Potts Admonishes House Passage of Faux Food Safety Bill

Midge Potts for U.S. Senate 2010

July 31st, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Potts Admonishes House Passage of Faux Food Safety Bill

HR 2749 Aids Big Agri-Business and Will Be Unfair to Small Family Owned Farms

SPRINGFIELD, MO – On Thursday July 30th, the US House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed HR 2749, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009.

"The so called 'food saftey' bill that was passed on Thursday in the House is not what its proponents have made it out to be," said Midge Potts who announced in June that she intends to run for Missouri's US Senate seat in 2010. "This bill is another assault on family farmers by agri-business giants including Monsanto and Kraft. It will ultmiately create a larger bureaucracy to oversee all aspects of food in America by stripping food safety duties from the FDA."

If enacted, HR 2749 will require a $500 registration fee of all operators in all steps of the food production chain, however it allows a limit on the fee for large scale agricultural conglomerates; similar discrepancies throughout the bill are detrmimental to the small family owned farms that are already struggling to survive . It also empowers the Department of Health and Human Services to micro-manage the raising and harvesting of crops, and would essentially allow for warantless searches of farms.

"The sponsors of HR 2749 preyed on Americans' fears in order to pass a bill that is more of a gift to agri-business lobbyists than anything else it has been portrayed to be," Potts added. "For the record, the sources of recent food contamination scares were large corporate processing plants. This bill basically protects the guilty while punishing innocent hard working family farmers, and it will ultimately reduce competition creating higher food prices in an already ailing economy."

Midge Potts is state co-chair of the Progressive Party of Missouri and is a delegate on the coordinating committee of the Green Party of the United States.

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