No, really.
That’s the thing about regulating everything. You end up regulating everything. From Natural News (and won’t their server logs be confusing them today):
(NaturalNews) The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund recently reported the unveiling of the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 (H.R. 875) on Feb. 4, 2009, by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), to both the House Committee on Energy and Commerce and the House Committee on Agriculture. Cosponsored by 36 other Congressmen, all Democrats, H.R. 875 would essentially transfer all state control over food regulation to the Food Safety Administration (FSA), a newly-established federal bureaucracy to be created within the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). Its implications point to the elimination of all independent, family farms as well as all organic farming operations due to overbearing federal regulations subjectively determined by FSA in favor of corporate factory farms.
Via Protein Wisdom, and Is this blog on? (here and here). See also the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund. Rep. DeLauro – and her husband Stan Greenberg – are familiar to our readers; they’re the people that gave Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel free rent for several years. Turns out that one of Greenberg’s clients is biotech giant Monsanto… and elements of the Left have been sparring with that company over genetically altered foodstuffs for over a decade. Note that Greenberg’s materially involved in that dispute, thanks to some reports that he’s written on the topic. So there’s definitely a question here over whether this legislation regulating food production has been, ah, given a certain impetus. And in case you’re wondering what’s affected by this, well, here you go:
(14) FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITY- The term ‘food production facility’ means any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.
As Darleen over at Protein Wisdom said, “No exclusions, no limitations. You grow it, you’re included.”
Come, I will hide nothing from you: I don’t eat organic foods. I am perfectly fine with consuming genetically altered foods. I in fact think that many of the Left-types that I linked to above there are being almost terminally silly in their dietary habits, and I will be happy to fight them over whether or not the Third World should be benefiting from current genetic agricultural research. But none of that means that we should regulate organic farmers out of business – particularly in this economy. If somebody wants to frankly overpay for a tomato that’s never been sprayed with pesticides, and I’m not required to subsidize it with my tax money, let him have the tomato. It does no harm to me, it pleases the tomato eater, and puts money in the pocket of the tomato grower.
Sounds great, doesn’t it? We call this con-ser-vat-is-m. It differs from li-ber-tar-i-an-is-m mostly in whether or not you think that you have any right to ever interfere in the transaction between the tomato grower and tomato eater; libertarians tend to default to “prove that it’s necessary” while conservatives go for “I won’t rule it out, but I’d need a reason.” You can spend many, many hours arguing which version is better – but in my opinion either one beats the liberal position, which is “Sure!” without even thinking about it. Which is what at best happened here.
Moe Lane
PS: Yes, I actually had to be heavy-handed with that last paragraph. If the organic-food people really understood us, they would have also understood that it might not be futile to try to get our support on this issue…
Crossposted to RedState.
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