Will The Federal Government Control Our Food?

From Big Government:

Food Fight: Will the Federal Government Control Our Food?by Dr. Susan Berry


Amidst the hustle and bustle of the “lame duck” Congress, another law was passed that didn’t quite get the same media coverage as the Bush tax extension “package,” the repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell, and the new START treaty. The Food Safety Modernization Act was not steeped in the same level of popular controversy as these other pieces of legislation. Nevertheless, its passage may affect our daily lives even more than these, and in a rather stealth manner.







Yes, the week before Christmas, the 111th Congress of the United States gave Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), quite extensive authority over food production in our country. That’s food- from the seeds that grow the plants and the animals that provide the meat and milk, to the Lean Cuisine you had for dinner.



Originally proposed last year by Democratic Senator Dick Durbin, the new law will cost about 1.4 billion dollars over a four-year period. It arrived, as much legislation does, in response to several major crises. Recent salmonella outbreaks in eggs and peanuts, as well as E. coli, in spinach, caused sickness, and some deaths, within the country. These outbreaks led to food recalls and much criticism of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is under the authority of HHS, for its poor oversight of already known risky food producers.



The new law is intended to redirect the FDA from the position of crisis management of food-borne illness emergencies to that of preventing them. Under the new law, food manufacturers will be required to engage in detailed record-keeping of their processing systems and ways in which they can avoid bacterial contamination of their products. All of these records, and test results proving their systems to be effective means of eliminating contamination, must be shared with the FDA. The agency will now have the authority to order food recalls (currently, it only requests them). and will be required to perform inspections of food producers more often.



So, what’s wrong with this?



There are three issues that should concern us:





1) Will this new law really make our food safer?



In an article in Forbes Magazine, Gregory Conko provides a thorough assessment of this legislation. He asserts that the new law is a waste of tax-payer money and will not achieve its stated goals. Conko explains that, first, while “more frequent inspections may seem superficially appealing…the new law would merely require inspections for most facilities every five years [instead of ten years], and once every three years for identified “high-risk” facilities.” Clearly, alot can happen in three to five years.



Second, Conko points out that even more frequent inspections of the visual type performed by FDA and other agency inspectors cannot detect microscopic bacteria that cause food-borne illness. A food production facility may look clean, but is it really? Conversely, a cluttered area in a facility may be sterile, but just a little messy.



Conko goes on to observe that, as with many systems imposed by bureaucrats who have little knowledge of the industry they are regulating, the detailed risk-reduction record-keeping, required by the new law, may only serve to pile up more cumbersome paperwork on private food companies that could be using their time to develop more effective food safety practices.



2) How will the type of food we grow and produce be controlled?



This is probably the most important issue affecting us with this new legislation because the new law is vague in its language of what constitutes a “farm” (Is a garden a “farm?”), and how the Secretary of HHS can regulate the types of seeds that are planted and fertilizers used (Will “manure” be permitted?) And what about people who enjoy foods in their raw form, like milk and honey? Will these be outlawed as well because we all now have to eat and drink the same foods that are most easily regulated by the Secretary of HHS?



The bill was supported by huge food companies like Campbell’s Soup and Cargill, and industrial seed companies like Monsanto, which spent millions of dollars lobbying for its passage. Large industrial seed companies are big producers of genetically modified seeds and, in recent years, have become increasingly threatened by the presence of small organic farms, farmers’ markets, and the local food movement which celebrates the benefits of heirloom and genetically true vegetables and fruits, as well as organic farming methods and fertilizers. For the latter, the direct farmer to consumer relationship is what matters, and the government will be in the way.



According to Conko, industrial seed giants are wealthy enough to pay the huge costs associated with the more frequent inspections required by the new law. In addition, they already have in place much of the expensive record-keeping system that will now be required of smaller farms that could be forced out of business by costs of the new procedures.



Enter another Democrat, Senator Jon Tester of Montana, himself a small farmer, to “appear to” save the day. He produced an amendment to the bill which recognized that small farmers would have a difficult time complying with the requirements of the new legislation. His amendment, which was included in the law, sets a dollar amount, namely $500,000, as the cut-off between the definitions of “small farmer” and “big farmer,” a line that hardly seems easily defined. As is often the case, the Democrats produced a huge piece of legislation with far-reaching consequences, and tried to make it more popular by adding yet more legislation to it.



3) What will the costs of the new law be for Americans?



As already noted, farms and food producers will be paying more fees to the government for all the increased inspections and record filings. These will, ultimately, be passed on to consumers. So, if we are not paying more for food because of inflation caused by the Federal Reserve printing money, we will be paying more because of the Food Safety Modernization Act.



However, the real cost of the legislation will be the increase of tax-payer dollars needed to support the mounting number of FDA and other HHS personnel performing more inspections in the field. In fact, the legislation gives the Secretary of HHS the authority to hire 4,000 federal employees in 2011 alone in order to implement the law. By 2014, 5,000 federal employees will be hired by this agency in support of this law. Clearly, in this new legislation, the current administration underscores its belief that the only way to handle problems is by expanding the power of the federal government.



It remains to be seen whether the Food Safety Modernization Act will be on the “Defund” list of the new Republican House of Representatives.