Drop the Tomatoes and Put Your Hands Behind Your Head

The Food Safety Modernization Act is getting closer to a vote. It represents the typical sort of big-brother benevolence that in the end will do little to accomplish what it ostensibly purports to do but could, as a matter of design, turn my Mom, my cousin, my brother in law, and millions upon millions of Americans into criminals.

This tyrannical law puts all food production (yes, even food produced in your own garden) under the authority of the Department of Homeland Security. Yep -- the very same people running the TSA and its naked body scanner / passenger groping programs.

This law would also give the U.S. government the power to arrest any backyard food producer as a felon (a "smuggler") for merely growing lettuce and selling it at a local farmer's market.

It also sells out U.S. sovereignty over our own food supply by ceding to the authority of both the World Trade Organization (WTO) and Codex Alimentarius.

It would criminalize seed saving, turning backyard gardeners who save heirloom seeds into common criminals. This is obviously designed to give corporations like Monsanto a monopoly over seeds.

It would create an unreasonable paperwork burden that would put small food producers out of business, resulting in more power over the food supply shifting to large multinational corporations.

What we need in this country is more regulation.

Because, as everyone knows, there are no existing laws against raising filthy food teeming with e coli and selling it to an unsuspecting public as kosher.