This is SO wrong and so SICK on so many levels. Astounding!
I was shocked to learn from a friend on the weekend that a new Food Bill
is being brought in here in New Zealand. The new bill will make it a
privilege and not a right to grow food.
I find two aspects of
this bill alarming. The first is the scope and impact the new bill has,
and secondly that it has all happened so quietly. There has been VERY
little media coverage, on a bill which promises to jeopardise the future
food security of the country.
I read that the bill is being
brought in because of the WTO, which of course has the US FDA behind it,
and of course that is influenced by big business (Monsanto and other
players). It looks like this NZ food bill will pave the way to reduce
the plant diversity and small owner operations in New Zealand, for
example by way of controlling the legality of seed saving and
trading/barter/giving away; all will be potentially illegal. The best
website to read about the problems with the new bill is [link to nzfoodsecurity.org] (I have no connection with this website)
Here are some snippets:
- It turns a human right (to grow food and share it) into a government-authorised privilege that can be summarily revoked.
-
It makes it illegal to distribute “food” without authorisation, and it
defines “food” in such a way that it includes nutrients, seeds, natural
medicines, essential minerals and drinks (including water).
- By
controlling seeds, the bill takes the power to grow food away from the
public and puts it in the hands of seed companies. That power may be
abused.
- Growing food for distribution must be authorised, even for “cottage industries”, and such authorisation can be denied.
-
Under the Food Bill, Police acting as Food Safety Officers can raid
premises without a warrant, using all equipment they deem necessary –
including guns (Clause 265 – 1).
- Members of the private sector
can also be Food Safety Officers, as at Clause 243. So Monsanto
employees can raid premises – including marae – backed up by armed
police.
- The Bill gives Food Safety Officers immunity from criminal and civil prosecution.
-
The Government has created this bill to keep in line with its World
Trade Organisation obligations under an international scheme called
Codex Alimentarius (“Food Book”). So it has to pass this bill in one
form or another.
- The bill would undermine the efforts of many people to become more self-sufficient within their local communities.
-
Seed banks and seed-sharing networks could be shut down if they could
not obtain authorisation. Loss of seed variety would make it more
difficult to grow one’s own food.
- Home-grown food and some or
all seed could not be bartered on a scale or frequency necessary to feed
people in communities where commercially available food has become
unaffordable or unavailable (for example due to economic collapse).
-
Restrictions on the trade of food and seed would quickly lead to the
permanent loss of heirloom strains, as well as a general lowering of
plant diversity in agriculture.
- Organic producers of heirloom
foods could lose market share to big-money agribusiness outfits, leading
to an increase in the consumption of nutrient-poor and GE foods.
…
The
key factor is seeds. In many cases they specifically are food, of
course. Grain seed, seed potatoes, rice, maize, quinoa, many staples etc
etc – as the bill stands all these will explicitly be controlled
substances, with similar penalties for possession as drugs.
This
being so, the unenforceability of prohibiting people from growing food
for local distribution becomes a moot point. No good seeds means no good
food (if any food at all) to distribute.
One of the few
newspaper articles that I’ve seen, highlighting some of the problems
with the bill. This from the Timaru Herald newspaper
URL [link to www.stuff.co.nz]
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