Reply #52: Bullshit. Organic farms not threatened. We DO need this new agency to oversee food safety.

[Brazenly Liberal]

These mass emailings about the bill are extremely deceptive and amazingly well coordinated. As an organic farmer myself, I can tell you I thoroughly resent being used and abused by the people who created them. There is no threat in this bill for us. It's a weird, mirror campaign in which you are urged to take action that will achieve the opposite of what you want. This bill doesn't help Big Agribusiness - it's a big step toward reining them in. Protesting it won't take a swipe at Monsanto - it will hand them our food supply on a plate. With fries.

Splitting the job of food safety between the FDA and the USDA has been a train wreck. The failures of both agencies to protect our food supply have been scandalous case studies in incompetence and outright malfeasance. (eg: reacting to the discovery of Mad Cow in a US cow by decreasing the number of cows tested for the disease.)

Furthermore, there has long been a revolving door between both agencies and the companies whose activities they are supposed to oversee. As the same officials drift back and forth, regulations protecting consumers have been gutted or eliminated.