“The Raw Milk Revolution” book author David E. Gumpert on Senate Bill S-510

From David’s The Complete Patient blog:

Kelli and Anthony Estrella of Estella Family Creamery. Complete Patient photo

“If the people let government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as are the souls of those who live under tyranny. — Thomas Jefferson

The writer of the Declaration of Independence and our third president was certainly a prescient man. His dark vision has pretty much come to fruition. And the irony is that most of the millions who suffer the consequences through degraded health haven’t a clue as to what has happened. Our government may be incompetent in many ways, but it is highly skilled at propaganda. Just as most people think the trillions in bailouts to our banks “saved us” from a depression, most also think that “food safety” is about giving the government more power to limit the foods we have access to (and today, the U.S. Senate moved closer to approving S 510 by invoking cloture and thus limiting debate).

This all has become ever more clear to me as a result of participating in a debate about S 510 sponsored by the online publication, Grist.org. Maybe I just hang around in the wrong circles, but it’s astounding to me that a number of smart people have so much faith in the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to fairly enforce a wide range of new laws, including the power to quarantine parts of the U.S., the power to search food producers at will, the power to implement so-called Good Agricultural Practices, and the power to require and approve HACCP plans guiding every step of production. There is finagling over exempting small enterprises, but I’m wary, since much of that could be left to FDA discretion. The FDA feasts on small enterprises, since it is so afraid of confronting big ones.

The discussion following my previous post about various aspects of food safety points up how much confusion, and disagreement, there is about the subject. Take Ron Klein’s link to the FDA memo about alleged violations of food safety practices at the Estrella Family Creamery in Washington….”

Read the whole thing on the Complete Patient blog.