Posts
Farm Bill Hijacked
If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
Take back the Farm Bill. This is very important urgent issue right now. The Farm Bill effects the very foundation and fabric of our society and is in serious danger. Which means we are in serious danger. Protections for all of us as well as our animals were in place but now Section 123 has been added which cut these very protections we demanded.
Time to ACT and take back the Farm Bill.
The Society for Animal Protective Legislation (SAPL), a division of the Animal Welfare Institute, has joined with 40 consumer, environmental, farmer and animal welfare groups in opposing a dangerous, sweeping provision in the 2007 Farm Bill. The Livestock, Dairy and Poultry Subcommittee surreptitiously inserted Section 123 into the House of Representatives bill several weeks ago.
The provision prevents a state or locality from prohibiting an article the Secretary of Agriculture has inspected and passed, or an article the Secretary has determined to be of non-regulated status.
In essence, Section 123 declares federal supremacy by denying states and localities the ability to implement stronger protections for both consumers and animals. For example, it would mandate states to lift their bans on horse slaughter, the brutal production of foie gras, and the sale of bioengineered food.
It would also prevent the passage of any laws that prohibit the commercial use of USDA-inspected products- for instance, preventing a local health inspector at a supermarket from condemning rodent-contaminated meat or poultry that has begun to go bad.
Frankly, at a time when we have seen repeated food safety failures at the Food and Drug Administration and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the United States needs more food safety protection - not less. In addition, when citizens and their state legislatures decide that a practice is so inhumane that it must not occur within their state’s borders, the federal government should not be able to trump their will.
Section 123 must be stricken from the Farm Bill to prevent the removal of critical state and local authority to ensure food safety, fight against animal cruelty, and protect the environment.
Will you help?
The full committee is scheduled to hold its mark up of the Farm Bill in July. Please contact your US Representative and both US Senators TODAY, urging them to oppose Section 123 of the Farm Bill as it is currently introduced in the House of Representatives. Agribusiness and special interests should not be allowed to undermine animal welfare, environmental and public health protections.
Don’t know who your Members of Congress are?
Find your Members of Congress online or call the Capitol Hill operator at (202) 224-3121 and request to be connected to their offices. If you have any questions or need further information, you can call SAPL at 703-836-4300.
Please ACT NOW !!!
Tags: Appropriate Technology, Environment, Family Farms, Horses, Peace
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
July 2nd, 2007 at 6:51 pm
Glad to see the Farm Bill post. There’s a few other things wrong with it, to say the least. Everyone should know how their taxes are being doled out to program crop growers, corn, wheat, soy beans: http://farm.ewg.org/farm/index.php. That’s the farm subsidy database. The other subsidy db I know about is here: http://www.yourfarm.com/. The 2007 Farm Bill needs to drastically reduce subsidies for corn, especially, and remove all funding for corn-based ethanol. Corn ethanol is a boondoggle, taking at least as much energy to make as it yields (that’s being nice about it) and driving up food prices. (Not that humans or cows should be eating as much corn as we do.) The Farm Bill also is funding “specialty” crops (everything other than the Big Three, from apples to zucchini) with only $5 billion for research and development. Remember, that’s spread out over 5 years. Get your congress folk to up that, drastically. We have some of the best, most productive plant scientists in the world working in U.S. land-grant universities; with a decent budget science, through the Extension system, could help make North America a garden of diversity–instead of a monocropping factory.
July 3rd, 2007 at 5:47 pm
I wasn’t aware of what was happening to the horses. Very Sad! I have saved the Society for Animal Protective Legislation site that you posted above so I can learn more. And, as of today,I have contacted my S.C. representative and was able to make a strong statement, because of your information here, about how absolutely imperative it is to oppose Section 123 of the Farm Bill.
Thank you for sharing your awareness on such important things.