HR 875-- Chill, people

(Just a bill)

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Ok, there's a lot of buzz on the interwebs (and by buzz, I mean hysteria) about HR 875, The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009. The primary sin of the bill is that it is vague (as bills are), and vagueness is the devil's playground. It allows those with a conspiratorial bent to fill in the gaps as it suits their agendas- and I should know, since I'm one of 'em.

Important stuff you should know first--
1) The bill is tabled, and not currently up for a vote.
2) The bill has failed before.
3) The bill has little support and is not likely to pass.

So, what's in the bill? The bill is a knee-jerk reaction to the various industrial-scale food scares we've had in the last few years- mind you, these are contaminations caused by, or aided by, the industrial food system itself. And naturally, the bill wants to fix the symptoms and not the root cause of the problem. It's kind of like the War on Drugs, or the War on Terrorism- to only go after symptoms and not the root cause is a Quixotic, endless fight. But lately, that's what American gov'mint does best.

The bill also wants to create a new agency called the "Food Safety Administration"; in fact, it wants to split the FDA into two agencies- one concerned solely with food safety, and one concerned with drugs and medical devices. The bill also calls for tougher oversight over contamination, mainly by increasing the frequency of inspections at processing plants. Splitting food and drugs is probably a good thing, but our food would need far less oversight in the first place if the system was simply decentralized. Of course, that'll never happen- the last thing the system wants is to cease to exist, or exist in diminished capacity. That would be bad for the system, see.

The biggest problem with the bill is that it appears to seek a one-size-fits-all solution to the contamination problems; it never specifies if these measures will apply to mega-farms, or Chinese imports, or small organic farms. And that lack of specification is what's causing the panic. Do I think it will apply the same measures equally to every different food system we already have? No. Just because the bill hasn't formally excluded small organic farms or even backyard gardens (it doesn't, but it should) doesn't automatically mean it will go after them. This bill does not call for the formation of the Greenshirt Food Police.

Most importantly: The bill does not cover anything already regulated by the USDA. That includes seeds and seed banks, farmer's markets, microchipping of animals (a whole other mess unto itself- hello, NAIS), and food traceability. Backyard and community gardeners, please exhale now. You will still be able to buy open-pollinated seed. And no Greenshirts will rip out your heirloom tomatoes at 2 AM.

This bill was introduced by Connecticut 03 Rep Rosa DeLauro, and her husband, Stan Greenberg, is the CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, a consulting firm. Guess who's on the client list for GQR? It starts with an M and rhymes with Schmonsanto. I totally believe DeLauro's motivations are less than pure. I'm equally certain the giant holes in the bill would allow Big Ag more liberties. And probably that her husband would love a new job title- say, Director of the Food Safety Administration. But do I think one single bill could allow for a vast, evil corporate takeover of our small farms and gardens and farmer's markets? Nope. Not gonna happen.

Food activists are passionate folks, and I can understand the panic a bill like this would generate. Clean, safe, fresh food is not a luxury, it is a basic human right. But government-planned machinations are just not in this bill. What's in the bill is a whole lotta vagueness. Like, I said-- devil's playground, people. But still, do contact your congressman and ask them to vote a big fat NO on this bill should it come back up. Sloppy, knee-jerk legislation is not helpful, no matter what the topic. Besides, it's good to call your congressman's office now and again. Shows them you're paying attention.

GMO protestor gets 22 years' imprisionment

This woman, Marie Mason, was handed a 22-year sentence yesterday because she protested (granted, with arson- not the best tactic) Michigan State University's role in the development in genetically modified crops.

The judge, U.S. District Judge Paul Maloney, called her acts as an “abandonment of the marketplace of ideas.”

I couldn't disagree more with Judge Paul Maloney; there is zero possibility for a protester to engage in the 'marketplace of ideas' when it comes to GMO. Cargill, Monsanto, and ADM are unstoppable global Goliaths with gazillions of dollars and tens of thousands of of well-paid scientists and lobbyists firmly ensconced in every hall of power on the planet. There is no David that can fight them. I completely understand what might lead a very passionate individual to such tactics.

Marie had been a peaceful protester once, but she joined Earth Liberation Front after peaceful methods didn't make any headway. When you're trying to reason with unbelievably greedy and sociopathic corporations, peaceful methods are useless. I often wonder how Gandhi would have dealt with Big Ag had it existed in his time.

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Here's how farmers in India protest their own government forcing them to use GM seeds- they commit suicide. By the thousands. This enforcement is another step in India's "Green Revolution", which took place in the mid-20th century right after their independence from Britain. Millions of people were starving and dying in India, so the new government introduced Western farming practices nation-wide. At the time, it included the use of pesticides and petro-fertilizers. Now it includes GM seeds.

But, why was there mass-starvation in India in the first place? India is home to one of the oldest civilizations on earth. Farming has existed there for at least 6,000 years, with no need for chemical or GM help. The starvation of the 20th century wasn't due to sudden population explosion or ignorance on the part of Indians. It was the result of the British Empire forcing farmers to grow non-food crops for export (cotton, indigo, spices) instead of the incredibly diverse food crops they had always grown. But even after Ghandi's revolution, British monocrops were still firmly in place. So how to feed many people and still grow the financially important export crops? Implement Western food monocrop methods which require chemicals and pesticides. The methods worked fine for a while, just like they do everywhere else. But eventually, the soil suffers and dies, bugs evolve with pesticide resistance, water runs out or becomes poisoned. So the process must be stepped up. And GM seeds came along just in time.

With the use of Western chemicals, at least farmers could still save seeds. But once the government forced the farmers to use GM seed, they couldn't save seeds from year to year anymore, for two reasons. First, GM seeds are hybrids. Saving hybrid seeds is folly. The seeds might or might not produce the next year- or when they do produce, the plants are poor. When you can't save seeds, you have to buy seeds, every year. Second, even if the farmers were able to save hybrid seeds, it would be illegal to do so because Monsanto owns the genes. This forced practice is absurdly expensive for poor farmers. And seeds from Monsanto corporate central won't necessarily grow in a farmer's particular micro-climate.

Seeds saved from year to year, for many years, are called "land-races". They have been slowly selected over time by local farmers who live on that particular patch of dirt, and they produce best for that spot. India has millions of these micro-climates, and there were probably tens of millions of land-race seeds all over India before the GM revolution. But land-race seeds are now dying out, and the GM seeds don't produce nearly as well. Farmers are forced into bankruptcy because they have to buy seed every year, or they have no profit because of bad crop production, or both. Culture suffers, families suffer, villages suffer. As farmers fail, Big Ag Mega-corps buy up the land. As land becomes privatized, Big Ag companies gain more power. So otherwise voiceless and desperate individuals protest in the only way they can.

Forced GMO use is happening in the US, too, though there are no known suicides from it. Farmers are strong-armed into buying GM seeds, and are sued if their non-GM crops test positive for privately owned genetics, since the Big Ag company "owns" that patented organism. And how does a non-GM crop become positive for those genetic markers? Pollen drift. Because of wind. Pollen can't be contained. And no one knows what will happen over time if GM genes are widely released and absorbed into our food sources.

I understand the frustration of Marie Mason. And now that we have a pro-GMO Secretary of Agriculture, Tom Vilsack, I'm even more frustrated and less hopeful.

Home gardeners in the U.S. have some choices for non-GMO seeds. My personal favorite is Seed Saver's Exchange in Decorah, Iowa. Every gardener should grow at least some heirloom, non-GMO vegetable seeds, and learn to save seeds. It's really the only way we can fight back.

Hey, plant some vegetables already, will ya?

(But, really, no pressure!)
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I went off on a little tear (positive-sounding, I hope) in the comments section on a great blog called Bamboo Geek-- http://bamboogeek.blogspot.com/ . Yes, quoting myself is madly tacky, but... well, there it is.

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"Everyone should be growing at least a little bit of their own food. There's nothing more local than the tomato growing in a pot on your porch. And, it can't be taxed, California won't stick a provision in the Farm Bill limiting it (as they have done with CSAs) there are no food miles, and you can grow amazing varieties that can't tolerate shipping. If you have a yard, it is absolutely astonishing how much food you can grow. Cheap energy severed our connection to our food- now is the time to reclaim it."

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Writing that little blurb made me want to expand on the thought, and I've been thinking a lot about this lately. Reading Michael Pollan, Richard Heinberg, and David Montgomery, a girl gets to thinking. I apologize ahead of time if this just comes off as an absurdly long rant- I'm trying to organize all the snippets in my head.

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We humans in the USA abandoned kitchen gardens only about 3 generations ago. I tend to blame the Victory Gardens of WWII, the end of which happened to coincide with an abundance of the cheapest energy we have ever known. Victory Gardens were "voluntary", but the government applied a lot of pressure on citizens to plant them. Nothing turns off a person to gardening faster than being forced to do it. And understandably, after WWII ended, people were thrilled to stop gardening altogether and buy food from new-fangled and sparkling-clean supermarkets, made possible by all that cheap energy. Frozen and canned food from often thousands of miles away now stocked pantries and electric refrigerators. Thanks to the national PR machine, growing your own food was deemed hopelessly out of fashion- not "modern". Big Ag was created, and it quickly took over what grandmas and moms had been doing since the Neolithic Revolution. Mix in our lack of national food identity in this country of immigrants, government-sponsored "nutrition experts", state and federal lobbyists paid for by the food industry, and the magic of capitalism, and voila- no more home-grown vegetables, no more home canning (Michael Pollan lays all of this out beautifully in his new book, "In Defense of Food"). Gardening knowledge and food preservation methods handed down for dozens of generations (nearly) vanished in a matter of 60 years.

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What was the benefit in that trade-off? Well, convenience, mainly. But now, that trade-off is coming with many side-effects that we are beginning to regret. Our Western diet- from the way we grow food and the way we process food, to the chemicals we use to replace food- is making us and the whole planet sick. Massive monoculture farming is dependent on enormous quantities of petroleum-based fertilizer and pesticides. But those chemicals further kill off any and all microflora and microfauna in the soil, which, it is strongly suspected, contribute mightily to the nutrient content in our food- and sterile soil requires even more fertilizer. Now our dirt is now mostly dead, and it's the base of a major food chain- the one that we depend on. Nitrogen runoff from the petro-fertilizers is the number-one cause of acidification of the oceans. The massive amount of fresh water required to run these Big Ag farms is draining ancient aquafers and rivers dry. Then there are the myriad food chemistry industries making us fat and probably giving us cancer. And GMO? Thank you, Monsanto- you took something that was not broken, and broke it.

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So, why did I start growing vegetables? I don't exactly come from a long line of gardeners. I never had a yard as a kid since I grew up in apartments. But three or four years ago, Peak Oil was a tremendous wake-up call for me. I was in a total panic for about a year. Finally, I rested on one thought- I have no control over the trade or availability of oil, but I can grow some food. It quieted my mind.

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But here's the weird thing- Peak Oil is just a low hum in the background for me now. I absolutely thrill to see my vegetables coming up, and I know they are pesticide-free and far more nutritious than anything I can buy in the store- and if you're a foodie, it's the best food you'll ever taste. Besides, you can't get more local than your own kitchen garden. And if, by some miracle, we don't plunge into a 21st century global Great Depression along with a world-wide energy, water, and food crisis (never mind this gigantic mess of a climate crisis), I am deeply grateful that I know how to grow even a little bit of my own food. Peak Oil gave me that, and I'm just incredibly thankful for it.

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And now that I understand- best I can, anyway- the web of Big Government, Big Money, Big Ag, and my food, I've come to think of gardening as a pretty subversive act. The old punk in me totally digs it. I can opt out, just a little bit, of this vast, senseless mess we've created in the name of short-term profit. And so far, no one can stop me- at least until the Big Ag police show up on my porch some night and smash my tomatoes.

A Shiny, Happy Article about Monsanto!

(MMummbbwwaaahhh-Haaa-Hhaaa-Haaahhh!)

Ok, not so much. The article is called "Monsanto's Harvest of Fear". It's a coming feature story in May 2008's Vanity Fair, part of their annual Green Issue. If you don't know much about Monsanto but already know that they are the one of the scarier faces of Big Ag, this article is an excellent place to start. And, natch, there's so much more to Monsanto than just agriculture.

Gestapo tactics? Check!
Dioxin and PCB manufacturing? Check!

Illegal dumping? Check!

Mass-market herbicides that poison our soil and water? Check!

GM seeds? You betcha!

They've got it all. And they won't rest until they make every last penny there is to be made in the world or kill off all their end-users, whatever comes first.

Why-O-why is Madonna on the cover, though? Madonna? Really?
http://www.vanityfair.com/politics/features/2008/05/monsanto200805