For Whom the Bell Tolls
New Legislation: The Control of America's Farmers and Farm Lands


by Arun Shrivastava
Global Research, March 15, 2009


1. Introduction

The joint stock East India Company [EIC] ruled India from about 1770 to 1857, about 87 years. During those nine decades the eight millennia old farming tradition was uprooted and subjected to colonial rapacity. A food secure India suffered persistent famines, hunger, starvation and deaths on a scale never before witnessed in its documented history. The people revolted in 1857, the British Government took over, but under the evil rulers hunger and starvation continued right up until 1947. One firm took over India because it came to control its farmers and farm lands and it controlled what its farmers produced.

This is 2009, not 1770, but the power to enslave remains undiluted. The people of the United States of America will soon face a law that even the most convoluted minds in the East India Company could not have thought of.

2. The two bills: HR875 [1] and S425 [2]

(a) HR875 Bill in the House of Representatives

Representative Rosa DeLauro [3] has introduced HR 875 designed to scare the hell out of any food producer anywhere in the world. The ostensible purpose of the bill is to:

To establish the Food Safety Administration within the Department of Health and Human Services;

To protect the public health by preventing food-borne illness,

To ensure the safety of food,

To improve research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and, inter alia,

To improve security of food from intentional contamination,

The Congress is of the opinion that ‘the food safety program at the Food and Drug Administration is not effective in controlling hazards in food coming from farms and factories in the United States and food and food ingredients coming from foreign countries, and these events have adversely affected consumer confidence’ [Sec 2(3)], that immune compromised population is at risk [Sec 2 (5)(c)], that the volume of imported food is increasing and that there have been lapses on part of the regulatory bodies.

The bill, if it becomes law, would give virtually untrammeled power to a US inspector, anywhere in the world, to enter any food establishment, inspect, collect samples, inspect production log books if that food establishment produces and/or processes foods meant for American consumption.

“All imported food under this Act shall meet requirements for food safety, inspection, labeling, and consumer protection that are at least equal to those applicable to food grown, manufactured, processed, packed, or held for consumption in the United States.â€