FDA requests $300 million war chest to implement onerous new food safety regulations against farmers, commercial food growers

Monday, April 15, 2013 by: Ethan A. Huff, staff writer
Tags: food safety modernization act, FDA, budget

(NaturalNews) The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has requested nearly $300 million in additional agency funding from Congress in order to implement the oppressive tenets of the so-called Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which will stifle American farmers and commercial food growers and potentially put many of them out of business. The FDA claims it is having to struggle through "tight budget times," and insists that a roughly 17 percent budget increase over its 2013 budget will be needed for 2014.

If granted by Congress, the requested funding increase will bring the FDA's overall operating budget to a massive $4.7 billion for the 2014 fiscal year, which is the highest it has ever been. This is in spite of the fact that FSMA is completely despotic, granting the FDA sweeping new authority over the cultivation, transport, and sale of food, particularly at the local level. As we covered many times in the past, FSMA will allow the FDA to preemptively regulate and control farmers and commercial food growers.

Signed into law by alleged President Barack Obama back in 2011, FSMA explicitly grants the FDA new powers to "prevent" illness outbreaks rather than respond to them when they occur. What this means in practice is that the FDA will be given jurisdiction over all food production, including small-scale and backyard farmers selling locally at farmers markets, for instance -- any form of food production that delivers food to the commercial marketplace will be subject to a laborious new inspection and regulatory paradigm that many experts believe will drive family farmers out of business.

"[FSMA] impacts 80 percent of the foods that consumers purchase," Caroline Smith DeWaal, a food safety expert with the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI), is quoted as saying by the Huffington Post. "Essentially all foods except those containing meat or poultry are covered under this act."

More money for the FDA means more tyranny

Just in case it is not already clear, the FDA has basically been given far more power and authority than it needs, or legitimately should have, which is why it is begging for more funding. But the agency repeatedly fails to fulfill its existing responsibilities, constantly claiming that it does not have enough funding to do so, while expending copious resources pursuing raw milk farmers and backyard gardeners -- why, again, should the FDA be granted even more funding?

Apart from a full-fledged revolution initiated by the people against the corrupt federal government, it is highly likely that Congress will grant the FDA its funding increase, which will effectively turn up the heat of police state tyranny against American farmers and food growers. But the people can still make their voices heard by contacting their representatives and demanding that the FDA not receiving funding to implement the onerous provisions of FSMA.

You can contact your Congressmen by visiting:
http://www.usa.gov/Contact/Elected.shtml

Sources for this article include:

http://www.reuters.com

http://www.huffingtonpost.com

http://www.naturalnews.com