Sometimes the best way to ensure our own health is to get involved in the political process. You know I’ve testified before Congress – now I’m asking you to get involved. Take a few minutes to get educated here – and check out the links we’ve included after the “read more”, too.

This information was sent to me from Michio Kushi’s son Phiya. It appears that a couple of bills regarding “food safety” may be coming up for vote in the next week or so.

Because of the vague language in these bills, it’s possible that they can do a lot of damage to food we consider healthy – organic farming, heirloom seeds, non-GMO foods, non-cloned animals, non-irradiated foods, hormone-free and pesticide-free foods, etc. In the name of food safety, the government would be able to mandate the seed varieties, pesticides and herbicides, and feed (hormones and antibiotics) used.

One of the results would be more big business in farming – that means a reduction in family farms, and a vastly increased carbon footprint. (Isn’t farming supposed to be “green?”)

Finally, the creation of a new bureaucracy (yes, a whole new agency) and an administrator with the authority to make the agency as large as he wants means more government spending. One of the bills includes surveillance of growers/farmers, computer tagging, monitoring, and “mandatory” usage of whatever means the government deems necessary to kill anything living in our food they feel is bad, including all the vitamins which are quite fragile. The cost of all this is staggering.

What can you do? Keep reading (click the “read more”). Find out more about the bills in the House and Senate. Then make a call or write an email. Help make a difference.

Here’s a great place to get the facts on where a bill is the political process, and to find out how to contact your representatives.

Here are the two bills we’re talking about –

Read about HR 875 (House version) – Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009
Summary – To establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes.

Read about S 425 (Senate version) – Food Safety and Tracking Improvement Act
Summary – A bill to amend the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to provide for the establishment of a traceability system for food, to amend the Federal Meat Inspection Act, the Poultry Products Inspections Act, the Egg Products Inspection Act, and the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act to provide for improved public health and food safety through enhanced enforcement, and for other purposes.

In this case, both the House and Senate versions of the bill have been referred to committee. That means you have time to call your representatives and make your voice heard. If your representative is a co-sponsor or committee member, your voice is even more important right now! You can find the list of co-sponsors on each bill’s page (click on the number of co-sponsors to get the full list). You can find the committee members by clicking through to the committee page, and scrolling through the list of members. (These are big committees – no wonder things move so slowly.)

When you call, know the bill number, and have a very brief statement of your opinion. Usually they just keep a tally of the “yay-nay” opinions when you call in. If you can email a short statement (no more than two short paragraphs), that’s even better – back up your position with your reasons.

Here’s an article on Monsanto.

See? Advocacy isn’t really too difficult. You CAN make a difference. You CAN help keep our food supply natural, organic, and healthy!

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 26th, 2009 at 6:16 am and is filed under Articles - Food, Green living. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.