Along with poetry, personal complaints about service at a restaurant or gas station, and 3,000-word discourses on the Illuminati, the newspaper also gets a fair amount of astroturf—i.e., fake grassroots stuff. At present there is a campaign afoot regarding HR 2749, concerning regulation of the food supply.

At least some organic and other small farmers suggest the bill would be a disaster for their way of life. Maybe that’s just paranoia run rampant. Or maybe they’re right: Consider the largely liberal, countercultural artisanal toy makers who found themselves making common cause with right-wing congressmen and free-market interest groups after the Chinese toy scare led to new regulations on the manufacture of children’s toys—detailed in the excellent Reason magazine article, Dangerous Toys, Strange Bedfellows a couple months ago.

But I digress.

The small farm movement has launched a letter-writing campaign, which has led to a ton of letters like this one:

Sadey this well intended bill is a disaster for small farms and does not address the fact that agribusiness farms are at the heart of compromising food safety and yet they are not the ones who will be over regulated by this bill.

I urge you to stop this nonesense of trying to regulate at a federal level a matter that is best suited for State management.

Small local organic farms will be what feeds this nation as oil peaks and people are now demanding, in ever greater numbers, food from these safe clean sources.  This bill as an attempt to over regulate small farms and is government regulation at it’s worst.

And that’s it. The letter never says what “this bill” refers to. It doesn’t identify the “you” who is supposed to “stop this nonsense.“ If you read that in the paper, you’d have no idea what the heck the writer was talking about. 

In most cases, letters like that are generated by websites where someone has read about an issue and been urged to write a letter about it. They dash off a few lines about whatever it is they have just read in a template and hit send to direct the letter simultaneously to members of Congress, an advocacy group’s petition, and multiple media outlets. Sort of like what you can do here.

Sometimes, people will ask, “Why the heck did you run such-and-such a letter?“ Sometimes, the answer is: Well, it was better than the alternative. . .

Radio,

I said come from a “big plant” meaning a processing plant, not a giant vegetable.

My example used “meat” as the example but could have just as easily mentioned vegetables (remember the spinach scare), as feces can get on and so contaminate both meat and vegetables.

You are right that feces is a problem. If your point then is that a small family farm won’t allow that to happen and won’t allow wobbly cows to walk around sick, or eat cannibalized cow brains. that’s a good point.

This might be a good time to insert a plug for family farms and farmer’s markets. There are several in this area that are quite good.

E. coli does not ‘come from’ plants. They are a constituent of feces. Your own turds are loaded with those little suckers—I mean loaded with ‘em.  So that letter writer should be angry that some farmers layer their crops with sh*t.

Even Bill (a classic D-student in Biology) knows this & can verify what I’m saying.

The problem with one of these long impassioned heartfelt rants and screeds was mentioned briefly or as Bart likes to say, “glossed over” by Bart.

Namely, I’ve never heard of this bill and I have no good idea what the pros and cons are; I need facts. Instead, Roger’s link gave me a heaping helping of attitude and raw emotion.

For instance, the letter writer says E Coli comes from those big agribusiness plants. Not so fast. It can come from a family business too. Just that if it comes from a big plant there are many illnesses and deaths and a smoking gun to be traced back. If only 200 people get meat and only one or two get seriously ill no one even knows about it.  The E Coli is there, just not in numbers that will leave a cookie crumb trail back to the problem.

This kneejerk emotional type of letter is a great way to stir up folks already simmering over perceived or imaginary slights from the FDA or agribusiness but it is a poor way to educate someone about the pros and cons of pending legislation.

This small farmer may have a good argument but I don’t feel I have enough info one way or another.  How big is his farm. What should be the dividing line, the cutoff, between big agribusiness and small farms ? Roger is right that family farms will never go out of business but they could get over or under regulated.

stoogebob,

Instead of waiting for someone you don’t like to post so you can reflexively disagree with them, why not do a little research and put forth an informed opinion?

It took me 3 minutes to find this.

http://www.westonaprice.org/farming/small_farms.html

It would seem that this is right down your alley.

I rememeber reading something about this after the GREAT SPINACH SCARE…or was it the GREAT JALAPENO SCARE…or the GREAT PEANUT SCARE…or maybe the GREAT SWINE FLU SCARE…anyway, it seems the FDA was proposing regulations, lobbied for by mega farms like ADM and Birdseye…to apply draconian restrictions on people who grow and sell produce at the corner stand.

Read the article I linked to. You’ll be surprised how good actual knowlege and information pulsing thru your knot of a head can feel.

And BTW…do the idiot bureaucrats actually think they’re going to stop people from growing veggies and selling them to neighbors? Good grief.

“Sometimes, people will ask, ‘Why the heck did you run such-and-such a letter?‘ Sometimes, the answer is: Well, it was better than the alternative. . .“

It was intresing what it is said about the Food and drug Administration (FDA) being too powerful and out of control.
A few months ago, critics of the FDA were saying it lacked enforcement powers over vegetable products from Mexico that were tainted with e coli. And then there was the Georgia meat plant that was uninspected. Plus, everyday, there is a controversy over some drug, slow drug approvals, drug approvals that are too fast,charges that drug companies are too powerful and have too much influnce on FDA
practices.
  I also find their assertion that organic farmers will dominate the market a bit speculative.
  Plus, what is their definition of what constitutes a small farm ? And a corporate farmer, since many farms are incorporated as a business neccesity regardless of size.
  And of course, I am waiting for one of the extreme cons to start posting here that Obama is behind this. He is tring to collectivize farming. What is needed is a Green Militia making common cause with the patrons of Mortons Gun Toting Steak House and gun Show in a united Front to secede from the union.
  It has to be a conspiracy.

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