Interactive Food Sovereignty Map tracks states, localities that have passed food freedom laws

Friday, March 25, 2011 by: Jonathan Benson, staff writer
Tags: food freedom, sovereignty, health news

(NaturalNews) The battle to preserve freedom of food choice rages on as many towns, cities, and even entire states work to pass food sovereignty laws that prohibit the federal government from interfering with health and food freedom. And Grown in the City, a group devoted to teaching people how to grow their own food in an urban environment, recently put together an Interactive Food Sovereignty Map to track the status of food freedom laws across the US.

Constitutionally, the federal government does not even have the legal authority in the first place to police food the way it currently does, let alone the way it plans to under bills like S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, and HR 2751, the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. But since it has already overstepped its bounds in trying to control what people can and cannot eat and threatens to do worse, vigilant citizens and lawmakers have begun crafting food sovereignty ordinances that reiterate the fact that the federal government has no business policing food within states.

As many readers will remember, the town of Sedgwick, Maine, recently became the first in the nation to pass a sweeping food sovereignty law. In it, citizens declared that it is their God-given right to "produce, process, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing" (https://www.naturalnews.com/031667_food_freed...). A few days later, the town of Penobscot, Maine, did the same thing with their own food sovereignty ordinance.

On April 2, 2011, the town of Blue Hill, Maine, will present its own food sovereignty legislation at a town meeting. And in May, the town of Barre, Vt., will vote on a local food and community self-governance ordinance that asserts the Tenth Amendment to the US Constitution as the basis for its declarations.

At the state levels, at least five states have introduced Food Freedom Act legislation to directly combat the unconstitutional provisions of S 510. According to the Tenth Amendment Center (TAC), which has its own interactive legislative map (http://www.tenthamendmentcenter.com/nullific...), four states currently have pending legislation which declare that food grown and produced within the states and that is sold within those same states is outside the jurisdiction of the federal government. These states include North Carolina, Georgia, Wyoming, and Utah.

Beyond the Food Freedom Act is the Intrastate Commerce Act, which TAC says is the same as the Food Freedom Act but also includes all products grown, produced, and manufactured within states. Both pieces of legislation are already written up and ready to use by individual states that wish to pursue their passage. The federal government has no business controlling or interfering with intrastate commerce of any kind, and such acts effectively declare that.

Sources for this story include:

http://growninthecity.com/interactive-food-s...