31 | August | 2010 | The PPJ Gazette

Take Action Now! Oppose S. 510 The “Food Safety Modernization Act”

August 31, 2010

This Modernization Will NOT Provide REAL Food Safety!!!! Senate Bill S510, the dangerous and misleading Food Safety Modernization Act, is getting close to a vote on the heels of the half-million egg recall from the industrial food supply chain. Act NOW!!!

NHFA urges you to immediately write your Senators and oppose S. 510. Click here to write your Senator NOW! 1. NHFA opposes S 510 because:

►It is a dangerously broad regulatory bill giving extensive discretionary power to the FDA over the entire food supply chain without proper checks and balances to avoid abuse of power;

►It would impose one-size-fits-all-regulations on thousands of small and mid-sized farmers, small-scale local farms and food producers, and would drastically burden, to extinction, basic natural and organic food suppliers, thus endangering the lives of Americans who depend on local wholesome foods;

►It does not reflect a well-thought-out solution, or address the real causes of food safety issues stemming from the industrialized food supply chain; and More

Live Link: Zester Daily

By Terra Brockman | Monday, 23 August 2010

I was a teenage beekeeper. And a geeky one at that.

Wayne Field sells honey in Chenoa, Ill.

I knew that one bee, in her brief lifetime, collected nectar enough for only a half teaspoon of finished honey. I knew that she and her sisters together flew more than 50,000 miles, dropping in on about 2 million flowers to produce just one of the one-pound glass jars that I filled with glowing liquid amber at midsummer and again in late autumn. And I loved reading about bee behavior as much as I loved inhaling the distilled essence of summer in freshly extracted honey.

And so, even though I had long ago hung up my bee veil near a stack of old hive parts, I was distressed to learn that the tale of honey has recently become more sticky than sweet.

On the global front, there’s been a lot of buzz about “honey laundering.” This accurate neologism refers to the way in which millions of pounds of Chinese honey have been making their way into the United States labeled as originating from other countries, and often contaminated with the banned antibiotic chloramphenicol, which can cause fatal aplastic anemia. More