Who’s Trying to
Scuttle the Amendment that Protected Organic and Family Farms? Big Food on the
Attack!
ANH-USA
Today we reveal the thirty agribusiness front groups and
industrial agriculture lobbyists that continue to fight the Tester amendment.
One of the few saving graces of the Senate’s controversial FDA Food Safety
Modernization Act (S. 510)—which passed the Senate last week, only to be
sidelined for the moment by a constitutional error—was the amendment introduced
by Sen. Jon Tester (D-MT). Small-farm and organic food advocates warned that the
legislation would destroy their industry under a mountain of paperwork; the
Tester amendment exempted producers with less than $500,000 a year in sales who
sell most of their food locally. ANH-USA and other organizations
successfully fought
[1] to get the amendment included in the final
Senate bill.
The bill hit a roadblock within
hours after its passage when the House Ways and Means Committee flagged
provisions that would levy fees for various activities: reinspecting food
facilities, mandatory recalls, registering food importers, etc. According to the
Constitution, all revenue-raising provisions must arise in the House of
Representatives, which means the Senate’s provisions make the bill
unconstitutional.
Robert Guenther, a lobbyist for
the United Fresh Produce Association, said the snag in the House could provide
an opportunity for the House and Senate to go to conference on the bill and
thereby remove the Tester language which exempts many small farmers and food
facilities from new food safety rules.
In November, Guenther’s association—together with
twenty-nine other agribusiness lobbyists and associations—openly and publicly
attacked small and organic farmers.
They wrote [2]
to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) Committee, saying
that the same rules ought to apply to all farms and food producers, regardless
of size—knowing full well that only the giants can afford to play by these
rules.
These organizations (and the
companies that are their members) believe that even the smallest food sellers,
like mom-and-pop roadside stands, should face the same regulatory hurdles as
their own industrial-scale processed food operations. Big Food is essentially
trying to use the government to quash competition from small family and organic
farms.
As Dave Murphy, executive director of
Food Democracy
Now! [3],
wrote in The Hill newspaper, “When legislation is made in Congress, industrial
agriculture sets the rules and these minor protections are the only thing
standing between the smallest family farmers and expensive new regulations that
could drive them out of business.”
In their letter to the HELP
Committee, these thirty groups write, “The undersigned organizations represent
the vast majority of growers, producers, shippers, distributors, processors,
packers, and wholesalers, and the vast majority of our members are small
businesses.” While we acknowledge that many small businesses belong to these
organizations, there is no doubt whatsoever that their membership is dominated
by the largest food processors in the country.
You may be shocked at some of
the names on this list:
American Feed Industry Association
American Frozen Food Institute
American Fruit and Vegetable Processors and Growers
Coalition
American Meat Institute
American Mushroom Institute
California Grape and Tree Fruit League
Corn Refiners Association
Florida Tomato Exchange
Fresh Produce Association of the Americas
Georgia Fruit and Vegetable Growers Association
Idaho Potato Commission
International Dairy Foods Association
National Council of Farmer Cooperatives
National Chicken Council
National Grain and Feed Association
National Meat Association
National Milk Producers Federation
National Oilseed Processors Association
National Pork Producers Council
National Potato Council
National Turkey Federation
National Watermelon Association
Pet Food Institute
Produce Marketing Association
Shelf-Stable Food Processors Association
Texas Produce Association
United Egg Producers
United Fresh Produce Association
U.S. Apple Association
Western Growers Association
After the constitutional snafu invalidated the bill,
thirteen of the above organizations plus ten other Big Food associations
wrote to House leaders
[4] to reiterate their
position and urge the Senate to go to conference on the bill.
Dave Murphy points out that “members of Congress and the
elite class of agribusiness lobbyists continue to ignore the elephant in the
room regarding food safety and agricultural production, which as most informed
citizens know is concentration.” Murphy is referring to CAFOs, or
Concentrated
Animal Feedlot Operations [5].
It’s the standard model for large-scale food-producing-animal factory farms.
Some members of Congress, like Rep. Dennis Cardoza (D-CA),
who sits on the House Agriculture Committee and represents California’s
factory-farm-dominated San Joaquin Valley, are glad to see the Senate bill fail
because it would give them the opportunity to strip the Tester amendment from
the bill. Cardoza went so far as to call the Tester amendment “an
abomination [6]”
(a very strong word for something that protects family farmers) and said, “A
small farm can devastate the industry as easily as a big farm.” It should be
noted that Rep. Cardoza’s campaign received more than $103,000 from the “Crop
Production & Basic Processing” industry—the very people who are now demanding
that Tester’s modest farmer protection provisions be killed.
Murphy continued, “This fact
should not be lost on anyone, because this is how industrial agriculture has not
only taken over food production in the US, driving farmers off the land,
fattening Americans, and contaminating our food, but it is also how corporate
agribusiness has corrupted our democracy.”
URLs in this post:
[1] successfully
fought: http://www.anh-usa.org../../../../../senate-food-safety-update/
[2] They wrote:
http://www.meatami.com/ht/a/GetDocumentAction/i/64238
[3] Food Democracy
Now!: http://www.fooddemocracynow.org/
[4] wrote to House
leaders:
http://www.unitedfresh.org/assets/files/House%20Letter%20on%20Senate%20Food%20Safety%20Bill.pdf
[5] Concentrated Animal
Feedlot Operations: http://www.cafothebook.org/index.htm
[6] an abomination:
http://www.miamiherald.com/2010/12/01/1952371/food-safety-bill-stumbles-over.html