Our Tragic Flaw

In my book, Our Tragic Flaw: A Case for Nonviolence, I specifically cite Monsanto's horrifying record of disdain toward democratic processes and public safety in its relentless pursuit of power and profits. A new chapter in this record has recently opened, and it may be the most terrifying of them all.

The U.S. House and Senate are currently considering a bill, the "Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009" (H.R. 875), strongly supported by Monsanto, that ostensibly aims to secure food safety, playing on recent concerns that have made big news. It is currently being considered by the House Committee on Energy and Commerce, and the House Committee on Agriculture.

This bill consolidates virtually total power over the food supply chain into one administration within the Department of Health and Human Services (to be called the Food Safety Administration) and concentrates much of that power in one person, the Administrator.

This centralization of power in the federal government hands Monsanto and other enormous special interest lobbies unprecedented leverage to use the regulatory system to wipe out its competitors. By the same token, it places small farmers, organic farmers, and family farmers even more at the mercy of onerous bureaucratic requirements intended to push them out of business.

Please do whatever you can to make sure this bill dies in committee! You can take action here. (I found the template letter at this link far too weak, so I cut-and-pasted a few choice paragraphs from this blog into the top of the letter.)

Undoubtedly, food safety is important. But let us not be distracted from the fact that this bill uses food safety as a Trojan Horse to sneak in even greater abuses of power on the part of Monsanto than they have already managed to perpetrate on the American and world public.

Consider this: According to the CDC, "foodborne diseases cause approximately 76 million illnesses, 325,000 hospitalizations, and 5,000 deaths in the United States each year." But the CDC also recorded 43,664 deaths from automobile accidents in 2006 out of more than six million car accidents, which included some 3 million injuries, about two-thirds of which will be permanent.

In short, our food system is far safer than our principal transportation system. Your chances of dying in a car accident are almost nine times greater than dying of a food borne illness. And your chances of suffering a permanent injury in a car accident are more than six times greater than being hospitalized for a food borne illness.

We should be concerned about food safety, to be sure, but not hysterical. And the very last thing we ought to do is to allow the fox into the henhouse (quite literally). Monsanto has no business dictating food safety to anybody! After all, it was Monsanto that audaciously proclaimed:

"Monsanto should not have to vouchsafe the safety of biotech food. Our interest is in selling as much of it as possible. Assuring its safety is the F.D.A.'s job" - Philip Angell, Monsanto's director of corporate communications. "Playing God in the Garden" New York Times Magazine, October 25, 1998.

You are encouraged to read the bill. It makes fascinating reading for the student of the corruption of power and the insidious creep of totalitarianism.

Update on Wednesday, December 30, 2009 at 08:13AM by Parke Burgess

I am happy to report that both this bill and its Senate companion seem to have died in committee.