The voice of controlled opposition wants Americans to believe that the Tester Amendment to S 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, elevates the bill to something we should adopt. The Tester Amendment puts a bandaid on a head wound. It does not stop the most lethal agency in American history from seizing control of the food supply from farm to fork.
Even though Big Ag now opposes S 510, we should continue to oppose the bill, as it amounts to federal assault on food freedom. Agribusiness giants have always opposed the exemption provided in the Tester Amendment. Now that it’s included in the current form of S.510, they’re only making clear that they oppose giving any wiggle room to competition. But from their sudden opposition to S 510, because it now includes an amendment they have always opposed, the public is being lulled into a false sense of confidence in S 510.
The Tester Amendment amounts to putting lipstick on a pig. It’s still a pig, and it still needs to be slaughtered.
The Tester Amendment does not go far enough. As the dollar crashes, how much is $500,000 a year going to be worth? That’s the lower revenue limit on food producers affected by the amendment; and it only exempts them from having to submit a food safety plan. This exemption does not exclude them from everything else in the bill. Small producers will still be wiped out by the hyper-regulation proposed in S 510, as will non-exempt medium-sized producers. History is repeating itself: small and medium-sized meat packers were destroyed by Bill Clinton’s HACCP – the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point plan adopted under the guise of food safety. Meat did not get any safer; all that happened was that fewer meat packers exist today.
