Waxman at it Again

This gives me a headache.

Henry Waxman’s bill, HR 2749, would give the U.S. Food and Drug Administration the authority to regulate all of America’s farms and the produce from our farms with a “Rube Goldberg” system of huge buffers, drained wetlands, bulldozed trees (to prevent the possibility of bird droppings) and fields lined with poison-filled tubes to kill rodents.

That’s not all. Children under age five “will be prohibited from setting foot on farmland or tilled soil for fear of leaking diapers,” according to an analysis of the proposed legislation by journalist Paul Williams. And if a crow should be so bold as to land in a cornfield, the whole crop would have to be destroyed, under the radical provisions of Waxman’s bill.

The stated purpose of Waxman’s bill is to rid farms of the food-borne, lethal bacteria, e. Coli.O157:H7, one of many strains of bacterium that cause food-borne illness.

Why all this trouble for legislation that no one – least of all America’s farmers – actually needs? Call it the lure of the organic. The congressional district Waxman represents is populated by affluent and liberal constituents, who may never have seen a farm but who fervently preach the virtues of organic produce. Upscale grocery stores, their shelves loaded with imported delicacies and plenty of organic foods, abound in Waxman-land.

Indeed, the kinds of restrictions that Waxman has in mind for the country’s farmers are already the norm in California. The San Francisco Chronicle article recently reported how crops and ponds are being destroyed in a quest for safety of foods. One Salinas Valley, California, farmer, Dick Peixoto, was quoted as saying: “I was driving by a field where a squirrel fed off the end of the field, and so 30 feet in we had to destroy the crop (and) one field where a deer just walked through, we had to take out 30 feet on each side of his tracks.”

And California is bankrupt? How so?

Brilliant. This is all our faltering economy needs right now. "Cap and Tax Waxman" will not be satisfied until the wiping of our butts is federally regulated.

Where is my Ibuprofen?

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