Our government has been very busy. Every year they pass innumerable laws that effect us in ways we don’t perceive. There is one place that the government’s policies directly effects us and that is in the area of food. There may be equally important issues to concern ourselves with but not more important. The reason this may be true is because food, what we stuff into our mouths, has a direct impact on our well-being. The government has been setting standards for nutrition for decades. Some of the standards have been helpful and some have been harmful. Things like the RDA, recommended daily allowances. These recommendations are woefully inadequate and our doctors and nutritionists cue off of it.
But now, what’s really scary, is that the Federal Government is in the process of passing legislation to further protect the American food supply. The first version was H.R.2749 and the current version is S.510. This sounds like a reasonable thing on the surface, but could it be a matter of too much protection or protection where it’s not needed.
The proposed legislation has morphed as it’s made it’s way through the separate houses of Congress. But one area that it apparently hasn’t changed is in gardening. There are concerns by people that the current version of the legislation could make it illegal to garden if it’s perceived by the authorities to somehow threaten the American food supply. There’s nothing in the legislation to stop the government from declaring your garden to be a threat to the food supply and taking punitive action. How could your garden be a threat? What if you share or sell contaminated produce with your neighbors or community? Or maybe even the fear that your produce somehow is a threat to your family. Absurd? No! They pulled the children out of their homes by the hundreds in Texas when they thought that there was ONE family there where a child was being molested.
The power in any law is in it’s ability to be enforced. Most people probably wouldn’t have to worry directly about this. However, the government only has to put the fear into the people to make this type of legislation useful. They only have to make a public example out of a few cases for people to get the message.
There are millions of laws on the books. How can we possibly know if we’re breaking some of them? While you may not know if your breaking one, there are computers that can keep track of this vast mountain of legislative junk that could be found to apply to your case if needed to eliminate you as a threat to the status quo. Paranoid thinking? No. Remember Texas and Idaho and innumerable smaller incidences that don’t make it into the mainstream media. If you dig you’ll find that records of government abuse abound.
Is this really an important issue? Apparently it’s caught the eyes of the Vermont legislature. There are groups of people who have contacted their state legislature to do something about this. They have informed the US Government that US Governments intervention is not desired or required. Vermont will take care of it’s own gardens, thank you.
Will most of us be concerned about this? No. And the reasons are many: the law is unenforceable, I don’t plant a garden, I’m too busy to worry about it and there is no such legislation. It’s the volume of legislation, proposed and passed alike, that makes much of what Congress does invisible.
So, what can be done? First: keep planting those gardens. Second: take a few minutes to verify the potential threat. Go to this website: S. 510 [111th]: FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (GovTrack.us) it's a website that will tell you all about this legislation. An informed public is the greatest deterrent to tyranny.
