Why the U.S. “Food Safety” bills should worry even rich bankers on Wall Street

Here’s a fascinating proposition, from Patrick Henning:

Sure they may be rich enough to have a plane in every garage, but if S-510 is allowed to pass the Senate, even the super rich may eventually not be able to buy any food worth eating.

In the 1980s, a British psychiatrist lived in the US.  He was making a great deal more money than he could ever have made in the UK but for financial reasons, he went home.  He returned because his daughter had a medical condition and he said that he could never be rich enough in the US to be sure she got adequate care, whereas in the UK, even on a considerably smaller salary, he knew she would be covered by the health system there.

Wall Street brokers are not immune from their own fears of threatening things happening in the world.  Out of fear for their own lives, they do the opposite of that psychiatrist.  They hope to be immune from world issues by amassing unheard of wealth.  And they have the money, already, through stealing from everyone else in the country.

The lack of any decent food (due to bills like S-510) sure could take the shine off owning a posh ski chalet in the mountains.

The problem is that with one issue, they, like the psychiatrist, could never protect themselves from no matter how much money they ever take.  The issue is not healthcare – they could buy whatever kind they wish.  The issue is food.

What is about to happen to it here is not something they could ever adequately protect themselves and certainly not their children from.  And moving will not help because the forces here which are set to destroy food are doing what they can to impose those same conditions internationally.  Unless it is stopped here, food is threatened everywhere.

And what is the threat?  Multinational corporations such as Monsanto, Cargill, Tysons,  the pharmaceutical industry, etc. have a “food safety” bill in the Senate (S 510) that will allow “the Administrator” to enforce regulations that would require farmers to use “best practices” in agriculture.  Unfortunately, those will be defined by “the Administrator” who is expected to be Michael Taylor, Monsanto VP and lawyer and the man who deregulated GMOs and is associated with getting rBGH into the food supply.  By being in a position to set the definition of “best practices” and “science based,” the Administrator can impose GMOs, pesticides, antibiotics, hormones, irradiation of food, chemical washes, and other products and processes for animal health, the environment, and human health.  Those products and and processes are increasingly rejected by the public and exposed as deadly by scientific journals but they are the lifeblood of agribusiness and the pharmaceutical industry (Big Pharm).  S 510 and the other bills would mandate their usage and punish (to the point of elimination) any – such as organic farmers – who would normally completely avoid such products and reject such processes.

If the bill passes, American food will become extremely dangerous to human health.  But it would be the only food available so would still sell.  And the illnesses it would create would be a high yielding crop to harvest for profit by the pharmaceutical industry.

The unbounded excesses of greed the country has seen Wall Street exhibit may be partly driven by their personal fear of what is happening politically and economically, and be their means of trying to shore up security for themselves.  While they may be able to insulate themselves and their children in some ways and for some little time from the more total destruction of food that big Pharm has designed, ultimately, this destruction of food will pose a danger to them as well.  Restaurant food would be affected.  Catered food would be affected.  Food in shops, food in markets (If markets even remain), the whole pleasure of food would be gone.

If the bill and related ones pass, food would become mutant, poisoned and irradiated as well.  Irradiated food is dead food and dead food is valueless for sustaining life (cats in Australia fed irradiated pet food have already died from it).

So, what’s a terribly rich Wall Street person to do?

Is the world a richer place when there's one less thing -- healthy natural food -- that money can buy?

They must understand that no one can eat money.  People must have food to live.  It isn’t enough that food just look like food.  Virtual food, PR food cannot keep people healthy or even alive.   It must not be irradiated, pesticided, chemicaled to death.  Food, to be food, must sustain life.  To do that, it must be real, normal and alive,  all things that industry is set to eliminate.

When it comes to food, Wall Street has reason to be afraid.  At the level of food, rich doesn’t make them any different from other human beings and so what happens to food makes them one with everyone else.  In that sense, they are still Americans, and what happens to the American food supply is critical to them, too.  S 510 and the other bills go dramatically against their own interests for themselves and their children’s future.  If they want to enjoy eating out, farmers markets, food as they travel, food in stores, food at celebrations, they have reason to be very worried, and reason to act.

There are two good things in this.  The first is that while Wall Street may represent a special interest that has taken from this country, not all destructive corporate interests intersect with their own.  People can live without money but no one can live without real food, so what Big Pharm plans is a threat to Wall Street people.  Wall Street is still human and real, unpoisoned, undrugged, unradiated food is very much in their own interest.

The second good thing is that, ironically, they now have vast resources to stop these bills.  They have a chance to protect themselves but more, they have a chance to redeem themselves by saving everyone else.  Unlike the British psychiatrist, there is no safe place to go anymore when it comes to food, so Wall Street folk must make their own country safe, for themselves and their children and grandchildren.

And the threat to food is far worse than anything Wall Street did

Maybe it will turn out that through their plundering, Wall Street amassed enough power to stop something none of us would have been able to do in their stead, and they will be able to do a literally world saving good because they did a huge but lesser wrong.

Yachts with private heli-pads could always be repurposed by the super rich to forage for wild edibles in Alaska after organic local produce has been outlawed and we're left with GMOs at the Groceteria.

Nader’s new book is fictional, about how the very rich find their own hearts and use their great wealth save things.  With food, though, the real life Wall Street rich need only find their own true self-interest, saving their own health and their children’s lives to have reason to save food.  Along with that sustaining platter, they would get a very rare dessert – a hope to redeem themselves in the eyes of their own countrymen.

Topped off by an incomparable cherry – a world not filled with increasing illness and death.

Ralph Nader’s book is called “Only the Super Rich Can Save Us“.

Picture credits (top to bottom):

House with plane garages from Seaspook’s Rants

Ski Chalet from ScrapeTV

Rolls Royce from Propertyinvesting.net

Yacht with heliport, from Bornrich.org

More on Ralph Nader’s book:

“In the cozy den of the large but modest house in Omaha where he has lived since he started on his first billion, Warren Buffett watched the horrors of Hurricane Katrina unfold on television in early September 2005. . . . On the fourth day, he beheld in disbelief the paralysis of local, state, and federal authorities unable to commence basic operations of rescue and sustenance, not just in New Orleans, but in towns and villages all along the Gulf Coast. . . He knew exactly what he had to do. . .”

So begins the vivid fictional account by political activist and bestselling author Ralph Nader that answers the question, “What if?” What if a cadre of superrich individuals tried to become a driving force in America to organize and institutionalize the interests of the citizens of this troubled nation? What if some of America’s most powerful individuals decided it was time to fix our government and return the power to the people? What if they focused their power on unionizing Wal-Mart? What if a national political party were formed with the sole purpose of advancing clean elections? What if these seventeen superrich individuals decided to galvanize a movement for alternative forms of energy that will effectively clean up the environment? What if together they took on corporate goliaths and Congress to provide the necessities of life and advance the solutions so long left on the shelf by an avaricious oligarchy? What could happen?

This extraordinary story, written by the author who knows the most about citizen action, returns us to the literature of American social movements—to Edward Bellamy, to Upton Sinclair, to John Steinbeck, to Stephen Crane—reminding us in the process that changing the body politic of America starts with imagination.