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I am vehemently opposed to HR 2749, which would place unnecessary burdens on small farm operations. The federal government continues to seek power over our nation’s food supply, hampering and taxing the small farmer while ignoring the unhealthful practices of the industrial giants.

The FDA isn’t content raiding vitamin supplement companies and preventing churches from having bake sales because the pies weren’t baked in a certified kitchen. Now they want to raid the small farm and confiscate records, quarantine areas with little oversight, regulate how crops are grown, basically exercise unbounded control. This is just the FDA’s version of the USDA’s NAIS.

Health-conscious people are choosing to buy locally from small farms where they know the animals are cared for and the crops are grown without heavy chemical use. I have to drive about an hour from Erie to get pasture-raised eggs, and I’m already paying too much money for organic produce. And what will my Amish neighbors do when required to comply with electronic filing?

Who will pay for this? Taxpayers. Small farmers. The small farmers won’t survive it, and we taxpayers will have to subsist on HFCS, refined flours, and rancid fats until we all become customers of the pharmaceutical industry, the the bedfellow of the FDA.

I MOST STRONGLY OPPOSE HR 2749, a bill that will give the FDA far too much power over our food supply and small farm operations.

If you oppose the government’s complete control over the small farm producer, please sign the petition.

You Want These People Monitoring Your Food?

The FDA first learned of possible salmonella contamination at ConAgra four years ago —- two years before officials traced hundreds of illnesses to Peter Pan.

In early 2005, an anonymous tipster told the FDA that ConAgra’s internal testing had detected salmonella in a batch of peanut butter the previous October, agency records show. Company executives confirmed the test results to an FDA inspector but refused to turn over lab reports unless the agency requested them in writing. The inspector left the plant, records show, and never again requested the reports.

Congressional investigators later learned that FDA policy discouraged written document requests. Federal courts, the FDA said, had ruled that if manufacturers turned over material in response to a formal request from the government, those documents could not be used as evidence in a criminal prosecution against them. But in the vast majority of cases, investigator David Nelson told a House subcommittee in 2007, the FDA pursues neither documents nor criminal charges.

Nelson termed the agency’s actions “nonsensical.” –ajc.com

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