GRAIN report exposes the fraud of 'food safety' legislation

Tuesday, May 10, 2011 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: food safety, legislation, health news

(NaturalNews) The typical response to food contamination outbreaks in the industrialized world, and particularly in the US, is to impose stricter regulations and more so-called "food safety" requirements. But a new report compiled by GRAIN, an international non-profit group devoted to supporting small farmers, explains that most food safety legislation does nothing to make food safer, and instead harms those that are actually producing clean, safe food.

The melamine-tainted food scare of 2008 (https://www.naturalnews.com/024947_melamine_i...), the salmonella tomato and pepper recall of the same year (https://www.naturalnews.com/023614.html), and the massive egg recall of 2010 (https://www.naturalnews.com/029539_salmonella...) are just a few examples of the systemic problems inherent in the conventional food supply system. And in one of these cases, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and others have pushed for more new food safety laws that they insist will help curb the problem, but that actually make it worse.

Each contamination and recall is an example of inherent problems of factory food, not the type of food grown and raised by small farmers using traditional, bio-diverse agricultural methods. And yet food safety laws like the Food Safety Modernization Act, or S. 510, which were presented as solutions to the problem, worsen it by targeting small farmers who produce safe food. And at the same time, these supposed food safety laws ignore the root problems characteristic of the food system as we currently know it (https://www.naturalnews.com/030863_food_safet...).

The only thing bills like S. 510 do is increase FDA power over food, and pave the way for measures like food irradiation and pasteurization, both of which attempt to treat the symptoms of the problem rather than the actual problem. The GRAIN report, however, goes into great detail about the real problems associated with industrialized agriculture, and why this system is directly responsible for the many food safety problems that the world currently faces.

To read the entire 37-page GRAIN report for yourself, visit:
http://www.grain.org/briefings_files/GRAIN_F...