Story about new Organic Farming laws

[Big Daddy]

The Exclusions are listed under Definitions Parag 13, it says for purposes of registration that food producers as defined in Parag 14 are excluded from having to register. I would assume if you don't have to register you aren't subject to the items in the bill. That's the way I read it. I'm not an attorney though. if you Google the bill you get about 1 million hits. So there's a lot of opinions out there. Too bad Paul Harvey is dead. He would give us the rest of the story. Right now were just getting the spin. It sure does seem like they cover their bases though.

This bill would actually cover the big production facilities in the case of bird flu. They know bird flu comes from infected birds outside the flock. If the facility is sealed from outside birds and an inspector is on the premises all the time that pretty much covers them. Any private flocks in the vicinity of an outbreak will be destroyed.

 

[me&thegals]

Big Daddy, here is the exemption for 'small operations'. There aren't any. If you found them in your reading, please tell me what page they are on.
.

Thank you for answering my unasked and un-thought of question. I remember seeing an exemption when Conrad was explaining the bill. There was a line giving a specific number of carcasses.

I would like an answer to the questions I asked above. We would like to sell Turkey and the above questions have always bothered me.

BD--The folks I know around here protect themselves with a $1 million liability policy. It's not huge, but it's pretty standard for small growers.

Of course, when you're selling a few items to a few people, it's hard to create a chain of evidence from a sick person back to you. I have a feeling that's where this bill is coming from. With things clearly "labeled" in this huge food system we have, outbreaks could be tracked much more quickly.

This hasn't come up yet on here, but it certainly comes up on opinion blogs: Organic is not inherently safer than nonorganic. The only thing safer about organic is there are no chemicals. The E. coli problems are caused by fecal material, which is just as--possibly more--likely to enter the organic food chain (think composted manure, not quite hot enough, long enough).

I think it's really important to be moderate enough in our thinking on this so organic and small producers don't come off as protecting their territory at the risk of consumers.

It's also important to think about what the odds of getting sick actually are. In a recent session I took on food safety, the instructor told us that we were more likely to get hit by lightning than to become ill from a foodborne pathogen.

For the record: I personally think it's good for our immune systems to be exposed to germs. I'd much rather fight off a germ than have irradiated food. And, I personally try to develop a relationship with my customers, show them where their eggs are laid, require them to help on the farm during CSA season so they SEE how THEIR food is being grown. But, most of our food system is not built on this relationship and people are getting sick and dying. Not many, but I guess when it's your kid, it's one person too many.

Just some thoughts...

 

[me&thegals]

Something else that is going on, not related directly to this bill but the players are lining up; there is a virtual craze of patenting everything.
All the seeds and plants are being patented. This is changing how growers, wholesalers and retailers will be able to operate. Originally seeds were bought, sown and the plants sold through retail or wholesale. Soon, because of the patents businesses must buy cuttings or plants, with the self sown seed end of it being phased out. I don't know the target date of this switch over but I think small home gardeners will be facing the same dilemma down the road. It will assuredly raise prices because the profit realized from sowing seeds will be eliminated.
I know this doesn't apply to field crops like corn, wheat and soy, mainly annuals and perennials and small businesses that grow from seed and sell plants.

Actually, it hugely and FIRST affects crops like corn and soybeans. The patent business, AFAIK, started with them. We got Round-Up ready seeds, which were patented. Farmers had to sign documents promising not to save the seeds for replanting. Can you get much farther from real farming than that? Monsanto has spent quite a bit of $ suing farmers who have those genetics in their fields but have not bought those seeds from Monsanto.

Now, Monsanto is getting even smarter and developing seeds that cannot reproduce after their first year. Why screw around with inspections? Simply make it absolutely impossible for folks to save their seeds.

In some third-world countries, they've addressed it a different way. You simply pay a Monsanto fee at the mill if any of the grains you bring in carry their genetics.

Now I feel like I am starting to get all conspiracy theorist, but I truly believe Monsanto and companies who operate like them are bad, bad, bad! To take the source of all food (seeds) and tinker with it until it contains intellectual property that you then control, then make it illegal for others to steal that intellectual property is a scary road to travel down. Plus, pollen doesn't know these rules and simply spreads itself whereever wind, birds and bees take it. So my nice organic tomato crops may carry pollen from my neighbor's GMO tomatoes. It is crazy when you start applying business models to people's food supplies.

So, I buy heirloom seeds. They're more expensive but way more interesting and FUN! They are NOT GMO. Vote with your pocketbook. A lot of the big seed catalogues now offer GMO or have been bought by Monsanto or its subsidiaries. So, you need to find the little guys like Baker Creek, Seeds of Change or Seed Savers Exchange.

I have not read the bill at all yet--can't get access to it--but I would fight tooth and nail anything that takes away my legal right to grow my own food, uninfested by GMO.

As I've said before, I don't believe in gov't conspiracies when there's always corporate greed as a perfectly likely explanation.

 

[patandchickens]

You know what, I wrote out a reply intended to sensibly discuss the issue but then realized that it is probably totally beside the point here, so never mind.

Those who prefer to interpret things to believe that the US government is genuinely proposing to prevent you from planting a coupla tomato plants on the back deck, really nothing anyone says is likely to sway you.

It's a shame though.

Because there are some more-compelling (i.e. reality based) reasons to oppose this bill, i.e. the potential effect on small commercial operations. I would be more surprised if the bill passed (in anything resembling its current form anyhow) than if it didn't but that doesn't mean it's not important to speak up.

But if you go claiming to your congressman that this bill will make it illegal for people to have a backyard garden for their own use, that is just not likely to getcha listened to.

For all those conspiracy theorists who see this as part of some plot by Government (peopled, apparently, by weasels from mars, not actual human beings) to take away every single d*mn thing from your lives, I would just like to point something out:

It is a hundred times easier to pass a law than to arrange for enforcement of it. (Wait... I am not going with this where you probably think I am going...)

Thus, when you have bijillions of people running around saying "OMG, melamine-tainted <fill-in-the-blank> is killing all our <fill-in-the-blanks>, and <whatever> residues in <food> from <somewhere> are being reported in all the media, and what about all those reports of <horrible toxic thing> being found in <toys and housewares from other countries>!!!!!!! Aaaaagh!!!! Help!!! Why doesn't someone DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS!!!!"...

...it is incredibly difficult to actually do something about it from a practical standpoint (like monitoring, testing, enforcing, and negotiating the resulting fallout with the countries involved).

Whereas it is easy peasy to introduce a bill saying 'here is a comprehensive plan to make sure none of that bad stuff happens any more'.

Thus I think it is quite understandable that there should be a push for more legislation on those issues. Because then your congressman (or whomever) can stand up and say "Hey, I did what I could! We passed a sweeping new program of regulations to make sure this will never happen again!". As opposed to him having to say "well, we'd really like to keep it from ever happening again but that is incredibly difficult and realistically not going to happen, to any great extent, during my lifetime... so hey, wanna vote me another term?"

I am not saying I think the substitution of grandstanding legislation for practical action is constructive -- it is not! -- but it sure is UNDERSTANDABLE, do you not think? Rather than being, say, part of a massive conspiracy.

You don't like what your gummint is doing, RUN FOR OFFICE. Even at the local level. If you get in, you could do some good; and boy will you get a different perspective on WHY things tend to happen the way they do. And I don't mean that in a cynical way.

JMHO,

Pat

 

[me&thegals]

Now there's a truly comforting point: Saved by the sheer size of government ineptitude

I feel a tad more concerned because I actually have a business based on selling food to people. If we were just talking backyard gardens, I doubt I would have low-flying helicopters trying to see if those were kids in the backyard or unregistered tomato plants

My recent conference addressed the likelihood of this very type of legislation coming up. You need to have a safe food supply, but it's very possible that in trying to do that through legislation it will pull down the little guy, ie: me.

So, then what? Do I try to sneak under the radar? I'm certainly not set up to put up a packing shed, stainless steel washing station and cooler. And I sure don't want to be doing this lawlessly.

Okay--time to stop speculating and try again to find a working link to the bill. I'm thinking if there is this much outrage, this bill will die faster than a new seedling in the hot sun

 

[Tallman]

Actually, it hugely and FIRST affects crops like corn and soybeans. The patent business, AFAIK, started with them. We got Round-Up ready seeds, which were patented. Farmers had to sign documents promising not to save the seeds for replanting. Can you get much farther from real farming than that? Monsanto has spent quite a bit of $ suing farmers who have those genetics in their fields but have not bought those seeds from Monsanto.

Now, Monsanto is getting even smarter and developing seeds that cannot reproduce after their first year. Why screw around with inspections? Simply make it absolutely impossible for folks to save their seeds.

In some third-world countries, they've addressed it a different way. You simply pay a Monsanto fee at the mill if any of the grains you bring in carry their genetics.

Now I feel like I am starting to get all conspiracy theorist, but I truly believe Monsanto and companies who operate like them are bad, bad, bad! To take the source of all food (seeds) and tinker with it until it contains intellectual property that you then control, then make it illegal for others to steal that intellectual property is a scary road to travel down. Plus, pollen does know these rules and simply spreads itself whereever wind, birds and bees take it. So my nice organic tomato crops may carry pollen from my neighbor's GMO tomatoes. It is crazy when you start applying business models to people's food supplies.


I have not read the bill at all yet--can't get access to it--but I would fight tooth and nail anything that takes away my legal right to grow my own food, uninfested by GMO.

As I've said before, I don't believe in gov't conspiracies when there's always corporate greed as a perfectly likely explanation.

I posted some of the H. R. 875 on post #26 of this thread.

My brother farms about 1,200 acres, and he has mentioned the same things that you have posted above about corn and soybean seed.

Wheat has yet to be monkeyed with. I know big wheat farmers in western Kansas who store their seed wheat each year, and they are concerned that someday something will come along requiring them cease this practice.

 

[me&thegals]

I posted some of the H. R. 875 on post #26 of this thread.

My brother farms about 1,200 acres, and he has mentioned the same things that you have posted above about corn and soybean seed.

Wheat has yet to be monkeyed with. I know big wheat farmers in western Kansas who store their seed wheat each year, and they are concerned that someday something will come along requiring them cease this practice.

Yeah. My husband is a crop farmer, too, so I know whereof I speak. He actually refuses to use Monsanto technology any more. They are basically creating an addiction. Plus, guess who supplies the chemical Round-Up that you can spray on your Round-Up Ready crops without killing the crop? You guessed it! My husband is so weary of being jerked around by this system that this dyed-in-the-wool, conservative, midwestern farmer is actually considering going organic.

Yes, agriculture is not your nice little family farm any more. It is called agribusiness for a reason. That's all nice and fine if you want to play that way in other businesses and globally. But, when you start messing around with people's food supply, it gets a little personal.

And, for anyone who says you can simply not buy GMO seeds, it gets harder and harder. Co-ops stock what most people buy. My husband has to look an awfully lot harder and further these days to find non-GMO seeds. Supply and demand. Until the old seeds are no longer in supply. That's, again, why I buy heirloom seeds--keep up the demand to protect the supply.

 

[farmerlor]

Me too. I'm all about heirloom seeds and seed saving. And I don't think that supply and demand thing is going to work in Monsanto's favor much longer. I hear noise about Monsanto suing farmers for having crops that have cross-pollinated with theirs. Farmers are a tough lot and they stick together. I think if you sue one of them the fall-out will be a lot less farmers buying those Monsanto brands....at least I hope so.

 

[me&thegals]

M already is suing farmers. They actually get a bit ugly in their tactics, as in trying to get other farmers to narc on each other and gathering samples from crops in fields adjacent to fields where Monsanto seed is planted. Here's a link to the case of Perry Schmeiser, an organic canola grower in Canada. I first read about this in Jane Goodall's book about food and how our choices affect the planet.

http://www.percyschmeiser.com/ This link is to Schmeiser's web page, which is obviously biased. But, I have read this same story in so many other different places that I feel comfortable with its accuracy.

Plenty of folks had already gotten steamrolled under Monsanto's legal machinery. Schmeiser decided to put up a fight.

I hope farmers do fight. We actually have a friend who is a crop geneticist for Monsanto. He simply says it's intellectual property with millions of $ invested in it and therefore Monsanto must protect it. I think I'd rather just bankrupt that type of agricultural system. I have TWO Monsanto crop geneticists out of my only TEN CSA families this year. Is that not crazy? And in my list of promises to my customers, the second one, prominently placed, is "I will grow all your food from non-GMO seeds." Take that! Weirdest of all is that Monsanto as a company subsidizes their employee's memberships in CSAs around here So, create GMO, but please eat organic.

 

[Wifezilla]

"I am a seed developer from western Canada, where since 1947 my wife and I have been developing a strain of canola that is resistant to certain diseases that we have on the prairies. I am also a seed saver, like hundred of thousands of farmers around the world who save their seed from year to year, to plant and harvest.

I was also the mayor of my community for over twenty five years.

In 1998 without any prior knowledge, Monsanto laid a lawsuit against me alleging that I had infringed their patent by growing their genetically modified conola without a license. It was a real shock to me, as we had never had anything to do with Monsanto.

But the real issue that concerned us was the possibility that our pure seed, which we had developed after half a century of research would now be contaminated. We stood up to Monsanto, arguing that if any genetically modified organisms (GMOs) were present in our pure seed, then Monsanto were liable for destroying the property of others.


It took two years for this case to go to trial at the Federal court of Canada, with one judge, but no jury, and I had no choice in the matter. In the two years of allegations Monsanto withdrew all allegations that I had obtained their seed illegally, but because they had found some GMO canola plants in the ditch along my field, I had infringed their patent. That is the basis on which the case went to the Federal Court of Canada.

This is what the judge ruled: it does not matter how Monsantos GMOs get into or onto any farmers field or into a seed supply (He went on to specify how this could happen: direct seed movement by birds, by wind, especially on the prairies, by floods, and through cross-pollination by bees). It doesnt actually matter how the genetically modified organisms get into an organic farmers field or into the fields of a conventional farmer like myself: once there, those seeds and plants become Monsantos property."
http://www.opednews.com/articles/Theft-of-Life-A-story-of-by-Percy-Schmeiser-090303-93.html

"Bablok became part of the controversy because some of his bee colonies were collecting pollen from fields where the Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture was growing GM corn for research purposes. The bees carried the pollen back to their hives and Bablok, who knew that the GM cornfields were nearby, had samples tested to ensure that his honey was clean. But the laboratory found that up to 7 percent of the pollen was from GM plants. When the case became public, a district court in the Bavarian city of Augsburg ordered Bablok to stop selling, or even giving away, his honey. As a result, he became Germany's first beekeeper who delivered his honey to a waste incineration facility. Now Bablok is suing the Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture to recover his costs and his lost sales, which he says amount to about 10,000.

The suit is complicated and has already passed through two courts. A third court is due to hear it soon and both sides are seeking a judgment establishing a principle. The case is about more than just Bablok's costs and the purity of German honey. In fact, the future of green genetic engineering in Germany is at stake. A victory for Bablok would further discredit MON 810. In the public's perception, it would transform the plant into a hazard for human beings.

Bablok, sitting in his kitchen, is an easygoing man given to long pauses between sentences. File folders are arranged on the table in front of him containing motions filed by his attorneys from Berlin, people who are familiar with the material. A beekeepers' association is helping to pay their fees. The folders also contain the motions filed by the opposing parties' lawyers. They are being represented by the law firm of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. With its 2,500 attorneys, the firm is about as global as Monsanto."
Bablok became part of the controversy because some of his bee colonies were collecting pollen from fields where the Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture was growing GM corn for research purposes. The bees carried the pollen back to their hives and Bablok, who knew that the GM cornfields were nearby, had samples tested to ensure that his honey was clean. But the laboratory found that up to 7 percent of the pollen was from GM plants. When the case became public, a district court in the Bavarian city of Augsburg ordered Bablok to stop selling, or even giving away, his honey. As a result, he became Germany's first beekeeper who delivered his honey to a waste incineration facility. Now Bablok is suing the Bavarian State Research Center for Agriculture to recover his costs and his lost sales, which he says amount to about 10,000.

The suit is complicated and has already passed through two courts. A third court is due to hear it soon and both sides are seeking a judgment establishing a principle. The case is about more than just Bablok's costs and the purity of German honey. In fact, the future of green genetic engineering in Germany is at stake. A victory for Bablok would further discredit MON 810. In the public's perception, it would transform the plant into a hazard for human beings.

Bablok, sitting in his kitchen, is an easygoing man given to long pauses between sentences. File folders are arranged on the table in front of him containing motions filed by his attorneys from Berlin, people who are familiar with the material. A beekeepers' association is helping to pay their fees. The folders also contain the motions filed by the opposing parties' lawyers. They are being represented by the law firm of Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer. With its 2,500 attorneys, the firm is about as global as Monsanto.
http://greenbio.checkbiotech.org/news/monsantos_uphill_battle_germany

"A group of food companies, mostly small co-ops, has pledged to avoid using sugar from genetically modified sugar beets.

Organizers of the registry insist that not enough is known about the long-term health and environmental effects of genetically modified beet sugar.

"We need to avoid the all-too-common situation of finding out a product is harmful after it has been approved and widely distributed," said Jeffrey Smith, director of the Institute for Responsible Technology, one of a dozen sponsors of the registry.

The Institute for Responsible Technology opposes all use of genetically modified organisms for food purposes.

Signers of the registry would prefer that genetically modified foods be labeled. But because that's not required in the United States, they created the registry.

The 70 companies that signed on pledged to "seek whenever possible to avoid using GM sugar in our products."

Signers include Organic Valley, Bozeman Community Food Co-op and Skagit Valley Food Co-op.

The group is opposed to Monsanto's Roundup Ready technology, which allows farmers to kill problem weeds with little or no harm to the crop as it grows.

Last year marked the first widely grown Roundup Ready sugar beet crop in the United States.

Tom Stearns, president of High Mowing Organic Seeds, said genetically modified sugar beets could cross-pollinate with related crops such as chard and table beets, potentially affecting their marketability.

"Overseas markets have already rejected other GM products, so the economic future of many of our nation's farmers is being needlessly risked," Stearns said.

High Mowing Seeds is a signer of the registry and a plaintiff in a lawsuit opposing the release of Roundup Ready sugar beets.

Companies on the registry said they don't support "the introduction of genetically modified sugar from GM sugar beets."

But growers of Roundup Ready sugar beets insist that there's no such thing as genetically modified sugar.

Sugar is sugar, regardless of how it's grown, according to the Sugar Industry Biotech Council.

Sugar is the same, whether it comes from sugar beets, sugar cane, or from crops grown using conventional, biotech or organic methods, council officials said."
http://www.capitalpress.info/main.asp?SectionID=67&SubSectionID=618&ArticleID=49114&TM=45064.89