Joel Salatin Says

"This is a death knell...."

Joel Salatin weighs in on Food Safety Legislation and NAIS (National Animal Identification System) and other "top down" government attempts to regulate Food Safety.

This homegrown video was filmed by the Fund on Joel Salatin's (windy) Polyface back pasture on May 27, 2009. We asked Joel to give us his take on all the new "Food Safety" legislations flooding Congress. At the time this was filmed HR 875 was of utmost concern.

Joel's words are even more pertinent, less than 2 months later, as HR 2749 has grabbed the spotlight and promises to be the fastest rolling, most onerous legislation affecting small farmers and consumers of farm fresh foods.

Joel's comments on NAIS (National Animal Identification System) predate the official USDA call for comments in the NAIS Listening sessions.

Excerpts

NAIS (National Animal Identification System)

"It will give a pretty free pass to the industrial food system because of the scalability of the infrastructure and it will essentially criminalize and de-economize local and small scale producers. So, this is a death knell."

"Food Safety" Legislation

"As far as food safety is concerned, again, you are dealing with a very subjective thing. By what writ of the pontiff, has it been determined, the pontiff being in our case the US Duh, by what extreme notion has it been been decided that it's perfectly safe to feed your kids Cocoa Puffs, Twinkies and Mountain Dew, but it's not safe to feed 'em compost grown tomatoes and raw milk. This food safety is a very subjective thing. And, boy, I mean, if there is one thing that stands between personal freedom and tyranny it's the choice of being able to decide what to feed our own bodies. If that isn't the most basic human freedom, I don't know what is.

And, so, once we turn over the decision making power to determine what we are going to eat to a government agency it will absolutely be... limited to... whatever industrial food can produce because that's the fraternity that the government and the agencies operate in.

So, the answer is not some BIG new regulatory agency, the answer is to force the industry to compete with viable, economically viable and transparent viable local food commerce. Right now, the industrial food system, the competition is not fair, because the regulations which are not scalable put an undue prejudicial burden on small scale producers. The day we allow small scale local producers to enjoy an exemption from these onerous regulations because the relationships of marketing and venue are just a good a police power as the bureaucray in the industrial, we will then make the industrial compete with us, and we will run 'em out of business.

The answer is not a top down answer, it's a bottom up answer."