Farm Fodder » FDA

What is “reconditioned” food? – from “Scholars and Rogues” website

paweber — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 18:43:16 +0000

Farmers can’t sell raw milk, but Snokist (and other food processors) can sell “reconditioned” or “reworked” foods.

This is from an article about Snokist, who was responsible for the moldy applesauce “product” sold to school children. The quote below is from the author of the story:

“I’m just stunned to learn that these guys don’t need to tell me, or the FDA, if they’re using “reconditioned” food. So what’s the point of food labeling if these guys don’t have to tell us stuff like this?”

Read the whole story and weep…

via What the hell is “reconditioned” food? | Scholars and Rogues.

As It Stands: Food conspiracy of government and chemical companies grows every year – Times-Standard Online

paweber — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 13:35:21 +0000

This is an excellent article – it shows the beginnings in 1991 of the chemical/biotechnology marriage of food production and how it has become closely knit over the years. It also reveals the recent government “power play” for food control by the passing of the Food Safety Modernization Act.

I think it is a must-read for anyone concerned about their health, welfare and freedom.

Read it and weep!

As It Stands: Food conspiracy of government and chemical companies grows every year – Times-Standard Online.

Top ten lies about Senate Bill 510

admin — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 13:39:12 +0000

Natural News has provided a list of issues about S.510. Yopu can read it at the link below:

Top ten lies about Senate Bill 510.

for those of you that don’t want to jump from site to site, I am republishing it here in its entirety:

Here are the ten biggest lies that have been promoted about S.510 by the U.S. Congress, the food industry giants and the mainstream media:
Lie #1 – Most deaths from food poisoning are caused by fresh produce
Here’s a whopper the mainstream media won’t dare report: Out of the 1,809 people who die in America every year from food-borne pathogens (CDC estimate), only a fraction die from the manufacturer’s contamination of fresh produce. By far the majority of food poisoning is caused by the consumption of spoiled processed foods, dead foods and animal-human transmission of pathogens.

For example, one of the largest food-borne killers according to the CDC is Toxoplasma gondii, a disease that people acquire from cat feces coming into contact with their food, which can happen right in their own homes (http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/eid/Vol5n…). Salmonella poisoning accounts for 553 deaths a year. As a reference for relative risk, over 42,000 people die each year from road accidents in the USA, meaning driving a car has a roughly 7600% higher chance of killing you than eating fresh produce. (http://www.driveandstayalive.com/in…)

In terms of food-borne illness, many of the deaths come from things like spoiled tomato sauce, spoiled canned foods and spoiled pasteurized milk. S 510, of course, does absolutely nothing to address these food contamination deaths, since those foods are considered “sterilized” at the time of sale.
Lie #2 – Under S.510, the FDA would only recall products it knows to be contaminated
Not true. S.510 merely requires the FDA to have “reason to believe” a food is contaminated. So right there, that means all raw milk will be targeted by the FDA because even without conducting any scientific tests at all, the FDA can say it has “reason to believe” the milk is contaminated merely because it is raw.

In other words, the FDA no longer needs science to outlaw a food product. It merely needs an opinion.

Is this “reason to believe” section really true? Yep, and here’s how it was amended:

SEC. 208. ADMINISTRATIVE DETENTION OF FOOD.
23 (a) IN GENERAL. – Section 304(h)(1)(A) (21 U.S.C.24 334(h)(1)(A)) is amended by
(1) striking ”credible evidence or information indicating” and inserting ”reason to believe”;
(http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi…)

In other words, in negotiating this bill, the U.S. Senate removed the requirement that the FDA needed “credible evidence” in order to recall a product and, instead, replaced that with the FDA only needing “reason to believe.”

It is utterly amazing that the U.S. Congress would give the FDA to conduct large-scale product recalls and even imprison people based entirely on what the agency “has reason to believe.”

Last time I checked, the FDA held some pretty bizarre (if not downright moronic) beliefs, including this jaw-dropping whopper: The FDA literally believes that there is no food, no herb, no vitamin or supplement that has any ability to prevent disease of any kind. They don’t even believe limes can prevent scurvy, and you’d have to nutritionally illiterate to believe that.

The FDA believes foods are inert and that all the amazing phytonutrients in those foods (carotenoids, antioxidants, therapeutic fats like omega-3 and so on) are utterly useless for human biology.

This belief, held by the FDA that has now been put in charge of the food supply, is the belief system of an insane government agency that has completely lost touch with reality while abandoning nutritional science.

Lie #3 – They didn’t tell you that nearly 70% of grocery store chickens are contaminated with salmonella every day

Yep, it’s true: Amid all the fear-mongering over salmonella, everybody forgot to notice that the vast majority of fresh chickens sold at grocery stores every single day are widely contaminated with salmonella (http://www.naturalnews.com/028661_c…). Yet S 510 does absolutely nothing to address this. It’s not even mentioned in the bill.

In fact, it is these contaminated chickens that end up cross-contaminating the fresh produce in many kitchens across America. So the so-called “food poisoning” that’s often blamed on spinach or onions often originates with the contaminated chicken meat people bring home and slice on their kitchen cutting boards.

Lie #4 – S.510 will exclude and protect small farmers

The Tester Amendment, which was finally included in S.510, excludes farmers who sell less than $500,000 worth of food each year from the more onerous paperwork and compliance burdens described in the bill. But this dollar amount is not indexed to inflation, meaning that as the U.S. dollar continues to lose value due to the Federal Reserve counterfeiting machine running at full speed (more “quantitative easing,” anyone?), food prices will continue to skyrocket — and this will shift even small family farms into the $500,000 sales range within just a few years.

In fact, a single-family farm with just four people could easily sell $500,000 worth of fresh produce a year right now, even before inflation. Remember, $500,000 is not their profit, but rather the gross sales amount. The profits on that might be only $50,000 or even less.

Furthermore, this $500,000 threshold means that small, successful farms that are doing well and would like to expand will refuse to hire more people or expand their operations. To avoid the tyranny of S 510, small farms will try to stay small, and that means avoiding the kind of business expansion that would create new jobs.

Lie #5 – The FDA needs more power to enforce food safety

The FDA already has the power to effectively recall foods by publicly announcing a product has been found to be contaminated. The FDA already has the power to confiscate “misbranded” products, too, and it could easily use this power to halt the sale of contaminated food items.

But the FDA simply refuses to enforce the laws already on the books and, instead, has sought to expand its power by hyping up the e.coli food scares. The ploy apparently worked: Now in a reaction to the food scare-mongering, the FDA is being handed not just new powers, but more funding, too! And you can bet it will find creative new ways to put this power to work suppressing the health freedoms and food freedoms of the American people.

Lie #6 – Fresh produce is contaminated because of a lack of paperwork

There is no evidence that requiring farms to fill out more paperwork will make their food safer. The real cause of produce contamination is the existence of factory animal farms whose effluent output (huge rivers of cow feces, basically), end up in the water supply, soils and equipment that comes into contact with fresh produce.

The food contamination problem is an UPSTREAM problem where you’ve got to reform the factory animal operations that now dominate the American meat industry. S.510, however, does absolutely nothing to address this. Factory animal farms aren’t even addressed in the bill!

Lie #7 – The American people are dying in droves from unsafe fresh food

The truth is that Americans are dying from processed food laced with toxic chemical additives, not from fresh, raw produce. Partially-hydrogenated oils, white sugar, aspartame, MSG and artificial food colors almost certainly kill far more people than bacterial contaminations.

The American public is also dying from pharmaceuticals — anywhere from 100,000 to 240,000 people a year are killed by FDA-approved drugs (http://www.naturalnews.com/001894.html), most of which have been approved under the guise of blatantly fraudulent science and drug company trickery. The FDA doesn’t seem to mind. In fact, it has been a willful co-conspirator in the scientific fraud carried out by Big Pharma in the name of “medicine.” (http://www.naturalnews.com/027851_h…)

To think that the FDA — the very same agency responsible for the Big Pharma death machine — is now going to “save us” by controlling food safety is highly irrational.

Lie #8 – The FDA just wants to make food “safer”

Actually, the FDA wants to make the food more DEAD. Both the FDA and the USDA are vocal opponents of live food. They think that the only safe food is sterilized food, which is why they’ve supported the fumigation, pasteurization and irradiation efforts that have been pushed over the last few years.

California almond growers, for example, must now either chemically fumigate or pasteurize their almonds before selling them (http://www.naturalnews.com/021776.html). This has destroyed the incomes of U.S. almond farmers and forced U.S. food companies to buy raw almonds from Spain and other countries.

Lie #9 – Food smuggling is a huge problem in America

One of the main sections of S.510 addresses “food smuggling.” Yep — people smuggling food across the country. If you’ve never heard of this problem that’s because it’s not actually a problem.

Not yet anyway.

But there’s a reason why they put this into the bill: Because they’re probably planning on criminalizing fresh produce and then arresting people for transporting broccoli with the “intent to distribute.”

Yep, farmers bringing fresh produce to sell at the weekend farmer’s market could soon be arrested and imprisoned as if they were drug smugglers. Hence the need for the “food smuggling” provisions of S.510.

Soon, we will all have to meet in secret locations just to trade carrots for cash.

Lie #10 – S.510 will make America’s food supply the safest in the world

Actually, even with S.510 in place, America’s food supply is among the most chemically contaminated in the world, second only to China. You can find mercury in the seafood, BPA in the canned soup, yeast extract (MSG) in the “natural” potato chips, and artificial petrochemical coloring agents in children’s foods.

Eating the “Standard American Diet” is probably the single most harmful thing a person can do for their health. It’s the fastest way to get cancer, diabetes and heart disease. Every nation in the world that begins to consume the American diet starts to show record rates of degenerative disease within one generation. This is the “safe food” that the U.S. Senate is now pushing on everyone.

Remember, with S.510, SAFE = DEAD. And the FDA says it wants to keep everybody safe.

Learn more: http://www.naturalnews.com/030587_Senate_Bill_510_Food_Safety.html#ixzz173VuSL2D

Fears over modified salmon voiced

admin — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 13:04:20 +0000

For now, the FDA has tabled approval of the genetically altered salmon as a human food item. They are saying that more time to investigate the GMO salmon is needed before it can be approved.

For those of you unaware that the FDA had planned to meet on this, see my precious post for information about the salmon, the company that has “engineered” it, and what is still at stake:

http://weber-farms.com/blog/2010/09/20/fda-to-consider-ok-of-genetically-engineered-salmon-cnn-com/

According to Gregory Jaffe, a panel member who is the biotechnology director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said that the FDA would eventually approve it. “I think the agency is going to take its time with this, but I anticipate at some point this will be approved by the FDA”, said Jaffe.

The advisory panel did not vote on the matter, but individual members offered a range of comments – sometimes conflicting – after two days of testimony from AquaBounty, the FDA and the public.ad_iconGregory Jaffe, a panel member who is the biotechnology director at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, said the committee did not find any fatal flaws in the application.”In some areas, we said we need more information to do the analysis,” Jaffe said. A separate panel will meet Tuesday to discuss whether the FDA should require labeling on the modified salmon. The FDA commissioner will decide both matters, but it is unclear when.

via Fears over modified salmon voiced.

Against the law to farm and acquire healthful foods in the US

admin — Fri, 10 Sep 2010 13:05:37 +0000

Based on recent actions by the FDA, it is becoming quite clear that people no longer have the “right” to choose the foods that they eat, and that farmers cannot grow or produce healthful foods to sell directly to consumers.

The FDA, in conjunction with state and local authorities, are stepping up raids on small farms, food buying clubs and private food co-ops.

All this being said, it is simply a foretaste of things to come, should the senate bill, S.510 be passed (the food safety and modernization Act).

I will refer you to the following article, part 1 in a series of 3 parts, which documents the trials of families in Missouri that were farming according to the state laws, only to have a judge state that “this could not have been what the legislators meant when they wrote this law”:

http://wholefoodusa.wordpress.com/2010/09/09/farming-without-a-license-is-a-criminal-enterprise/

Please, please, please. If you want to be able to choose where you get your food from, and would like to help out the local farmers (you know, the ones that have eggs without Salmonella and also sell meats and greens without E. Coli), call and write your senators and tell them to vote against the Food Safety and Modernization act (Bill S.501).

–Pat

Raw Milk in MA: Can Regulators Be Deterred from Their Crackdown?

admin — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:20:39 +0000

According to the FDA, we have no absolute rights to choose the foods we eat!

Here is a quote from the brief:

“Plaintiffs’ assertion of a ‘fundamental right to their own bodily and physical health, which includes what foods they do and do not choose to consume for themselves and their families’ is similarly unavailing because plaintiffs do not have a fundamental right to obtain any food they wish.” [p. 26]

They stated this in briefs presented in the lawsuit filed by the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund ( A nonprofit that works in a similar fashion as the Home School Legal Defense Association, except the strive to protect small farmers and all consumers that choose to buy local, fresh foods, including raw milk).

I cannot believe that the government can actually override the Constitution, and say that this blatant stripping of our rights is NOT unconstitutional!!!

Somebody wake me up from this nightmare! Are we living in an Eastern block country that is still trapped behind the iron curtain???

You can read the entire article here:

Raw Milk in MA: Can Regulators Be Deterred from Their Crackdown?.

They also provide links to the briefs from the court case.

–Pat

The Associated Press: E. coli forces lettuce recall; 19 ill in 3 states

admin — Fri, 07 May 2010 13:27:25 +0000

Once again, there is E. coli poisoning occurring. Is it from small farmers?

NO!!! Once again, it is from BIG AG companies (Freshway Foods of Ohio) using processing plants.

But Senate bill S-510 is going to shut down your link to safe foods, raised by your local farmer and give all that business to the BigAG firms that will continue doing “business as usual” – all under the guise of “Food Safety”

That means “poison for profits”.

Read the full article below

The Associated Press: E. coli forces lettuce recall; 19 ill in 3 states.

Why are we in this ‘Health Care’ mess?

admin — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 14:28:38 +0000

I ran across a news article from August 10th. it explains in great detail why we have become an unhealthy society. It mirrors what we have been telling people for a long time, but at its core, it explains why we are here, in the quagmire.

The debate about health care would be a non-issue, had the FDA NOT overurned a LAW passed by congress in 1938 – which stood until it was rescinded by the FDA in 1973.
Of course, the FDA did not have, and was not GIVEN the POWER to overturn this legislation. It did so without public notice, no fanfare, and no publicity.

What was in this law?
Here is a quote from the article:
“If some readers are old enough to remember, in the middle half of the 20th century, there was a law put into place by Congress issuing a food label on food products that were not what they said they were. In Michael Pollan’s book In Defense of Food he describes that these food items were given the name ‘imitation’ food. The law was called the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. The law read, “…there are certain traditional foods that everyone knows, such as bread, milk, and cheese, and that when consumers buy these foods, they should get the foods they are expecting…[and] if a food resembles a standardized food but does not comply with the standard, that food must be labeled as ‘imitation.’” ”

As a small time cosmetic manufacturer, we are held to the letter of this law, and MUST list every ingredient we put in the products that we manufacture, package and sell.
As producers of food for our own family, and for those of you that have “discovered” us, we raise, and grow food and value-added products that have never seen chemical pesticides, weed killers, pollutants, growth hormones, or antibiotics, except to save an animal, which then does not produce anything (like goat milk for our lotions, or eggs) that we would consume, use or sell for use, until the antibiotics have passed out of their systems and they are once again healthy. So why do the big food corporations get away with this?

Once again, it boils down to money.
If we greased the palm of the FDA bureaucrats, we too could ride on easy (spelled s-l-e-e-z-y) street…

This has lead to the use of foaming degreasers in toothpaste, shampoos and other body products – known carcinogens, high-fructose corn syrup and other corn by-products in over 90% of the 47,000 + “food” items in the average grocery store. All increasing the risk of cancer, obesity, diabetes, sores on the scalp and skin, dry skin issues, and a myriad of other maladies, which we run to doctors to “fix” for us. And they “fix” our ailments with chemical ointments, drugs, and everything else under the sun – except nutritional education and restoration of the natural balance in our lives that comes from eating healthful, nutritious foods, and getting rid of the shampoos, anti-bacterial soaps, lotions, and other items e pour on our skin, in our hair and in our mouth that should never have been touched.

Through education, and telling our selves “no” to bad things and “yes” to those things that are good for us, we won’t need the “Health care” system for much…

Documentary Film – Must See!!!

admin — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 13:44:23 +0000

If any of you have been following my blog, you know that I write about the USDA and FDA, corporate “Big Ag” companies, and how they are not our allies or great protectors of the food chain..

I subscribe to different feeds that bring food safety and nutritional news to my inbox, so that I can keep all of you updated. One of those (and I am sure I have told some of you about this) is called The Center for Food Safety. They have teamed up with a film maker, and together have produced a film that should be seen by anyone that eats food – It is called “Food, Inc.”

“Food Inc.” premiers today, June 12th in New York City, Los Angeles and San Francisco, followed by the nationwide release on June 19th.

The film reports the abusive persecution and, in other cases, prosecution of farmers by Monsanto as it tries to force its genetically altered food products into the mainstream food industry.
It has interviews with such innovative farmers as Joe Salatin (Polyface Farm) and Gary Hershberg of Storyfields. There are also interviews with Journalist and author, Michael Pollan (“In Defense of Food” and “The Omnivores Dilemma”) and Eric Schlosser (Author of “Fast Food Nation”).

It also exposes the role that the FDA and USDA play in promoting a Corporate-run Industrialized Agriculture model – A failing model that has caused a new strain of E. Coli that affects over 73,000 people per year, an unprecedented escalation of heart disease, type-2 diabetes, and childhood obesity – reaching epidemic proportions in our society.
I have affectionately called this “Poison for Profits” for a couple of years now…

This is a MUST SEE film!

For more information go to this link:

http://www.foodincmovie.com/index.php

To your health,

–Pat

FDA Monitor

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 17:50:45 +0000

I Just had to tell someone that they were making claims about their products which the FDA would use to shut them down. I didn’t do it because they are a competitor, but because a recent episode came to mind about a family run business doing the same kinds of products we do was “caught” by the FDA abnd was forced to shut down and pay 10′s of 1000′s of dollars in fines – they are now financially ruined, all because the said things like “healing herbs” and “moisturize your skin” and things like that.

In the Cosmetic industry (of which we are a part), one cannot say that a product “moisturizes” or “heals” or “relieves pain” or other such verbiage. Such claims are reserved for drugs only – so, if you want to say that, you have to back it up with a $3million double-blind test performed by independent laboratories – then you have to submit all of the ingredient information, and the results of the testing to the FDA and wait for them to give you the official nod that you can say those things and sell the product in question… as a drug -

So, we have products that may actually do good things for you, but we aren’t allowed (by law) to say that they do. We also have to be careful about product reviews submitted by customers – because their comments may cause us the same harm.

So, since we don’t want to be in that category, we choose to describe our products in ways that tell you that they are good for you without saying that they are good for you – it’s for our own good!

Check out our product listings here and see what I mean, and then check out the web and see how many people are heading for financial ruin and heartache over “the name game” that the government plays…

–Pat