‘Food safety’ legislation misnamed
Meghan Scully, Durango -
It seems like tainted peanut butter was the straw that finally broke the camel’s back. Food safety has become a real hot topic in Washington. New bills keep appearing with the buzzwords “food safety” in their title – and why not? Who would oppose making our food system safer?
Unfortunately, the magnanimous titles mask bureaucratic impositions, hidden agendas and corporate beneficiaries. These lurking motives emerge in the push for the National Animal Identification System. NAIS would overhaul existing (and effective) identification programs and affect all owners of livestock, regardless of how many animals you house or whether your animals are a source of food.
NAIS is being integrated into food-safety bills even though it fails to improve food safety. This inclusion highlights the misleading nature of so-called food-safety legislation. Functioning livestock identification programs for tracking diseases already exist, yet we are still plagued with unsafe food. Why?
Most food contamination is caused by shoddy food-handling practices in substandard, high-volume processing facilities, not an inability to track disease outbreaks in livestock. What’s more, livestock raised in high-density, confinement operations are plagued with health issues that can be linked to the animals’ diet and living conditions; when a disease outbreak occurs, it can spread like wildfire. NAIS actually will make it harder to trace these kinds of outbreaks because a loophole permits “concentrated animal feeding operations” to use a group ID, while requiring small producers to tag each individual animal.
NAIS threatens to drive operations that do produce safe, healthy food out of the market while doing nothing to prevent or regulate the true sources of unsafe food. In fact, this program will make it easier for industrial agribusinesses to continue with business as usual and expand their export markets, while imposing immense financial and regulatory burdens on small – often local and organic – producers.
You’d think food-safety legislation would reform those aspects of our food system that present the greatest threat to our health and safety – well, you’d think. Speak up about what food safety means to you.
Meghan Scully, Durango
|
About : I'm just a American patriot who believes in freedom for all, even the ones I don't like. It's time to make a stand and take over the media, government, and police of this nation. Join me in the movement and join the forums. |
Leave a Reply