Statist control of food supply in Venezuela and the US: Different in form, equal in substance

While Hugo Chavez’s latest move towards state-owned food distribution translate into thousands of tons of rotten food, with the concomitant billions of taxpayer dollars wasted (and/or appropriated by the kleptocrats) of the regime, things in the US don’t look much brighter.

Up north, our American brothers are threatened by a similar kind of bureaucratic monster that promises to funnel trillions of dollars to Washington regulators and their corporate cronies, and further enhance their power at the expense of local small farmers. All, of course, in the name of “food safety” and other noble-sounding euphemisms.

As James J. Gormley points out, if Senator Durbin’s Senate Bill 510 (S.B. 510) passes, selling your own backyard-grown heirloom produce on your own property or at a farmer’s market could bring an inspector knocking at your door:

Products not grown according to designated standards will be considered adulterated and your business records will be subject to warrantless searches by inspectors from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), all this without any evidence that you have violated any law.

Furthermore, Under S.B. 510’s House counterpart bill, H.R. 2749, sponsored by Congressman Dingell, the Secretary of Health and Human Services will have the power to prohibit all movement of all food within a geographic area — without the need of court order.

Gormley continues:

Upset that raw milk or raw milk cheeses (like feta) are no longer available in the U.S.? This could well happen thanks to the “performance standards” powers that would be granted to the FDA by S.B. 510, especially since the agency has made it clear that it is vehemently opposed to the consumption of raw milk products.

Amazed that U.S. food safety regulations strangely match those of other countries? Well, Section 306 of S.B. 510 would require “Recommendations to harmonize requirements under the Codex Alimentarius.”

And what about food supplement manufacturers, suppliers, distributors and health food stores? Will they be ensnared in this bill’s draconian, 1984-esque net? Very possibly so.

This all may seem far-fetched, but theoretically, this new law would give the government all this authority.

S.B. 510 (which would cost Americans $825 billion in 2010 alone) and the House of Representatives version of this bill, H.R. 2749, which did pass under suspended rules, do not address the root causes of the U.S.’s food safety problems, which were highlighted in both a recent campaign by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF) and by a letter to 99 U.S. senators by the Ranchers-Cattlemen Action Legal Fund (R-CALF USA).

According to Citizens for Health (http://www.citizens.org/), if this proposed law is enacted it would:

• Undermine DSHEA and move the U.S. one step closer to harmonizing our standards under Codex with those of supplement-restrictive regimes like the European Union. (DSHEA, or the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act, asserts that supplements are food and are safe for consumption unless proven otherwise – ensuring that millions of Americans are able to enjoy access to safe, effective and affordable dietary supplements).

• Give the FDA unprecedented control over farms and direct-to-consumer distributors. If passed, the bills would charge facilities an annual $500 registration fee, require additional record keeping, and expand FDA authority to quarantine geographic areas for alleged food safety problems – all without significantly improving food safety.

• Cost U.S. taxpayers trillions of dollars ($825 billion in 2010 alone) while providing fewer physical inspections and less food safety overall.

• Harm U.S. organic farmers by imposing overlapping regulations.

• Hurt food supplements and health-food stores by imposing standards that are already covered by the AER (Adverse Event Reporting) Law, cGMPs (current Good Manufacturing Practices) and food facility registration.

• Cripple local food co-ops, farm stands, independent ranchers and artisanal food producers by imposing unnecessary standards and unfair bureaucratic burdens.

Clearly, S. 510, while purporting to increase food safety would actually leave consumers more vulnerable to foodborne disease since the FDA would be required to use a risky, risk-based food safety system rather than doing old-fashioned, effective physical, on-site inspections in plants, factory farms and slaughterhouses, where the actual food safety concerns are.

Furthermore, the U.S. has abrogated its duty to inspect and enforce food safety standards, both here and abroad, by allowing processing plants to regulate themselves under a failed system; and it has embraced policies that have driven independent U.S. farmers and ranchers out of business and replaced them with corporate-owned, industrialized food production units that are known to cut food safety corners to maximize corporate profits.

Continue reading Gormley’s post here. Hat tip: Laughter and Liberty.

The Venezuelan bureaucratic monster is Stalinist in its form and funnels wealth to kleptocrats through a chaotic mess of kickbacks, surcharges, and outright looting of food products. The American version is more akin to a Fascist public-private partnership that efficiently sucks wealth out of people’s pockets through increased taxation and monopolistic power for GMO-spewing mega-corporations.

In both cases, the results are the same: the average Joe ends up poorer, malnourished, and at the mercy of a system that concentrates power in the hands of the ruling elite.