Bill S 510 is the Senate counterpart to HR2749 which was passed by the American House of Representatives earlier this year in spite of public opposition. The following compilation of internet resources and commentary is from a number of authors. Seemingly gratuitious rock video below does tie in with final article in this compendium.
How can S 510 mandate GMOs?
The explanation is lengthy in order to give enough detail so people can be certain as well as able to withstand this phrase, specifically – “There is no language in the bill that mandates GMOs or that will end organic farming.” This explanation lays out how without using those words, it is still precisely what the bill would do.
1. Obama put Michael Taylor, Monsanto lawyer and VP, over the FDA. Taylor is who gave us rBGH and unlabeled at that, and the deregulating of GMOs. Taylor designed the “food safety” bills of which S 510 is one.
2. Here is certainty that Taylor (or Monsanto) has planned the bill.
3. Look yourself at an early version of the bill, which its proponents said would not mandate GMOs and end organic farming and yet which does.
This is taken from http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/A-solemn-walk-through-HR-8-by-Linn-Cohen-Cole-090314-67.html with some few additions but many omissions to make this shorter.
[Note: “The Administrator” is expected to be Monsanto’s Michael Taylor, as Food Democracy warned, so, throughout, Monsanto will be in charge.]
(c) Regulations- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and representatives of State departments of agriculture, shall promulgate regulations to establish science-based minimum standards for the safe production of food by food production facilities. Such regulations shall–
(1) consider all relevant hazards, including those occurring naturally, and those that may be unintentionally or intentionally introduced;
(4) include, with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal’s health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;
(5) provide a reasonable period of time for compliance, taking into account the needs of small businesses for additional time to comply;
(f) Enforcement- The Administrator may coordinate with the agency or department designated by the Governor of each State to perform activities to ensure compliance with this section.
SEC. 201. ADMINISTRATION OF NATIONAL PROGRAM.
(a) In General- The Administrator shall–
(1) develop, administer, and annually update a national food safety program (referred to in this section as the ‘program’) to protect public health; and
(2) ensure that persons who produce, process, or distribute food meet their responsibility to prevent or minimize food safety hazards related to their products.
Food and Water Watch, CU, CSPI and others said “There is no language in the bill that would stop organic farming.”
When you hear those words, and those are exactly the words you will hear, be aware that is precisely what Monsanto aimed to achieve – to be able to mandate what it wants without using explicit words, and thus without it being apparent to the public. They want plausible deniability in regard to what is written in a bill and for people who want to believe things are fine to to see something they believe is positive, because they are unable to read through the “common” words to their very specific and hidden regulatory power. In the same extremely deceitful way, the bill arranges the harvesting, transporting, cleaning and storage (thus ownership) of normal seeds, as well.
All this complex legal masking is necessary since the public would reject the bill out of hand if it were clear what was happening.
When told that the bill will not do mandate GMOs (or pesticides or other noxious things), think who is behind the bill. And then consider the two following articles on Monsanto’s use of language. It is as plastic in how it distorts means as in how it distorts nature, and as destructive.
The Corporate redefinition of Normal
and
Laws to Redefine Normal as Hazardous
This act creates a new agency, and the FDA becomes the Federal Drug and Device Agency, combining offices currently under FDA and Commerce Department (National Marine Fisheries) and will cooperate with the USDA in “promulgating rules and orders” which will have the bearing and impact of law.
Notice that “the Administrator” is charged with developing minimum standards, not maximum limits on feed, fertilizers, nutrients etc. and this is where the mandating occurs.
“The Administrator” is not going to be saying there can only be this much contamination or this much poison (maximum limits) but will be saying there MUST BE this much and/or type of feed, this much and/or type of fertilizer, this much or type of “nutrients,” etc.
That is, Monsanto as Administrator can order that farms must use GMO feed, must use pesticides, etc. That is mandating.
There are many ways that language is used here, which are degrees off from what normal people expect. In this way, the intent of the bill can be hidden and those pushing it, including lawyers, can say “nowhere in the bill does it say it mandates GMOs or that it will end organic farming.”
The extent of this trickery is a major education for progressives who are sincere people but they must keep reminding themselves they are dealing with Monsanto which is infamous for how it twists logic and law. It did, after all, sue farmers for “mislabeling” when they had honestly labeled their milk as not having rBGH, and Monsanto won.
The twisting of language and meaning is central to how all of this is working.
So, here is a translation of the things the Administrator (Monsanto) is charged with setting “science based” minimum standards for:
Animal health: It has traditionally meant medication and hormones, petroleum-based fly sprays and other non-organic products.
Feed: It is likely a reference to GMO soy or GMO corn, the standard feed.
Environment: It can mean pesticides, and herbicides used on pastures. And that is only if pasturing itself is deemed “healthy.” Internationally, this is NOT so for poultry. In fact, in many countries there is NO outdoor poultry anymore – by law since the “avian flu” which was caused by the poultry industry and then used to force local farmers to wipe out their local genetically diverse poultry stocks and substitute GMO chickens owned by industry.
Nutrients: These are not necessarily whole food based, many are produced synthetically, and again, petroleum based.
Animal encroachment prevention: It can be anything from a scarecrow or plastic owl to poison bait and bullets. Not one of these things is specified, yet there is no place for public opinion in the decision making process provided.
How mandating is assured:
SEC. 206. FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES.
(a) AUTHORITIES.-In carrying out the duties of the Administrator and the purposes of this Act, the Administrator shall have the authority, with respect to food production facilities, to
(1) visit and inspect food production facilities in the United States and in foreign countries to determine if they are operating in compliance with the requirements of the food safety law;
(2) review food safety records as required to be kept by the Administrator under section 210 and for other food safety purposes;
(3) set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety;
Here, again, is where mandating of GMOs, pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, all as “good practice standards,” comes in.
Please be aware who is defining these words – the same company which has said GMOs produce bigger yields, are safe, are climate-friendly, don’t contaminate, etc.
“Good practice standards,” words that sound so friendly and innocuous and actually specific references to international rules set up by the WTO. These rules define industrial requirements, which do not fit real farming, and are drastically antithetical to (will destroy) organic farming.
“Good practice standards” are where mandating of insane, anti-nature, anti-farming rules like “animals and crops can’t exist on the same farm” come into play. Where wild animals aren’t ever supposed to be near crops so the government has been poisoning deer and frogs. The list of such manufacturing rules for farming is long, and each amounts to “WTO intentionally wrecks the farm.”
(4) conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products, or the environment, as appropriate; and
Please, those of you who find the idea of NSA-spying intolerable, look carefully at those words. Now, imagine it were your farm, your home on that farm, and realize that the USDA and FDA have been run by and the new agency will be run by Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons, and ADM. Their interest in helping consumers have safer food is nil. The bills are meant to eliminate farmers as is now rapidly occurring in the EU with identical (“harmonized”) bills, now law there.
(5) collect and maintain information relevant to public health and farm practices.
Pause here to consider the implications of each of those on someone’s home – their family’s farm. This is quite different from applying them to industrial sites where no one lives. Beyond that, these powers are so broad and vague, they are dangerous if only in that.
Those things listed open the door to total control, warrantless entry and perpetual surveillance. Notice how innocuous they have made it appear, even beneficial – always about public health. Yet, the insincerity of this is boggling – the USDA and Big Ag have worked to prevent inspections to the point where farmers have had to actually sue to get them done, even after offering to pay for them.
(b) INSPECTION OF RECORDS.-A food production facility shall permit the Administrator upon presentation of appropriate credentials and at reasonable times and in a reasonable manner…
Who defines “reasonable”? Does a farmer have to go to court each time there is an”unreasonable” manner and time? How wide open do we push the door to Big Ag-corrupted government control over farmers – the people creating the only safe food?
Look carefully and realize the USDA right now is countenancing state ag departments conducting terrorizing raids on non-corporate farms across the country. Imagine it were your home and USDA agents banging on your door to demand paper work and if you don’t have it, facing fines that would bankrupt you in a moment and lose you your land and home.
… to have access to and ability to copy all records maintained by or on behalf of such food production establishment in any format (including paper or electronic) and at any location, that are necessary to assist the Administrator-
Imagine again.
(1) to determine whether the food is contaminated, adulterated, or otherwise not in compliance with the food safety law; or
Be aware that in Pennsylvania where there has been an aggressive effort to destroy fresh milk dairy farmers, the tests by the states repeatedly do not match those of independent testers but the harm to farmers from such false tests and reporting of them is done and can’t be undone. Be aware that the USDA has a record of creating test results damaging to small farmers while it refuses to inspect even when farmers ask to pay.
(2) to track the food in commerce
This could mean farmers bringing food to markets with USDA agents surveilling.
(1) consider all relevant hazards, including those occurring naturally, and those that may be unintentionally or intentionally introduced;
Goodbye raw milk.
And what about your own organic garden or the urban gardens that are now being developed?
In regard to gardens:
The government has had plans for controlling food “FROM FARM TO FORK” including home preparation since September of 1995 (WTO ratified in 1995).
S 510 will:
“require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;”
“include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water”
“include, with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal’s health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;”
“set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety”
“…facility owned or operated by a person located in any State that processes food or a facility that holds, stores, or transports food or food ingredients.”
Notice it does not say a person SELLING food. It says a person holds, stores, or transports food or food ingredients. The bill specifically states it covers commerce within states, but again there is no exclusion for food raised for home use. The fact you are growing veggies for your and friends and not selling them does not exclude you.
“in any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction SHALL BE PRESUMED TO EXIST.”
Under Ag Sec. Veneman, in September, 1995, the USDA’s Food Safety & Inspection Service presented a 600-page document, Farm-To-Table, intended to control every step in the food chain from production to home preparation.
This is a real life example of what has already occurred and what may be in store:
Today a state Ag inspector and two county officials show up and scare the bee-jesus out of me. First they accuse me of selling products and milk, then explain that even “giving milk products away” is illegal in California. Now everything is pasteurized, but it is illegal to share milk products in any form! They explained it was even ILLEGAL to give it to my own children if they did not live under my roof! I can’t even take a lasagna dish to my grown sons home without risk of being fined, arrested and or jailed! This is OUTRAGEOUS!!!!” Donna, Aug 12, 2008. (See more stories on the government raiding farms and co-ops.)
In short, S 510 includes “good practices standards” which is not a vague thing but a very specific WTO set of regulations and require “science based minimum standards”, to be decided by “the Administrator” within a year after the bill is passed in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture (a Monsanto crony) and state ag departments (already under the influence of Monsanto and the WTO) and . That is, it allows industry to decide what is “best” and to impose (mandate) GMOs, pesticides, and the rest. It may be they will simply refer to Codex Alimentarius which is hidden inside the bill and would do the same thing. They essentially define their own products, despite all studies showing their danger, as most advanced, and get that put into law so it can then be forced onto farmers.
Here is a little commentary on the House version of the bill.
“HR 2749 [now S 510] would empower FDA to regulate how crops are raised and harvested. It puts the federal government right on the farm, dictating to our farmers.”
Dictating is mandating.
S 510 will allow the FDA (now run by Monsanto) to mandate GMOs in the US.
It doesn’t get more serious, unless it’s that progressives are entirely unaware of the bill and its capabilities.
Ari LeVaux wrote a large story at Alternet examining what is happening in farming but never mentioned the bill though it passed this house this summer and is waiting for a Senate vote in January.
Please do all you can to alert to your membership and as many other organizations as you can.
The left has been caught flat-footed on this and is now being (purposefully?) distracted by an offer of DOJ anti-Monsanto, anti-trust workshops in the spring.
Progressives are also being exposed to articles encouraging them to help “crack down on mislabeling” by corporations by giving the FDA much more power over labeling regulations. But “mislabeling” is just how Monsanto has gone after farmers (suing them for saying they do not use rBGH, for example). And “mislabeling” regulations in S 510 are the means Monsanto and the pharmaceutical industry can use to fully destroy small producers of all kinds – food and food supplements – regardless of whether no one was ever harmed.
This is the same FDA that allowed Merck’s Vioxx on the market knowing in advance it would kill (55,000 died) and which adjusted the definition of toxicity to allow corporate baby formula to contain melamine, and which lets drug companies claim anything they wish, while ignoring that 100,000 people a year die from prescription drugs.
Here is what the FDA did (overstepping its authority) to prevent cherry farmers with scientific evidence of their usefulness in controlling pain, from communicating that to the public in any way. Yet no one dies of cherries but 16.500 people a year die from the drug industry’s NSAIDs.
The FDA has become so extreme in its efforts to crush attempts to inform the public that natural products are valuable, that they have resorted to kidnapping.
“…In Europe at the present time (1943, it is) A crime punishable by death to spread information in regard to nutrition in Norway, Belgium, Holland, and all other conquered countries.” – D.T. Quigley, MD, Fellow American College of Surgeons, in The National Malnutrition. http://www.ahealedplanet.net/mdaq.htm
[The pharmaceutical industry was the main support for Hitler during that “crack down” on nutritional information. And some of the largest pharmaceutical companies now were once part of that support and those death penalty laws around information. And it is that same pharmaceutical group which devised Codex Alimentarius, hidden inside S 510. Codex is one of the means by which S 510 would mandate not only GMOs, but pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, and irradiation of all food. [ http://yupfarming.blogspot.com/2009/05/codex-inside-hr-875-herbs-vitamins-and.html]
To Alternet:
S 510, a Monsanto bill, will allow them to mandate GMOs in the US.
Nothing is bigger.
Obama has already put Monsanto’s Michael Taylor (infamous for introducing unlabeled rBGH and deregulated GMOs) over the FDA.
Its passage would be the ultimate win for Monsanto. That is why the DOJ is offering the distraction of “workshops” to look into Monsanto’s antitrust actions … for later this spring, past when the bill would be voted on. The intent to get NGOs and progressives fired up about two birds in the bush, “promises” from an administration that has broken all their major ones to their base and which put Monsanto over the FDA and all through the USDA already.
The whole ball game for food in the US and for farming is S 510. Notice how it is barely mentioned? The left doesn’t know and isn’t ready at all. Perhaps LeVaux could remedy that and Alternet might lead on this.
Three articles to get you up to snuff on “food safety” reform (what S 510 claims to be about) in the US because Alternet is badly needed to help stop this bill (it also includes preventing access to normal seeds by raising the standards for keeping them so high no one could meet them, and more.
The Beginning of Food Deregulation and Dietary Feces
History, HACCP and the Food Safety Con Job
The Festering Fraud behind Food Safety Reform
Here is LeVaux’s article. Notice no mention of what is about to hit in January with Monsanto’s S 510.
The Year Food Was Totally Schizoid: Growing Local Takes Off, As Giant Agribiz Becomes More Dominant
By Ari LeVaux, AlterNet. Posted December 27, 2009.
In the battle between Big Ag and Small Food there were notable victories on either side.
As 2009 closes out, the dominant issues in the world of food could be lumped into two competing paradigms that have framed much of the decade. In one corner we have Big Food: factory farms, fast food restaurants, mystery meat, biotechnology and other examples of when the economics of scale are applied to how we feed ourselves. In the other corner is Small Food, whose players include farmers’ markets, ecology-based agriculture and seasonal diets of minimally processed food.
In a victory for small food, 2009 will perhaps be remembered as the year gardening returned to mainstream consciousness. Much credit goes to First Lady Michelle Obama, thanks to the organic veggie patch she planted on the White House lawn. The symbolic gesture created an instant buzz, and many other politicos around the world have followed suit. There are now gardens on the grounds of city halls, governors’ mansions, and other houses of leadership around the world, providing countless opportunities to educate and discuss why gardens are good.
According to the National Gardening Association the number of households with gardens rose from 36 million in 2008 to 43 million in 2009. Michelle Obama’s garden certainly deserves some credit, but so does the recession, which inspired many people to stick their hands in the dirt, not only to save on grocery bills, but to find economical ways to enjoy their leisure time.
Ironically, this proliferation of home gardeners bears some of the responsibility for the rapid spread of a late tomato blight funguswhich nearly wiped out the commercial tomato crop on the East Coast. Many gardeners bought tomato starts from stores like Home Depot, Kmart, Lowes and Wal-Mart, nearly all of which were raised by the Alabama nursery Bonnie Plants. Plant pathologists believe the nursery sent out infected plants, which slipped under the radar of agricultural inspectors and brought the spores to all corners. Unusually heavy rainfall encouraged the blight to take hold, prosper and spread. The take-home message: buy your plant starts from local nurseries, or grow them yourself from seeds.
In addition to kitchen gardens, another beneficiary of the recession is a 93-year-old great-grandmother named Clara Cannucciari, whose YouTube videos combine salty commentary about life in the Great Depression with hands-on demonstrations on how to crank out simple delicacies that average 50 cents a serving. The videos helped win Clara a contract with St. Martin’s Press, which publishedClara’s Kitchen: Wisdom, Memories, and Recipes from the Great Depression this past October.
It’s impossible to discuss the year in food without an update on the activities of biotech giant Monsanto, whose year can be summed up in a single word: “chutzpah.” In April, the company sued the sovereign nation of Germany when its agriculture minister banned the planting of a type of Monsanto corn engineered to thwart the advances of the corn-borer moth. Monsanto was unsuccessful in forcing Germany to allow its farmers to plant the corn, and recent research suggests Germany’s concern (shared by several other European countries) may have been warranted: French scientists published a paper suggesting adverse affects of this corn — and two other types of GM corn — on the kidneys and livers of rats.
While health and environmental concerns over GM crops are commonplace, in September federal judge Jeffrey White in California’s Northern District ruled that Monsanto’s sugar beets provided an economic threat to farmers who wished to grow organic or non-GM crops. Beet pollen is carried on the wind, and will pollinate chard as well as beets. In Oregon’s Willamette Valley, where much of the nation’s beet and chard seed is grown, the presence of Monsanto’s “Roundup Ready” sugar beets threatens the livelihoods of farmers growing the non-GM varieties of these plants. It’s also likely that after a few years of Roundup Ready sugar beet cultivation in the Willamette Valley it would be difficult to get non-GM beets or chard anywhere in the nation. According to judge White, Monsanto’s sugar beets posed “…the potential elimination of a farmer’s choice to grow non-genetically engineered crops, and the consumer’s right to eat non-genetically engineered food.” The ruling, against the USDA, forced the agency to complete an EIS examining the potential impacts of the GM beets on organic seed growers and consumers before the Roundup Ready beets can again be planted.
Meanwhile, Monsanto’s marketing practices have placed it on a collision course with the U.S. Department of Justice, which this month indicated it’s considering anti-trust litigation. Monsanto’s string of acquisitions have squelched almost any possibility of competition, while its seed prices have risen by an average of 42 percent. When the DOJ dispatched some of its lawyers to meet with Monsanto to discuss these developments, the company engaged the services of Jerry Crawford, an Iowa lawyer who is a friend and financial supporter of USDA chief Tom Vilsack. It’s further indication that keeping Monsanto in line is about as easy as wrestling an anaconda.
Monsanto owns the rights to genetic sequences found in more than 85 percent of corn planted in the United States, and 92 percent of soy. Given the prevalence of corn and soy in the American diet, it’s hard to take a bite of any packaged food without eating Monsanto’s handiwork. What’s scary is how little research has actually been done in the area of food safety, and that nearly all such research has been conducted by the company itself.
While touting its products as safe for humans and the environment, Monsanto’s main sales pitch is based on the claim that genetically engineered seeds will increase crop yields and facilitate pest control. But last summer, a report by the Union of Concerned Scientists concluded that genetically engineered seeds actually don’t increase productivity. Another study, by the Organic Center, found that since the introduction of “Round-Up tolerant” corn, soy and cotton, farmers have sprayed 382.6 million more pounds of herbicides than they otherwise would have. This is partly due to the proliferation of Round-Up resistant weeds: between 2007 and 2008, farmers increased the use of different herbicides by 31 percent in an effort to combat these superweeds. Nonetheless, the company’s Web site promotes the seeds as a key component in “sustainable agriculture.”
While Monsanto has co-opted the term “sustainable agriculture,” retail giant Wal-Mart, already the world’s largest vendor of organic food, is poised to capitalize on the popularity of locally grown food.Wal-Mart is looking at ways individual stores can carry foods grown by local farmers. Another large grocer, Safeway, has this year begun aggressively pushing a “locally grown” marketing campaign, while blatantly taking advantage of the ambiguity in the term “local.” A writer by the name of Food Dude, on the Portland, Oregon blog Portland Food and Drink, busted Safeway with photographs of produce bearing out-of-state stickers next to signs announcing “I’m Local!” and “Locally Grown.”
That large corporations are jumping on the sustainable, local and organic bandwagons is arguably a good sign. It shows that these words, and what they represent, have infiltrated the mainstream consciousness. One of the most powerful vehicles to deliver this message was Food Inc, the movie whose depressing yet important message about the American diet was seen by enough people to make it the highest grossing documentary of 2009.
The year closed with the anti-climactic climate summit in Copenhagen, where U.S. Agriculture Secretary Vilsack acknowledged the huge role that livestock plays in global warming — more than transportation activities by most estimates. Vilsack announced plans to build methane capture facilities at large dairy farms in order to turn that potent greenhouse gas into an energy source. He deserves credit for helping to keep agriculture at the forefront of climate change discussions.
On the other hand, searching for ways to enable the cattle industry, while politically expedient in the short-term, are shortsighted in the long-term. Which brings us to my prediction for next year’s (or next decade’s) hot topic: serious soul-searching on the pros and cons of all things bovine. From the atrocities of feedlots and slaughterhouses to the environmental destruction wrought by cattle, given the skyrocketing worldwide demand for meat, the human addiction to cow products is reaching a breaking point.
See the original version of the above story on AlterNet for the many embedded links.
Below: The 1969 original of the song in the lead video of this post:
The Bovine 
Yet another version of the song, this time with violins and a cello: