WaPost Proposes A Moratorium On...Normal Food

By R Patel
Rense

To have some idea why the Post might have done something as bizarre as proposing a moratorium on the only still normal and clean food, organic food, a little history is in order.

The Food Modernization and Safety Act of 2010 was forced through Congress in the middle of the night in the very last days of a lame duck session, breaking rules and constitutional safeguards. "Food safety" bills arrived in Congress almost as soon as Obama arrived in the White House.

For those who don't remember, it was Hillary Clinton who first proposed setting up a giant centralized food safety that would control all food in the US, a part of her campaign for president. Her campaign strategist was Mark Penn, CEO of Burson Marsteller, one of the largest PR firms in the world and one that represents Monsanto. Bill Clinton had put Michael Taylor, a lawyer for and then VP at Monsanto, in at the FDA from where he introduced the first GMO into the food chain in the US - rBGH, keeping it unlabeled, He also deregulated the introduction of GMOs and Monsanto's Bt-corn and Bt-soy were soon planted. Taylor also wrote a white paper for Monsanto laying out how they could sue dairy farmers who were honestly labeling their milk as GMO-free. The Clinton connection to Monsanto is very strong.

Though Hillary Clinton lost her bid for the White House, Taylor showed up on Obama's transition team, a food safety "crisis" occurred almost immediately. Contaminated peanut butter was sent out though the owner of the company, on the board at the USDA,knew it was contaminated and almost before the new hit the paper, a series of massive food safety bills already laden with co-sponsors showed up in the house.

One in particular drew intense attention - HR 875 - introduced by Rosa Delauro, a close friend of the Clintons, whose husband Stanlety Greenberg polled for Bill Clinton and works for Monsanto. About that connection, there was great denial by DeLauro and Monsanto but the DeLauro connection to Monsanto could not have been stronger. Greenberg consults for Monsanto and his area of interest is global corporate strategy.. Their rebuttal was classic Monsanto, a slick game with wording, saying that Greenberg's name was listed among of Monsanto "employees." While Greenberg was not listed among secretaries or scientist who draw a salary there, the reality was worse than what people were asserting - Greenberg works for Monsanto at the highest planning level and may have even been involved in designing the campaign around food safety.

Obama appointed Taylor as Czar over food safety at the FDA, a means of putting him into office without the potential storm over his Monsanto connections and past actions at the FDA that a congressional approval might have stirred up. But it did not go unnoticed. Jeffrey Smith at the Institute for Responsible Technology wrote an article at Huffington Post detailing the damage Taylor had done to food safety in the US already.

"The person who may be responsible for more food-related illness and death than anyone in history has just been made the US food safety czar. This is no joke."

Taylor got the massive law giving him police state power over all US food, a law he was instrumental in designing on behalf, not of food safety, but corporate control over the global food supply. There was tremendous public pressure to stop the bill - on organization alone sent a million emails to Congress to try to stop it, making clear it would end US sovereignty over food (and much else) and hand it to the WTO. Harry Reid and the democrats led the change against massive grassroots' opposition (so many who had voted for Obama) for its questionable passage.

Now FSMA funding is on the table in Congress. There is huge backlash against the bill and groups are working to deny funding as a means to weaken the power of Taylor at the FDA which he has already using to have agents attack farmer and organic food producers - with raised weapons.

The new law is clearly not being used as promoted - to stop industrial agriculture and the food industry from putting out contaminated food that has been sickening and killing people - but is being used as was feared by farmers and gardeners and those working to create sustainable agriculture and truly safe, local food. The use of food safety as a weapon to attack and put out of business small famers and safe food has arrived, driven by the FDA under Michael Taylor, a Monsanto executive.

For those who want to see what is happening, they can see a new documentary - Farmageddonmovie.com. - as well as watch videos that detail an FDA conspiracy with departments of agriculture in the Midwest to wipe out all food buying clubs and hoping for a disease outbreak that makes some child very sick.

The food safety bills arrived via contaminated food, the backdrop for Congressional wrangling was to the tune of more corporate media contamination stories, and during intense opposition to the bill last summer, contaminated eggs were the story de jour. In each case, the USDA knew in advance that the food was contaminated and let it go out. Farmers and organic cheese makers are being shut down in the US now who have harmed no one and not being allowed to reopen but none of the corporate facilities involved in any of the contamination has been closed for as much as an hour. Billions were sought for the bill using the argument that the FDA didn't have the ability to effect a recall. But the truth is that a single free phone call to media by the FDA describing what facilities and what lot numbers were involved would immediately stop the sale of any food immediately, even if the companies didn't recall. And once exposed in that way, the companies would be highly vulnerable to lawsuits if anyone was harmed.

Billions versus a free phone call.

Who is behind the FMSA?

Taylor is a Monsanto executive. Monsanto is controlled by the Rockerfellers who are also connected to the international bankers who plundered the US economy, caused the food crisis, and invested, not in food security or safe food but in starvation .

In looking at the peculiar passiveness of the National Sustainable Ag Coalition (whose members are the small organic farmers most threatened by the bill), Nicole Johnson noticed:

The practices of industrial livestock enterprises are entirely ignored by the pending food safety legislation. And, many in the local food movement find that the source of enteric pathogen pollution are also being ignored by the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition (NSAC), a group that represents the interests of those involved in sustainable and local agriculture, in its analysis of the legislation. NSAC has been involved in trying to soften the blow of the legislation, but it has only really tinkered with various details, while leaving fundamental problems alone. The group's representatives just don't seem to be fighting hard enough to protect the interests of its membership. All this leads me to ask: Has NSAC become a controlled opposition group?Does it appear to advocate for the interests of its grassroots membership while actually advancing the agenda of vested interests?

If you examine NSAC's membership list, you'll find that among its participating members is the Wallace Center at Winrock International.[63] Winrock International

was founded by Winthrop Rockefeller and counts in the long list of its funding partners numerous foundations, government agencies, international agencies, private sector groups and more, all of whom are aligned with vested interests that want international standards harmonized in order to eliminate barriers to international trade. Winrock International receives financial support from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Rockefeller Foundation, the DOE, USAID, the US Department of State, the USDA, the World Bank, the FAO, SYSCO and the Tides Foundation.[64]Winrock International also has long-standing ties with Monsanto, which has benefited from Winrock's help in introducing its products to farmers in developing nations around the world. It's hard to image that any organization advocating for the grassroots could be in partnership with a group funded by the likes of these powerful vested interests and not be subject to their influence or control.

HACCP, a substitution of paperwork for actual inspection of meat was introduced by Bill Clinton with Monsanto involvement. It's clear statistically now that it has been used to target primarily small operations with no history of contamination and has left the corporate giants with on-going contamination, untouched.

USDA blithely walks away from obvious contamination problems at the huge slaughter plants, and we must remember that the biggest four packers slaughter 88% of our feedlot steers and heifers. USDA statistics show that 93% of federally inspected plants are small, yet they produce only 10% of our meat. This means that although the big plants represent only 7% of all Federal plants, they produce 90% of our meat. This agency policy now insulates 90% of our meat from adequate inspection, while the agency intensely monitors 10% of our meat production at the small plants, which are easier enforcement prey for USDA. (John Munsell, Foundation for Accountability in Regulatory Enforcement (FARE).)

HACCP is central to FSMA which now will apply its failed protection against contamination but its corporate-insulating injustice to vegetables, fruits, and all food, all farms, all food producers, and potentially gardens.

Though the FMSA is a severe threat both environmentally and to food since opens the door to industrial agriculture and GMOs that include pesticides dangerous to many life forms, many supposedly environmentally and farming-concerned organizations behaved as NSAC did and were weak or passive or silent when it came to stopping the FMSA or promoted it. This was true though it was apparent that FMSA would put Monsanto (through Taylor) in control all US food and that it included HACCP, already proven itself worthless in terms of actuall food safety but dangerous to our food supply in having removed the means for livestock producers' to reach the public and local markets.

At every step, contamination has driven the bills forward, with food that the government knew in advance to be dangerous but neither stopped nor warned about. Now e.coli raises its ugly head just as funding for FMSA is threatened by groups trying to protect US food and health, and suddenly there are loud calls for FSMA funding, irradiation of food, and even, a global food safety agency.

The threat of contamination, it is plain, has been invaluable for consolidation for global industrial agriculture, the global food industry, their partner the global pharmaceutical industry - and the international bankers, and has not abated using any of the industrial methods that are degrading food. Irradiation has long been sought by industrial food system and the nuclear industry. Though has nothing to offer in terms of food safety, it has everything to offer in terms of finishing off industrial agriculture's growing competition, real food. Real farmers' markets would no longer exist. The only truly nutritious food in the country - local, fresh food and organic food - would be destroyed. Chronic diseases based on inadequate nutrients in food would abound, spelling profit for the pharmaceutical industry. All in the name of "food safety."

And now the Washington Post puts out an editorial promoting, of all things, a moratorium on organic food! Normal food. The Post has in essence called for a moratorium on nature. This is not an exaggeration of the situation but actually in line with what is already happening through "food safety" in the EU where all herbal remedies have been banned as of April 30th, and in Australia where there is a plan to ban 1000s of common garden plants, listing "plant offenses" and "controlled plants."

Why is the Washington Post proposing a moratorium on the food that has sustained life for tens of thousands of years? Could the editorial have any connection corporations like Monsanto doing all in their power to push GMOs on the world, right now?

"We are grateful to The Washington Post, The New York Times, Time Magazine and other great publications whose directors have attended our meetings and respected their promises of discretion for almost forty years. It would have been impossible for us to develop our plan for the world if we had been subject to the bright lights of publicity during those years. But, the work is now much more sophisticated and prepared to march towards a world government. The supranational sovereignty of an intellectual elite and world bankers is surely preferable to the national auto determination practiced in past centuries."­ David Rockefeller, in an address to a meeting of The Trilateral Commission, in June, 1991. [Originators of genetic engineering.]

Contamination is easily come by. Its value to corporations wishing to globalize the world food supply, including Monsanto, is apparent. "Food safety" has been called the law of food fascism by Vandana Shiva who says it is the means to corporate rule.