Posts Tagged: bill

Seeds – How to criminalize them

UPDATE: BREAKING: Senate votes cloture on S 510 – must now be voted on in 60 days. Linn Cohen-Cole, in her post Seeds – How to criminalize them, asks us to wake up to the implications of this bill. Lots of email has been flying around the cyber heavens about this Food Safety Bill. The Bill language starts below and the rest can be linked to in Linn’s article. Read with your critical mind engaged and give your thoughts in the comments section below. Wisdom says stop a bill that is broad as everything yet more vague even than it is broad. Wisdom says stop a bill that comes with massive penalties but allows no judicial review. Wisdom says stop a bill with everything unspecified and actually waits til next year for an unspecified “Administrator” to decide what’s what. Where we come from, that’s called a blank check. Who writes laws like that? ”Here, do what you want about whatever you want and here’s some deadly punishments to make it stick.” Wisdom says know who wrote that bill and be forewarned. Wisdom says wake up. Here’s the bill. Let’s use our imaginations and extrapolate from the little bit it reveals and from the reality we know. 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 respectto food production facilities

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A Better Way to Feed the Hungry?

Bill Gates thinks he’s got a brilliant idea: fighting malnutrition abroad by fortifying food. The scheme, backed with $50 million from the Gates Foundation, in part encourages Proctor & Gamble, Philip Morris’ Kraft, and other companies to develop vitamin and iron-fortified processed foods. It then facilitates their entry into Third World markets. Gates seems to believe we don’t have time to address the complex social and political roots of malnutrition. But in opting for this single-focus, top-down, technical intervention, Gates can end up hurting the very people he wants to help.

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