The Future of Food

Unnatural Selection: Genetically Modified Canola growing wild in North Dakota

Bayer (IG Farben) and Monsanto (/Searle), two of the most evil companies in history, join forces to pollute our gene pool with their profit-motivated genetic tinkering.

Our society desperately needs to move to a techno-agrarian model using local food production and clean energy (solar and wind), domestic manufacturing, responsible mining, and renewable materials, with severely limited imports.  This is getting ridiculous.  It’s death to our environment by a thousand cuts.

For billions of years on this planet, there has not been the means to program genes manually and deliberately.   All mutations to genes have been due to random forces such as radiation or chemical damage.  Now we bring into the equation the psychology of profit combined with the ability to construct new organisms with specific purposes.  This is a quantum leap forward in terms of evolution.  In a sense it bypasses evolution since natural selection is not imposed on these new organisms.

It’s artifical,  unnatural selection, imposed by some sick, sick people.  We’re talking about the same companies that created Agent Orange defoliant (Monsanto) that caused horriffic birth defects, and Zyklon B Gas (IG Farben) used to kill concentration camp inmates in Germany during WW2.  Do we really trust them to be engaging in this sort of reckless activity that will surely have unforeseen consequences?  The biggest class action law suit you can imagine wouldn’t begin to recoup the cost of permanently removing GM plants and animals that have escaped into the wild.   There is no amount of money that can fix these problems.

From GM crop escapes into the American wild (Nature)

“The extent of the escape is unprecedented,” says Cynthia Sagers, an ecologist at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, who led the research team that found the canola (Brassica napus, also known as rapeseed).

Sagers and her team found two varieties of transgenic canola in the wild — one modified to be resistant to Monsanto’s Roundup herbicide (glyphosate), and one resistant to Bayer Crop Science’s Liberty herbicide (gluphosinate). They also found some plants that were resistant to both herbicides, showing that the different GM plants had bred to produce a plant with a new trait that did not exist anywhere else.

McDonalds, public school lunch beef treated with ammonia

New York Times

Eight years ago, federal officials were struggling to remove potentially deadly E. coli from hamburgers when an entrepreneurial company from South Dakota came up with a novel idea: injecting beef with ammonia.

The company, Beef Products Inc., had been looking to expand into the hamburger business with a product made from beef that included fatty trimmings the industry once relegated to pet food and cooking oil. The trimmings were particularly susceptible to contamination, but a study commissioned by the company showed that the ammonia process would kill E. coli as well as salmonella.

Officials at the United States Department of Agriculture endorsed the company’s ammonia treatment, and have said it destroys E. coli “to an undetectable level.” They decided it was so effective that in 2007, when the department began routine testing of meat used in hamburger sold to the general public, they exempted Beef Products.

With the U.S.D.A.’s stamp of approval, the company’s processed beef has become a mainstay in America’s hamburgers. McDonald’s, Burger King and other fast-food giants use it as a component in ground beef, as do grocery chains. The federal school lunch program used an estimated 5.5 million pounds of the processed beef last year alone.

But government and industry records obtained by The New York Times show that in testing for the school lunch program, E. coli and salmonella pathogens have been found dozens of times in Beef Products meat, challenging claims by the company and the U.S.D.A. about the effectiveness of the treatment. Since 2005, E. coli has been found 3 times and salmonella 48 times, including back-to-back incidents in August in which two 27,000-pound batches were found to be contaminated. The meat was caught before reaching lunch-rooms trays.

…

Carol Guzy/Washington Post

Carl S. Custer, a former U.S.D.A. microbiologist, said he and other scientists were concerned that the department had approved the treated beef for sale without obtaining independent validation of the potential safety risk. Another department microbiologist, Gerald Zirnstein, called the processed beef “pink slime” in a 2002 e-mail message to colleagues and said, “I do not consider the stuff to be ground beef, and I consider allowing it in ground beef to be a form of fraudulent labeling.”

One of the toughest hurdles for Beef Products was the Agricultural Marketing Service, the U.S.D.A. division that buys food for school lunches. Officials cited complaints about the odor, and wrote in a 2002 memorandum that they had “to determine if the addition of ammonia to the product is in the best interest to A.M.S. from a quality standpoint.”

“It is our contention,” the memo added, “that product should be labeled accordingly.”

Represented by Dennis R. Johnson, a top lawyer and lobbyist for the meat industry, Beef Products prevailed on the question of whether ammonia should be listed as an ingredient, arguing that the government had just decided against requiring another company to list a chemical used in treating poultry.

School lunch officials said they ultimately agreed to use the treated meat because it shaved about 3 cents off the cost of making a pound of ground beef.

Cherry farmer dumps his frustration

Leonard Ligon stands in mounds of tart cherries that he had to dump because of government regulations. Douglas Tesner/Record-Eagle

Millions of pounds of fruit left on the ground to rot

BY BRIAN McGILLIVARY
bmcgillivary@record-eagle.com
Traverse City Record-EagleOLD MISSION — Life on the farm is no bowl of cherries for farmer Leonard Ligon — nor profitable in the cherry business.

Ligon, and many other tart cherry growers in northwest Michigan who produced a bumper crop this summer, will leave millions of pounds of cherries on the ground to rot. A federal marketing order will divert 42 percent the estimated 300 million-plus pound tart cherry harvest from going to the primary domestic market this year. Area growers estimate 20 percent to 25 percent of their crop will be abandoned.

Instead of shaking his cherries off trees and leaving them to rot in the field, Ligon dumped his 72,000 pounds of “diverted” cherries along Old Mission Road with a sign that read “Traverse City, cherry capital of the world.”

“All I’m saying to the tourists and joggers and others in this town is that life on the farm is not always profitable,” Ligon said, “and we’re losing our (cherry) producers.”

Ligon said he’s leaving the tart cherry business as fast as he can. Instead of replanting orchards with cherries he’s putting in wine grapes. He doubts many growers will replant orchards on Old Mission Peninsula.

“The farther I get away from the tart cherry business the better as far as I’m concerned,” said cherry grower and Peninsula Township Supervisor Rob Manigold. “My whole focus right now is to convert to wine grapes.”

Manigold said the cherry business is like no other. Growers take their fruit to processors for whatever they will give them, then have to wait a year until the processors sell the cherries before they get paid.

Wine grapes generate cash within 30 days, he said.

Conversion to grapes is expensive, however, so Manigold isn’t going to tear out productive orchards that can last 25 or 30 years. Manigold’s processor took 100 percent of his cherries this year, so he’ll either break even or make a small profit.

Old Mission cherry grower Joshua Wunsch had similar success with his fruit processor, and has no plans to convert to grapes.

“I looked pretty hard at the economics of wine grape growing, but it seems that most of the return there is at the press and bottling,” Wunsch said.

Wunsch estimates about 20 percent of one of the largest tart cherry crops in years will be abandoned in the fields this year. Abandonment is just one type of diversion. Cherries exported overseas, dried, turned into juice concentrate, sold in new markets or stored for future use are also considered diverted.

Perry Hedin, executive director of the Cherry Industry Administrative Board in Dewitt that sets the market restrictions, said a 300-million pound bumper crop in 1995 that lacked market restrictions dropped the price of cherries to 5 cents a pound or less.

This year, growers expect about 20 cents a pound, down from almost 40 cents a pound last year.

“You have to match supply with demand in the domestic industry … or the market price drops to about zero,” Hedin said.

Hedin said he still sees a lot of young orchards around Traverse City, and the market continues to expand with new uses every year.

In the past Old Mission farmers, because of their ability to produce consistent crops, hit the jackpot when the national crop failed, Wunsch said. But the result was they lost market to other fruits.

The ability to stabilize prices and store fruit for poor crop years has allowed the industry to maintain its traditional market while expanding other areas, such as juice concentrate.

“About 20 percent of the crop is going into cherry juice concentrate and it’s growing rapidly,” Wunsch said. “It’s a market segment that a dozen years ago wasn’t a blip on the radar.”

Still, leaving fruit to rot doesn’t set well with most growers and the public in the current economy, Manigold said.

“The food pantry shelves are bare, people going hungry, and here we are dumping millions of pounds of cherries on the ground,” Manigold said.

St. John’s Wort Again Proven Better than Antidepressant Drugs

(NaturalNews) The popular herbal extract St. John’s wort is more effective at treating the symptoms of depression than any antidepressant drug, and has fewer side effects, researchers from the Centre for Complementary Medicine in Munich have concluded.

“Overall, the St John’s Wort extracts tested in the trials were superior to placebo, similarly effective as standard anti-depressants, and had fewer side effects than standard anti-depressants,” lead researcher Klaus Linde said.

In a study published by the Cochrane Library, the researchers compiled the results of 29 prior trials, involving a total of 5,489 participants who were randomly assigned either St. John’s wort, a placebo, tricylclic antidepressants or selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) to treat mild to moderately severe depression. All studies were double-blind, meaning that neither patients nor researchers knew what kind of treatment each participant was receiving.

St. John’s wort was found to be more effective than a placebo and at least as effective as both tricylics and SSRIs, but with fewer side effects. Patients receiving the herbal treatment were significantly less likely to drop out of studies due to negative side effects than those assigned to take tricyclic antidepressants.

The researchers called their study the most thorough to date, and possibly the first to show that St. John’s wort is effective at treating not only mild, but also severe depression (also known as major depression).

St. John’s wort, known officially as Hypericum perforatum, is a native European perennial herb with distinctive yellow flowers and now grows wild in many parts of the Americas as well. It derives its common name from the tradition of harvesting its flowers on St. John’s day (June 24). Also known as Klamath weed or Tipton’s weed, the plant has been used for centuries as an herbal remedy for depression and sleeping problems.

In recent years, the popularity of the herbal antidepressant has soared as new concerns continue to emerge over pharmaceutical antidepressants, especially SSRIs. In Germany, doctors regularly prescribe it to children and teenagers. In the United Kingdom, it is currently used by two million people.

SSRIs have been shown to significantly increase the risk of suicide in those under the age of 18, and evidence suggests that they may have a similar effect on adults, as well. Recent evidence has also linked use of the drugs by pregnant women with an elevated risk of oral and heart-related birth defects.

With Western health care systems emphasizing drugs for the treatment of mental illness, however, many doctors feel they have no alternatives but to prescribe tricyclics or SSRIs, in spite of the risk. The new study may lead more doctors to prescribe St. John’s wort instead.

Another recent study, conducted by St. James’ University Hospital in Leeds, England, found that St. John’s wort was the only herbal supplement effective at treating depression, in contrast to cat’s claw, ginseng, gingko biloba, liquid tonic and royal jelly.

Researchers remain unsure precisely how St. John’s wort works, in part because the plant contains chemicals from at least seven different families. The most favored explanation is that the herb acts much like an SSRI, slowing the rate at which the neurotransmitter serotonin is removed from the brain. The chemical hyperforin is posited by some as the most active chemical agent in the herb, and has been linked to slowed uptake of not only serotonin but also the neurotransmitters dopamine, noradrenaline, GABA and glutamate. St. John’s wort extracts from which hyperforin has been removed, however, have still been shown to function as effective antidepressants.

Monsanto and greedy GM farmers pwned by mother nature

France24
Sunday 19 April 2009

‘Superweed’ explosion threatens Monsanto heartlands

“Superweeds” are plaguing high-tech Monsanto crops in southern US states, driving farmers to use more herbicides, return to conventional crops or even abandon their farms.

The gospel of high-tech genetically modified (GM) crops is not sounding quite so sweet in the land of the converted. A new pest, the evil pigweed, is hitting headlines and chomping its way across Sun Belt states, threatening to transform cotton and soybean plots into weed battlefields.

In late 2004, “superweeds” that resisted Monsanto’s iconic “Roundup” herbicide, popped up in GM crops in the county of Macon, Georgia. Monsanto, the US multinational biotech corporation, is the world’s leading producer of Roundup, as well as genetically engineered seeds. Company figures show that nine out of 10 US farmers produce Roundup Ready seeds for their soybean crops.

Superweeds have since alarmingly appeared in other parts of Georgia, as well as South Carolina, North Carolina, Arkansas, Tennessee, Kentucky and Missouri, according to media reports. Roundup contains the active ingredient glyphosate, which is the most used herbicide in the USA.

GM protesters demonstrate near the French town of Toulouse in March 2008.

How has this happened? Farmers over-relied on Monsanto’s revolutionary and controversial combination of a single “round up” herbicide and a high-tech seed with a built-in resistance to glyphosate, scientists say.

Today, 100,000 acres in Georgia are severely infested with pigweed and 29 counties have now confirmed resistance to glyphosate, according to weed specialist Stanley Culpepper from the University of Georgia.

“Farmers are taking this threat very seriously. It took us two years to make them understand how serious it was. But once they understood, they started taking a very aggressive approach to the weed,” Culpepper told FRANCE 24.

“Just to illustrate how aggressive we are, last year we hand-weeded 45% of our severely infested fields,” said Culpepper, adding that the fight involved “spending a lot of money.”

In 2007, 10,000 acres of land were abandoned in Macon country, the epicentre of the superweed explosion, North Carolina State University’s Alan York told local media.

Had Monsanto wanted to design a deadlier weed, they probably could not have done better. Resistant pigweed is the most feared superweed, alongside horseweed, ragweed and waterhemp.

“Palmer pigweed is the one pest you don’t want, it is so dominating,” says Culpepper. Pigweed can produce 10,000 seeds at a time, is drought-resistant, and has very diverse genetics. It can grow to three metres high and easily smother young cotton plants.

Today, farmers are struggling to find an effective herbicide they can safely use over cotton plants.

In an interview with FRANCE 24, Monsanto’s technical development manager, Rick Cole, said he believed superweeds were manageable. “The problem of weeds that have developed a resistance to Roundup crops is real and [Monsanto] doesn’t deny that, however the problem is manageable,” he said.

Cole encourages farmers to alternate crops and use different makes of herbicides.

Indeed, according to Monsanto press releases, company sales representatives are encouraging farmers to mix glyphosate and older herbicides such as 2,4-D, a herbicide which was banned in Sweden, Denmark and Norway over its links to cancer, reproductive harm and mental impairment. 2,4-D is also well-known for being a component of Agent Orange, a toxic herbicide which was used in chemical warfare in Vietnam in the 1960s.

FRANCE 24 report: French scientist Eric Seralini says research shows Roundup herbicide is highly toxic to human beings.

Questioned on the environmental impact and toxicity of such mixtures, Monsanto’s public affairs director, Janice Person, said that “they didn’t recommend any mixtures that were not approved by the EPA,” she said, referring to the US federal Environmental Protection Agency.

According to the UK-based Soil Association, which campaigns for and certifies organic food, Monsanto was well aware of the risk of superweeds as early as 2001 and took out a patent on mixtures of glyphosate and herbicide targeting glyphosate-resistant weeds.

“The patent will enable the company to profit from a problem that its products had created in the first place,” says a 2002 Soil Association report.

In the face of the weed explosion in cotton and soybean crops, some farmers are even considering moving back to non-GM seeds. “It’s good for us to go back, people have overdone the Roundup seeds,” Alan Rowland, a soybean seed producer based in Dudley, Missouri, told FRANCE 24. He used to sell 80% Monsanto “Roundup Ready” soybeans and now has gone back to traditional crops, in a market overwhelmingly dominated by Monsanto.

According to a number of agricultural specialists, farmers are considering moving back to conventional crops. But it’s all down to economics, they say. GM crops are becoming expensive, growers say.

While farmers and specialists are reluctant to blame Monsanto, Rowland says he’s started to “see people rebelling against the higher costs.”

Germany bans Monsanto MON810 GM Corn

Germany’s Minister of Agriculture, Ilse Aigner announced a decision today to ban the cultivation Monsanto’s MON810 genetically modified Bt maize (corn), due to serious health, agricultural, and ecological concerns.

4 out of 5 German consumers are opposed to the importation of the maize, and the German BMELF (Federal Minsitry of Food, Agriculture, and Consumer Protection) decision reflects that view.

MON810, also known as YieldGard, is genetically modified to express an insecticide (Cry1Ab) that naturally in bacterium Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt).

This Bt maize has been approved for human consumption and animal feed in the US, unlabelled, since 1996, [1] and many other countries, despite significant risk to humans and other species.

A 2007 study by Greenpeace showed inconsistent levels of Bt toxin expressed between plants when grown in non-controlled agricultural settings.  The study found that levels of the toxic protein in some plants were up to 100 times lower than Monsanto claimed, raising questions about both the effectiveness of the plant at controlling pests, and the actual potency of the expressed pesticide. [3]

A US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) risk assessment study that concluded the maize was safe for human consumption was based on 3 studies in mice, and none in humans.

Richard Wolfson, PhD points out the recklessness of using the Bt maize in light of wofeul inadequacy of existing research.  There exists a likelyhood of ampicillin (antibiotic) resistant bacteria forming in animals that consume the corn.   The use of Bt corn and other crops will almost certainly selectively breed stronger pests that threaten organic crops, and they have been shown to harmful to beneficial insect species [2].

It is poorly understood whether genes from Bt maize will transfect other corn, permanently affecting gene lines of non-GM crops.

Unfortunately in many western countries, especially the US, big agribusiness and biotechnology industry has a stranglehold on regulatory agencies.  In the US, produce labeled as organic (indicated by a number 9 before the PLU number) may not be genetically modified.  Any produce not labelled organic may be GMO (genetically modified organisms), and even perpared, mixed foods labeled as organic, may contan GMOs.

Backyard garden? Not any more. Presenting H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009

A friend and I spent some time reading over this insanely complicated piece of shit bill. Technically it applies to all food production and storage. I couldn’t find anything about having to transport food or sell it to fall under the jurisdiction of this law. If you have a backyard garden, and you store the food you grow, you will be in violation and face finds of $100,000/day or imprisonment.

And of course, it provides for arbitrary exemptions at the sole discretion of this new Food Safety Administration.

Apparently the FDA isn’t properly doing the bidding of Monsanto, so they want to create an entirely new agency to usurp their authority. I’m starting to see a pattern here (Dept of Homeland Security)

Big agribusiness is holding a gun to the head of all private agriculture in this country. I certainly hope everyone will contact their congress critters asap. At least they won’t be able to say we agreed to go along with it, when push comes to shove.

Update: The Husband of the Bill’s Sponsor Does Work for Monsanto

Reader CW tipped me off to this. It checks out.

Rosa DeLauro is married to Stanley B. Greenberg.

Here’s a bio on Greenberg:

Stanley B. Greenberg is Chairman and CEO of Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research.

He has served as polling advisor to President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore, Prime Minister Tony Blair, Presidents Nelson Mandela and Thabo Mbeki, Prime Minister Ehud Barak, German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, President Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada of Bolivia and their national campaigns.

Greenberg provides strategic advice and research for companies, organizations and campaigns trying to advance their issues amid shifting social currents.

Greenberg is author of the new book, The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break it, published by St. Martin’s Press, described by James Carville as “the most important book on American politics in my memory … maybe since 1960, the Making of the President.” Greenberg is also the author of Middle Class Dreams.

Together with Bill McInturff, Greenberg conducts bi-partisan surveys for National Public Radio on the main issues of the day.

His private sector clients include BP, Boeing, Monsanto, Comverse, Sun Microsystems, United HealthCare, the Business Roundtable, and the organizing committee for the 2004 Olympics in Athens.

—END UPDATE—

What this will do is force anyone who produces food of any kind, and then transports it to a different location for sale, to register with a new federal agency called the “Food Safety Administration.” Even growers who sell just fruit and/or vegetables at farmers markets would not only have to register, but they would be subject inspections by federal agents of their property and all records related to food production. The frequency of these inspections will be determined by the whim of the Food Safety Administration. Mandatory “safety” records would have to be kept. Anyone who fails to register and comply with all of this nonsense could be facing a fine of up to $1,000,000 per violation.

I’ve bought food at several farmers markets for years and I have yet to meet any vendors who are fond of the government. I think it’s pretty safe to say that most vendors at farmers markets won’t go along with this. The problem will be that the people who run the farmers markets will be forced to make sure that vendors are “registered” with the government.

Is this Change we can believe in? Maybe it is for Obama’s Secretary of Agriculture, Tom “I Fly with Monsanto” Vilsack.

For the rest of us, this is a nightmare.

Let’s take it piece by piece:

What is the legislation called? H.R. 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009:

111th CONGRESS
1st Session
H. R. 875

To establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services to protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness, ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes.

How does this affect farmers who just sell fruit and vegetables at farmers markets?

SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.

…

(9) CATEGORY 5 FOOD ESTABLISHMENT- The term ‘category 5 food establishment’ means a food establishment that stores, holds, or transports food products prior to delivery for retail sale.

…

13) FOOD ESTABLISHMENT-

(A) IN GENERAL- The term ‘food establishment’ means a slaughterhouse (except those regulated under the Federal Meat Inspection Act or the Poultry Products Inspection Act), factory, warehouse, or facility owned or operated by a person located in any State that processes food or a facility that holds, stores, or transports food or food ingredients.

Does this really apply to fruit and vegetables? Yes.

SEC. 3. DEFINITIONS.

…

(12) FOOD- The term ‘food’ means a product intended to be used for food or drink for a human or an animal and components thereof.

Registration:

SEC. 202. REGISTRATION OF FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS AND FOREIGN FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS.

(a) In General- Any food establishment or foreign food establishment engaged in manufacturing, processing, packing, or holding food for consumption in the United States shall register annually with the Administrator.

(b) Registration Requirements-

(1) IN GENERAL- To be registered under subsection (a), a food establishment shall submit a registration or reregistration to the Administrator.

(2) REGISTRATION- Registration under this section shall begin within 90 days of the enactment of this Act. Each such registration shall be submitted to the Secretary through an electronic portal and shall contain such information as the Secretary, by guidance, determines to be appropriate. Such registration shall contain the following information:

(A) The name, address, and emergency contact information of each domestic food establishment or foreign food establishment that the registrant owns or operates under this Act and all trade names under which the registrant conducts business in the United States relating to food.

(B) The primary purpose and business activity of each domestic food establishment or foreign food establishment, including the dates of operation if the domestic food establishment or foreign food establishment is seasonal.

(C) The types of food processed or sold at each domestic food establishment or, for foreign food establishments selling food for consumption in the United States, the specific food categories of that food as listed under section 170.3(n) of title 21, Code of Federal Regulations, or such other categories as the Administrator may designate in guidance, action level, or regulations for evaluating potential threats to food protection.

(D) The name, address, and 24-hour emergency contact information of the United States distribution agent for each domestic food establishment or foreign food establishment, who shall maintain information on the distribution of food, including lot information, and wholesaler and retailer distribution.

(E) An assurance that the registrant will notify the Administrator of any change in the products, function, or legal status of the domestic food establishment or foreign food establishment (including cessation of business activities) not later than 30 days after such change.

(3) PROCEDURE- Upon receipt of a completed registration described in paragraph (1), the Administrator shall notify the registrant of the receipt of the registration, designate each establishment as a category 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 food establishment, and assign a registration number to each domestic food establishment and foreign food establishment.

Inspection, Category 5 Food Establishments

SEC. 205. INSPECTIONS OF FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS.

(a) In General- The Administrator shall establish an inspection program, which shall include statistically valid sampling of food and facilities to enforce performance standards. The inspection program shall be designed to determine if each food establishment–

(1) is operated in a sanitary manner;

(2) has continuous preventive control systems, interventions, and processes in place to minimize or eliminate contaminants in food;

(3) is in compliance with applicable performance standards established under section 204, and other regulatory requirements;

(4) is processing food that is not adulterated or misbranded;

(5) maintains records of process control plans under section 203, and other records related to the processing, sampling, and handling of food; and

(6) is otherwise in compliance with the requirements of the food safety law.

…

(5) CATEGORY 5 FOOD ESTABLISHMENTS- A category 5 food establishment shall–

(A) have ongoing verification that its processes are controlled; and

(B) be randomly inspected at least annually.

(c) Establishment of Inspection Procedures- The Administrator shall establish procedures under which inspectors shall take random samples, photographs, and copies of records in food establishments.

What happens if you own a farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation that does not prepare or serve food directly to the consumer?

I hope you like having Feds crawling all over your property and telling you what to do.

SEC. 206. FOOD PRODUCTION FACILITIES.

(a) Authorities- In carrying out the duties of the Administrator and the purposes of this Act, the Administrator shall have the authority, with respect to food production facilities, to–

(1) visit and inspect food production facilities in the United States and in foreign countries to determine if they are operating in compliance with the requirements of the food safety law;

(2) review food safety records as required to be kept by the Administrator under section 210 and for other food safety purposes;

(3) set good practice standards to protect the public and animal health and promote food safety;

(4) conduct monitoring and surveillance of animals, plants, products, or the environment, as appropriate; and

(5) collect and maintain information relevant to public health and farm practices.

(b) Inspection of Records- A food production facility shall permit the Administrator upon presentation of appropriate credentials and at reasonable times and in a reasonable manner, to have access to and ability to copy all records maintained by or on behalf of such food production establishment in any format (including paper or electronic) and at any location, that are necessary to assist the Administrator–

(1) to determine whether the food is contaminated, adulterated, or otherwise not in compliance with the food safety law; or

(2) to track the food in commerce.

(c) Regulations- Not later than 1 year after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Administrator, in consultation with the Secretary of Agriculture and representatives of State departments of agriculture, shall promulgate regulations to establish science-based minimum standards for the safe production of food by food production facilities. Such regulations shall–

(1) consider all relevant hazards, including those occurring naturally, and those that may be unintentionally or intentionally introduced;

(2) require each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls implemented to address those hazards;

(3) include, with respect to growing, harvesting, sorting, and storage operations, minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, animal encroachment, and water;

(4) include, with respect to animals raised for food, minimum standards related to the animal’s health, feed, and environment which bear on the safety of food for human consumption;

(5) provide a reasonable period of time for compliance, taking into account the needs of small businesses for additional time to comply;

(6) provide for coordination of education and enforcement activities by State and local officials, as designated by the Governors of the respective States; and

(7) include a description of the variance process under subsection (d) and the types of permissible variances which the Administrator may grant under such process.

Is registration required? Yes. Is compliance with inspections required? Yes.

TITLE IV–ENFORCEMENT
SEC. 401. PROHIBITED ACTS.

It is prohibited–

…

(3) for a food establishment or foreign food establishment to fail to register under section 202, or to operate without a valid registration;

(4) to refuse to permit access to a food establishment or food production facility for the inspection and copying of a record as required under sections 205(f) and 206(a);

(5) to fail to establish or maintain any record or to make any report as required under sections 205(f) and 206(b);

(6) to refuse to permit entry to or inspection of a food establishment as required under section 205;

So what might happen if I refuse?

SEC. 405. CIVIL AND CRIMINAL PENALTIES.

(a) Civil Sanctions-

(1) CIVIL PENALTY-

(A) IN GENERAL- Any person that commits an act that violates the food safety law (including a regulation promulgated or order issued under the food safety law) may be assessed a civil penalty by the Administrator of not more than $1,000,000 for each such act.

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