One of my favorite quotes comes from Will Rogers – "With Congress, every time they make a joke, it's a law – and every time they make a law, it's a joke."

Except HR 875 is no laughing matter. It's the so-called "Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009.

I wrote on this about a year ago. This bill was introduced by Congresswoman Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), whose husband, Stan Greenburg, reportedly has ties to (surprise!) Monsanto. Now, on the surface of it, the bill looks like a good-faith attempt to protect the American people from "food-borne illnesses" while "ensuring the safety of food, improving research on contaminants leading to food-borne illness, and improving security of food from intentional contamination, and for other purposes."

HR875 is currently in committee, which is where most bills go to die. Still, at any moment it could come lurching back to life. So...why are so many people worked up about it?

On one hand, people are seeing it as a government takeover of agriculture, including not only the big factory farms and huge corporate operations like Monsanto and ConAgra, but small organic farmers and even your neighbor who grows vegetables in his backyard and sells them at the local farmer's market. On the other hand (given Representative DeLauro's purported ties to Monsanto), folks are saying that it's a corporate takeover of agriculture and is going to put Big Corporate Ag in charge, forcing everyone to use GMO seeds (which as you know, Monsanto has a virtual lock on).

The bottom line is, this bill threatens to take control away from small family farmers and force us down a particular path – with heavy fines and even prison time for violators. Here's what's dangerous about HR 875 – it's a "one-size-fits-all" piece of legislation that in the great tradition of the legal profession, is incredibly vague. The hidden cost of legislation like HR 875 is that when things like this get signed into law, there are going to be lawsuits and litigation and court challenges for decades, and the only folks that are going to come out winners are the lawyers.

There's another bill sneaking its way through Congress right now, and from what I'm hearing, it's not only worse than HR 875, it's more likely to become law. That's HR 759, the so-called "Food and Drug Globalization Act of 2009."

What's really scary about HR 759 (introduced by Congressman John Dingle of Michigan) is that it's totally flying under the radar. Hardly anyone knows about it (I found out just today). This bill would allow the FDA to impose "science-based standards" on everyone right down to the backyard gardener and force everyone to pay "compliance fees," submit to "hazard evaluations" and "preventative controls," and put a huge paperwork burden on everyone.

And it doesn't do a damn thing about food safety.

This bill is likely to come up for a vote by the end of May. Get educated – call your member of Congress – and raise your voice before it's too late.

Read previous discussion on this topic at: http://blog.alextiller.com/BlogRetrieve.aspx?BlogID=2729&PostID=58102