leavemyfoodalone and bill hr875

[wakeupamerica]

Welcome to LeaveMyFoodAlone.org

This website is a petition designed to stop HR 875. In its current form, the bill could prevent small local organic farms and community gardeners from growing and selling you nutritious, truly fresh, organic produce. It would crush our small local food producers by imposing heavy government regulation that only large corporations could adhere to. Imagine:

No more farmers markets.
No more garden fresh, seasonal ingredients from the local farmer at your favorite restaurant.
No more roadside stands with fresh picked sweet corn, juicy ripe tomatoes, or refreshing
watermelons in the summer.
Americans would essentially be forced to only eat corporately manufactured, chemically treated, hermetically sealed, irradiated fruits and vegetables. Stop this abomination now.

To prevent this bill, act now by signing the petition below!

To learn more about this ridiculous and misguided bill, click here.

SIGN This petition to save local small farms and organic gardens.

http://www.leavemyfoodalone.org/


Petition Letter to be Sent

Congressman Collin Peterson, Chairman
House Committee on Agriculture
1301 Longworth House Office Building
Washington, DC 20515

Subject: An Open Letter and Petition to House Agriculture Committee Chairman Collin Peterson


Dear Congressman Peterson:


Your committee is currently reviewing H.R. 875, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009. We, the undersigned, are members of America’s agricultural community and friends of farmers, hunters, gardeners, and all those who work to feed our country and its people. We believe that H.R. 875 is a bad bill which would make a worse law, and we urge you to reject this bill and the many errors about the direction of American agricultural policy it embodies.

This bill places the food-producing activities of ordinary American families under the control of an ill-defined and expensive bureaucracy – a bureaucracy which ignores the century-plus history of the FDA as the primary regulator of America’s food safety on the national level in favor of creating “czars” and working groups under the direct control of the White House.
This bill places intolerable burdens on small organic farms and alternative agricultural producers, requiring them to do business under the very methodology that many of them were founded to avoid. We agree that nobody should be permitted to market unsafe or dangerous foods, but this bill goes much too far in attempting to standardize and regulate the production of food by small operators. America has a long and proud tradition of innovation and experimentation in the production of food – a tradition which has led our country to its current position as the most food-secure nation on Earth. This bill would discard that proud tradition in favor of bureaucracy and government control.
This bill creates regulatory and administrative hurdles that seem specifically designed to choke the economic life out of small producers in favor of the major corporations which can better afford to adapt expensive regulatory regimes. Again, we agree that regulation and oversight are important tools for the government to use in ensuring that America’s food supply is safe- but we do not believe that these tools must be deployed in a one-size-fits-all solution that ignores the wide diversity of American agricultural production.
All Americans agree that food safety is a vital issue for our country, and we applaud you and your committee’s tireless work to ensure that America’s food supply remains safe and secure. However, H.R. 875 does not advance that goal – it harms it, by placing far too much power in the hands of unelected officials, and removing responsibility from the farmers who have fed this country, and the world, for more than two centuries. We urge you in the strongest possible terms to reject this bill and prevent the destruction and disruption that it would create in our nation’s most critical economic sector.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

As of March 31, 2009, we have received over 2500 signatures for the petition! (the site was launched on March 26th at 2PM) This is a great start, but we need you to keep telling people about the petition and posting links to LeaveMyFoodAlone.org on forums, blogs, and other related sites. We have also notice growing pushback from the bill supporters who are aggressively pointing out that there were some false emails circulating about the bill early on. It is true, HR875 DOES NOT outlaw farming. However, that fact doesn’t mean the bill is good legislation for small famers and growers. Keep them on point. It’s about the bill, not whether or not there was some debunked web buzz. Refer any bill supporters that you hear from to this article for a level headed argument against HR 875.