everyone just chill already about this and stop claiming that your garden, your farmers' market, and organic produce are going the way of the dodo, because that's false, wrong, and stupid.
If you thought more than 10 seconds about it, you'd know it was stupid.
But, hey. What the hell do I know, right? You want proof? Read the bill your own damn self.
Whenever crap like this happens, I have the overwhelming urge to re-enact this scene from The Muppet Show. I would be cosplaying Kermit, of course.
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I want more involvement in getting me local foods, please, Big Brother.
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And now it's overlapping into sane land. Aside from several blogs, several people on my FList was whittering about this.
Then, this morning, I read it again on a usually reliable blog.
I think I kind of snapped there.
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I found out that the reason for the sudden crazy around this bill is because Glenn Beck (The Self-Styled Weeping Saint of the Glorious Overthrow of the Elected One) apparently has been doing his usual ba-shit flailing about how this is more evidence the U.S. is becoming a fascist...no wait, communist...hold on, socialist...well some kind of -ist-ish kind of state.
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Man, why don't more people know about and use THOMAS? Seriously! It's a mighty, free online resource for every bill going through the House and the Senate, updated within days of the bill's introduction to Congress. Even if you can't sift through the specialized language of a congressional bill, the thing offers simple, concise summaries from the Congressional Research Services where available, not to mention Congressional Budget Office analysis (which is also available online for free, along with analysis from, like, fifty other different government funded and non-government funded groups). The information is there, the government is actually at least that transparent.
But, hey, it's more fun to make it up yourself and get filled with righteous anger and get other people to follow along.
*sighs*
Of course, if more people were aware of and took advantage of those free online services, my department would probably get cut in half. . . .
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Of course, I thought everyone knew about THOMAS. THOMAS has existed since at least the mid-90s. I remember when it was basically all text and FTP.
Then again, I thought everyone knew about SEC EDGAR, yet 6 months ago, when I mentioned it as a resource to my Master-degree-holding co-workers they were all, "Whaha? Publicly traded companies have to give you all their financial filings free? And you can get it online? Really?"
*whams head against the wall*
So, y'know. It's entirely possible that people don't know nothin' about THOMAS.
As for The Muppet Show, whenever I get really, really frustrated with someone, I yell very, very loudly in my head, "You are fired, Piggy! You are fired, Piggy! You are fired, fired, FIRED, Piggy!"
It's like my favorite mental relief. Heee!
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And honestly? I had no clue about THOMAS until I started working here, and thus started using it as a resource on a regular basis.
Of course, here I am spouting the wonders of online resources to government findings and analysis and when I go to retrieve the HTML copy of a TIGTA audit report from their website, they've got the damned thing filed wrong so that the link from the front page results in a 404 not found, the pdf crashes my browser and my Acrobat, and I have to link hop for ten minutes before I finally manage to find just a basic list of audit reports and get an HTML copy. . . .
But, hey, that's the Treasury Department, for you. Between them and everyone's favorite section of them, the IRS, my company is managing to stay afloat.
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The stupid comes in when you repeat what a bill says without actually checking the text of the bill itself.
It's just mind-boggling, especially since some of the claims should raise a red flag about it's relative truthiness.
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Much thanks!
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Also, this is the first time I've ever heard of THOMAS....
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Just proves that some folks seem to react first and read later..
Love the Muppets!
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There is NO question that food safety needs to be cleaned up - my own preference would be to restore the system of inspectors that was decimated under Bush. There is not enough inspection going on.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/04/09/hr-875-myth-sows-terror-a_n_185230.html
It sounds as though 875 is better than HR 759, though. There's some interesting discussion of this bill over here:
http://www.organicconsumers.org/articles/article_17256.cfm
When it comes to far-fetched... I've seen news reports of Monsanto GMO crops contaminating neighboring fields, and Monsanto taking the small farmers to court because they "stole" their patented crops.
The time to watch this bill is not just now, in its present form - it's when the agribusiness promoters start tacking on their addenda.