Lowell’s Column

“DIRT IS – DIRTY”

 

By Lowell Ponte

 

 

A bill now before Congress, H.R. 875, could give government the arbitrary power to fine families $1 million per day for having a backyard garden.

 

Crazy as it sounds, this measure would authorize such fines on any “food production” facilities that grow, store or ship contaminated food.

 

And such facilities are defined in the bill as “any farm, ranch, orchard,vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.”

 

This legislation, which already has 39 lawmaker co-sponsors, is remarkably vague. 

 

It never spells out whether growing carrots in a backyard turns a home into a farm, or how many peach trees constitute an orchard or grape vines a vineyard.

 

But this potential law is remarkably specific about how much “contamination” is permitted: Zero. 

 

Previous laws allowed, for example, cereal and cracker makers to have a tiny percentage of insect parts in their flour, a concession to the reality that keeping large quantities of grain perfectly insect-free was almost impossible.

 

But this new legislation imposes a “zero tolerances” standard on those producing food – even if they never sell food, are non-profit entities, and give all their crops away to the needy.

 

Nothing in this bill excludes home gardens and gardeners from $1 million per day civil fines.

 

Given the confiscatory risk of such penalties, future mortgage lenders might prohibit homeowners from growing (or perhaps even storing) any food whatsoever.

 

Nothing excludes Better Homes with Gardens from the bill’s requirements to register with the government, to give open access to your property to government inspectors, to do expensive documented testing of backyard peaches and tomatoes for the tiniest traces of contamination, and to keep highly detailed records identifying everyone who receives such food. Failure to obey any of these rules could bring a $1 million fine.

 

Backers of this legislation say it would make our food safer, and that it could save your life by giving government the means to identify and locate you with a warning that corn you bought at a farmer’s roadside stand could make you ill.

 

This might slightly enhance public safety, but it certainly will undermine individual liberty.

 

This measure would give government the power to track and confiscate food down to the smallest backyard producer.

 

And if a food shortage arrives, these same records could be used to identify who has stored food – and to confiscate it from the industrious ants for redistribution to unprepared grasshoppers.  This would give government the arbitrary power to decide who eats, the kind of power Stalin once used to starve to death as many as 17 million Ukrainian farmers.

 

It’s no coincidence, say some opponents of H.R. 875, that it ominously resembles laws requiring firearm registration and tracking.

 

Several giant food producers – Monsanto, Archer Daniels Midland, and Tyson, to name three – are supporting this legislation. 

 

Their reason is apparent: as international food companies they already comply with such burdensome laws, but their small and independent American competitors do not. 

 

This legislation will send the cost of doing business for many Mom and Pop food producers into the stratosphere and force many into either bankruptcy or quitting the food business. 

 

This will greatly increase the food profits of the giant conglomerates – and send food prices much, much higher for millions of American families.

 

H.R. 875 would also push the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables out of reach for millions, forcing them instead to buy more highly processed, highly profitable food products that the big companies prefer to sell.

 

Such foods may clog your arteries with fat and cholesterol, but by the standards of the new law these processed foods will be judged safer from “contamination” than natural fruits and vegetables from a nearby farm – or your own backyard.

 

Oh, and we can kiss goodbye any organic foods grown in natural compost or dirt.  Natural soil contains bacteria, just like the microorganisms that help your digestive tract assimilate nutrients.

 

The problem with natural soil, as Steve Shenk of efoodsdirect.com says, is that “dirt is – dirty.”

 

If H.R. 875 becomes law, a government inspector could soon visit your backyard garden, declare your organic tomatoes “dirty,” and punish you with a fine of $1 million or more.

 

Before such government food controls and food tracking become law, we all would be wise to lay in as much stored food as possible, both canned from our own gardens and food sealed to last more than a decade from reputable suppliers such as Mr. Shenk.