Re: [Homesteadingfamily] Re:S 510

I've found some good links with info on S510:

http://foodfreedom.wordpress.com/2009/06/13/seeds-how-to-criminalize-them/
This website has the text of the bill, with commentary.
Their sub-title: "Decentralize, grow your own, buy local." Lots of commentary

http://www.infowars.com/senate-bill-s510-makes-it-illegal-to-grow-share-trade-or-sell-homegrown-food/
This website lists several negative outcomes of the bill, such as:

1. It puts all US food and all US farms under Homeland Security and the Department of Defense, in the event of contamination or an ill-defined emergency.
3. It would allow the government, under Maritime Law, to define the introduction of any food into commerce (even direct sales between individuals) as smuggling into "the United States." Since under that law, the US is a corporate entity and not a location, "entry of food into the US" covers food produced anywhere within the land mass of this country and "entering into" it by virtue of being produced.
5. It would remove the right to clean, store and thus own seed in the US, putting control of seeds in the hands of Monsanto and other multinationals, threatening US security.

It includes this sentence:
S 510 fails on moral, social, economic, political, constitutional, and human survival grounds.
A good summary to justify it being of interest to our list.

http://laughterandliberty.com/senate-bill-s510-explained-sort-of/
(I don't know how to take off the black-and white on this paste)

When I heard about Senate Bill s510 I was completely freaked out. The first thing I heard about it was that it makes it illegal to grow your own food.
The first thing I found out was it doesn't make growing your own food at home and eating it yourself illegal. PHHHEWWWW!! Grandma's pickles are SAFE!! Then I started actually reading what WAS in the bill.
If you trade or give your food away, or sell it at farmers markets, you are no longer considered growing for personal consumption which puts you in a category as a Community Supported Agriculture supplier, or so you forget what it actually means CSA's for short. This is a whole world of difference because now your food has to be "traceable" That means if your neighbor little sally walker has a tummy ache, you need to be held accountable for giving her those bacteria laden zucchinis.
So in other words you don't grow it yourself, you probably aren't going to get to eat it. Which is going to make you a pretty big ball of sad if you get most of your fruits and veggies from farmers markets. Is this going to be the end of organic farming? No probably not directly or in the near future but farmers who can afford to give away 50% of their profits to the government to implement this bill will probably not going to be living in your town. And because of the lack of farmers putting their heirloom seed grown produce out there, we will eventually see a decline in the amount of heirloom seeds available to the public. The worst part though is the bill will directly affect pet and animal feed manufacturers as well, which means higher feed costs for farmers, which means you ain't makin chicken wings for the backyard barbecue buddy. It's all hot dogs from here. We will probably still get hamburgers for a while, but eventually hamburgers will
be the price of steak, steak will be the price of lobster, lobster will be filled with oil.
So, this really is in the nature of an alert, since the Senate has already passed it. We each need to contact our Representatives. I don't know about the version they passed, except that it's different, so they will have to be reconciled.

I'd be happy to learn more about the House version, and how they're doing on reconciling

Naomi in NM

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