Another little Ditty on the GFSI

14 Feb 2013 2 Comments

by truthfarmer in Control, food, Food Destruction Agency, food safety, GMO's

The other day I posted something from a third party company working with the FSMA (Food Safety Modernization Act) relating to that and the GFSI. Today I came across this, complete with side commentary by the lovely Monsanto owned and operated Michael Taylor, Head of the FDA. I just thought there may be a few of you who might be interested in seeing the streamlining inherent in the consolidated, centralized, harmonized and standardized global food take over. The GFSI comes to you via the corporate control side. But Michael Taylor let’s us know, they are all working hand in hand:

GFSI Certification

A ticket to doing business in the global market

LISA LUPO | February 8, 2013

Global standards. Consistent audit schemes. Validated certifications. Across the food supply chain, the concepts are being increasingly discussed, tested, and required. It is a trend that is being reported in articles, white papers, and reports from around the world, such as the 2012 report from the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on global trends which stated, “Developed countries place growing importance on information and logistics technologies, and food safety and quality standards.” What is driving this trend? Are processors adopting global standards? And, if so, is it by choice or mandate? And, most importantly—What does this really mean to the industry?

To gain some perspective, we put the questions to a number of industry suppliers who focus on or work with audits, standards, and certifications on a daily basis.

All those who responded verified the trend, noting that they are seeing a definite increase in food manufacturers seeking certification, primarily that of Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) certification. The key drivers of the trend are major retailers and other next-level customers who are realizing a need for global consistency. And this is having a trickle-down effect, with an increase in the demand for certification in several food sectors, including packaging, storage and distribution, produce, and pre-farm gate, said Robert Prevendar, managing director of NSF International’s Global Supply Chain Food Safety programs. In many ways, he said, certification to GFSI-benchmarked standards is, in essence, becoming a ticket to do business in the global marketplace. (entire article here)

DOT Regs Targeting Horse Owners

14 Feb 2013 Leave a comment

by truthfarmer in Control Tags: Citations, DOT Regs, Horse Shows, Horses, Trailers

A few years ago there was a lot of noise about requiring farmers to obtain CDL’s to move their equipment. Since there was a huge public outcry, they “kind of” backed off on that. Now, it comes to light that there is a specific push to target hobbyists transporting their horses to events. If this keeps up, trail riding, fun shows, and saddle clubs are likely to be a thing of the past.

Please read and share this article below so that people become more aware of the constraints being placed upon them through the State Fed funding complex:

DOT Numbering Requirements

By Mary Cedeno

The Regulations are NOT new. They seem new because we simply went on our merry way before and never thought about them. But when our friends started getting pulled over and cited and told to get US Dept. of Transportation (USDOT) numbers, they kind of got our attention.

Blast from the past?

However, simply obtaining a DOT number is not where the difficulty lies. It is what comes AFTER that. Any commercial vehicle operating in interstate commerce, who obtains a USDOT number, is required to abide by the FMCSA Safety Regulations. This includes keeping a daily log book, certain safety training, vehicle inspections, annual log reviews, etc and so on…obviously meant for COMMERCIAL transporters. There are strict requirements for these log books, it’s not simply writing down your mileage from one place to the next. If you are interested in learning more about these regulations, you can stop at any truck stop and purchase the 661 page “Federal Motor Carrier Safety Regulations Pocketbook” for about $5. Oh, but don’t forget to grab the $2 (or so) “Official Deluxe Duplicate Copy DRIVER’S DAILY LOG” – because you’ll need that too if you get your USDOT number and intend to travel across state lines (even with your hobby race or show car).

Hobbyists, trailering their car, horse or boat to an event, are being stopped on the roads by enforcement officers all across the country and told they need a DOT number. The hobbyists are simply taking their hobby vehicle to a show or race event. They are on the road perhaps five or six times a year with their vehicles, in summer weather usually, and often towing some of their most valued possessions. To hold hobbyists to the same commercial standards as commercial transporters simply does not make sense. And the lawmakers obviously agreed – which is why they specifically wrote certain applicability requirements into the exceptions of the regulation. (full article here)

Drones for Our Safety…Yeah, right

01 Feb 2013 1 Comment

by truthfarmer in Agenda 21, Conspiracy, Control, Enforcement Tags: drones, livestock, poachers

NBC put out this story highlighting a possible new career for people who can’t afford the $20,000 cost of Obamacare for a family of four. Since they want up to 30,000 drones in the sky over the next decade, there is likely to be a boom in the drone flying job sector. Seems like the only area of employment growing in any way is the kind that spies on your neighbors for the Uber-ment.

If you sense a certain tone of discontentment in my writing, you get it. I’m sick to death of being surveilled, monitored and impeded from being able to PRODUCE by our government. It comes down to one thing, and one thing only: The consent of the governed. If we allow this to continue, we are giving our consent.

Here is the story from NBC, please note that they are intending to “monitor” livestock and catch “poachers” with this “civilian” surveillance.

Anticipating domestic boom, colleges rev up drone piloting programs

“Some of the schools that have permits have been flying unmanned aircrafts for decades; others, like Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio, received theirs recently to start programs to train future drone pilots.

Courtesy Randal Franzen

—Randal Franzen went from being unemployed to earning a six-figure salary as a drone flight operator in Afghanistan—

Alex Mirot, an assistant professor at Embry-Riddle who oversees the Unmanned Aircraft Systems Science program there, said this generation of students will pioneer how unmanned aircraft are used domestically, as the use of drones shifts from almost purely military to other applications.

“We make it clear from the beginning that we are civilian-focused,” said Mirot, a former Air Force pilot who remotely piloted Predator and Reaper drones used to target suspected terrorists in Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere for four years from a base in Nevada.

“We want them to think about how to apply this military hardware to civilian applications.”

Among the possible applications: Monitoring livestock and oil pipelines, spotting animal poachers, tracking down criminals fleeing crime scenes and delivering packages for UPS and FedEx.

With U.S. military involvement in Afghanistan winding down, drone manufacturers also are eager to find new markets. AeroVironment, a California company that specializes in small, unmanned aircrafts for the military, recently unveiled the Qube, a drone designed for law enforcement surveillance.” (read the entire story here)

USDA Cuts Foreign Meat Plant Inspections

30 Jan 2013 7 Comments

by truthfarmer in Consolidation, Control, Enforcement, USDA, WTO Tags: Food Safety, inspections, USDA

While the USDA works to destroy US cattle growers ability to profit from their labor, they make it easier for the general public to buy meat with NO inspection process at all- from foreign countries.

For those who don’t have a solid handle on this issue, I’ll give you a really brief run down. Since the 1950’s the USDA has been operating under the OECD plan of “get big or get out”. The percentage of US farms relative to the population has dramatically dwindled, and the complete failure of the USDA and the DOJ to enforce the competition and monopoly laws on the books allows for strong corporate control of the market. And because of reciprocal agreements between the States and the USDA, a person can’t raise their stock and sell directly to the public without USDA interference or oversight.

There are a million more issues related to this lack of access to market (not market access, defined as access to foreign markets), and I’ve covered a lot of them in the past, but for this morning, I would like you to see how concerned with REAL food safety the USDA is. It’s simple. They are not concerned.

While the USDA and the FDA ramp up their State sponsored terrorism on domestic farmers wishing to provide their communities with honest food, they allow fewer inspections of foreign plants and effectively let them “self inspect”.

Nice, isn’t it? You can’t buy a half a steer processed by your neighbor whom you can speak with, but you can buy hamburger with who knows what in it, and the USDA approves.

USDA cuts safety audits on imported meat

Dow Jones Newswires 01/25/2013 @ 2:08pm

The U.S. Department of Agriculture has cut the number of food safety audits it conducts on foreign countries that ship meat to the U.S. as part of an overhaul that the agency says will allow it to focus on the riskiest imports.

USDA officials are now only conducting audits of safety laws in meat-exporting countries at least once every three years instead of on a mandatory annual basis, the agency said Friday, a move that critics say could reduce the safety of imported meat.

Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D., Conn.), one of those critics, expressed alarm that USDA had already changed its audit system without informing Congress or the public.

The previous system that relied on annual audits was “imperative to ensuring that foreign regulatory systems provide the same level of protection of the public health as our domestic system,” Ms. DeLauro said, but now it seems that USDA “has been implementing and refining these changes for several years.”

The USDA said Friday in a submission to the U.S. Federal Register that it began making the transition “from an annual on-site audit to less frequent on-site audits” in 2009 and “now that the transition is fully in place, [USDA] is announcing it to the public.”

Countries with a history of food safety violations will get closer scrutiny under the new system, the USDA said.

“This performance-based approach allows [USDA] to direct its resources to foreign food regulatory systems that pose a greater risk to public health compared to others,” the USDA said. (read full story here)

Fines of $500 per Day for Garden

08 Jan 2013 Leave a comment

The issue brought forth in the following article is becoming entirely too commonplace. What better way to destroy a nation than to prevent the people from being able to feed themselves without governmental permission?

ORLANDO, Fla. –

A College Park couple’s vegetable garden is on the chopping block again after the city threatened fines if they don’t uproot it by Thursday, according to the Institute for Justice Florida Chapter.

Jason and Jennifer Helvenston are launching “Plant a Seed, Change the Law,” a protest of Orlando’s law, which they say violates their constitutional right to peacefully use their property to grow their own food.

In November, Local 6 broke the story about the controversial garden after the city told the Helvenstons their 25-by-25-foot front yard vegetable garden was not in compliance with the city’s code.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdnf8j8NZ9E

After hundreds of emails supporting the couple flowed in and initially allowing the Helvenstons to keep their garden, saying it will hold off on violations, the city has since asked the couple to uproot the garden and replace it with a lawn or face fines.

“The greatest freedom you can give someone is the freedom to know they will not go hungry,” said Jason Helvenston. “Our Patriot Garden pays for all of its costs in healthy food and lifestyle while having the lowest possible carbon footprint. It supplies valuable food while being attractive. I really do not understand why there is even a discussion. They will take our house before they take our Patriot Garden.”

According to Ari Bargil, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, the Helvenstons have a scheduled inspection and will be fined starting on Thursday, up to $500 a day….(Read the full story and see more links here)

Evidently, the public pressure was sufficient and the City backed down a bit:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uyn7URfKCXM

Video by truthfarmer

Manipulation of Commodities

07 Jan 2013 2 Comments

by truthfarmer in Consolidation, Control Tags: commoditiies manipulation, JP Morgan

This article deals specifically with copper, however, this tactic can readily apply to all commodities, including food. Talk about an artificial economy! Not only do we trade real labor for fake money to pay fraudulent taxes on stuff we don’t own, supply and demand is fully manipulated. Seems to me that since we are running of what Yah refers to as an abomination of unjust weights and measures, we can expect some rather serious (ahem) market corrections.

Monday, January 7, 2013

SEC Gives JP Morgan and Other Big Banks License to Manipulate Commodities

An SEC action that appears likely to do considerable harm to companies and individuals in the US and abroad appears to have gone completely unnoticed, save for an important piece in The New Republic by Linda Khan.

Heretofore, as Kahn describes, the main participants in physical commodities markets ex precious metals have been end users. While there have been reports of metals hoarding in China, it’s not easy for most investors to do since they are bulky. (Oil is a special case, since producers can speculate simply by “inventorying” oil by keeping it in the ground; above ground storage is limited and not as “efficacious” in the words of oil investor Dan Dicker, as one might think. The picture is oil is further complicated by the fact that the prices for OPEC oil are based on an average of futures prices, not spot prices, which producers found were subject to manipulation).

The SEC has paved the way for investors to take a direct stake in commodities, rather than through commodities futures. The agency gave the green light to JP Morgan to launch a fund whose shares would be backed by warehoused copper. The implications are not pretty. Per Khan:

In practical terms, the SEC handed traders at J.P. Morgan control over 20 to 30 percent of the copper available for immediate delivery from the London Metals Exchange — the commercial market where companies that use copper go to procure last-minute supplies.

The investors purchasing shares in J.P. Morgan’s fund won’t be buying copper to use, but to store. The intricacies of the fund are complex, but its underlying rationale is straightforward: the more shares investors buy, the more copper is taken off the market. And the more copper that is taken off the market, theoretically the more valuable the copper and the shares become.

Moreover, it’s a no-brainer that this JP Morgan “innovation” will lead to the creation of copycat fund in other markets, most troublingly those for agricultural products.

The SEC asserts that its own study showed that changes in inventory levels at the LME did not have a price impact. That’s just barmy. The question regarding the LME would be to define what a normal level of inventory would be (a certain level is necessary to handle routine transactions); amounts in excess of this buffer level would be seen by economists as proof that prices were above the true market clearing price unless you had a good explanation as to why not. Not surprisingly, experts pooh-poohed the SEC analysis:

….companies that use copper strongly oppose the new fund, and argue that allowing investors to hoard the metal will lead to supply shortages, create substantial price volatility, and distort the market. “The implications of this practice would be grave for our companies, our industry, and, indeed, for the U.S. economy,” a group of copper users wrote to the SEC in August…

Public interest groups and academics also criticized the methodology the SEC used to justify its decision. John Parsons, a financial economist and lecturer at MIT, said the SEC failed to consider how the copper market actually works. “Just as the SEC staff did in the Madoff case, it carefully asks the wrong questions and thereby comes to easy answers,” he wrote.

The SEC is undermining provisions in Dodd Frank calling for the CFTC to rein in undue speculation in critical commodities. Readers may recall that commodities prices moved up in a coordinated manner in 2008. It looked like a speculative bubble, and was, since prices collapsed in the second half of the year (we were pretty sure that oil was a bubble, and called it and even traded it well; there was similar behavior in other commodities, but bad harvests and ethanol subsidies made the price rises arguably influenced by fundamentals in the grains complex). Seasoned regulators are aghast:

“Allowing investors to speculate in the futures market created horrific price volatility,” said Michael Greenberger, a law professor at the University of Maryland and former director at the CFTC. “Here, you’re allowing investors to intervene with physical supplies. We’ll see a double whammy.”

Like it or not, the SEC has created a real world experiment. BlackRock has petitioned the agency to launch its own copper fund, one that would be twice as large as JPM’s and will get an answer by February 22. Given that its proposal is identical to JPM’s, it is well nigh certain to be waved through. If the nay sayers are correct, that hoarding by investors will drive prices up, we should see the impact (although the mere announcement of the JPM approval, particularly in light of the pending BlackRock application, may have led speculators to bid up prices in anticipation of the funds’ launch. That too should be measurable). But if the next few months proves the SEC analysis to be wrong, you can bet the agency won’t admit its error and halt the creation of more funds. If these concerns are borne out, we can only hope that real economy players put pressure on Congress to shut this toxic innovation down.

Cat Fight in Key West

24 Dec 2012 Leave a comment

by truthfarmer in Control, Uncategorized

Key West is somewhat well known for the six-toed Hemingway cats that abound on Hemingway’s old property there. The USDA has managed to win a court battle giving them jurisdiction over the cats and the museum that was Hemingway’s residence there through the Animal Welfare Act. Now the museum is an “exhibitor” of these cats and subject to the rather onerous control of the USDA regarding their cats.

Where the museum messed up, in my opinion, was by registering the cats with the USDA and by applying for licenses…..This solidly puts them under the USDA’s jurisdiction.

This is a great article explaining the issues and outcomes involved in the Hemingway cat fiasco. Please read it and share it with people.

Cat Fight

“Michael A. Morawski, chief executive of the iconic Hemingway Home & Museum in Key West, Florida, has spent nearly 10 years and hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees fighting the feds – all to stop them from regulating the 43 resident cats that roam the museum’s grounds to the amusement of visitors. His dealings with the United States Department of Agriculture – in meetings, administrative hearings, and the courts – ended earlier this month at the Atlanta-based United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh District.
He lost his appeal…..

The USDA contended Congress gave it – not Florida or Key West — the ultimate say regarding the cats under the Commerce Clause and Animal Welfare Act of 1966. Although the appeals court agreed, its sympathies were with Morawski and his cats. “Notwithstanding our holding, we appreciate the museum’s somewhat unique situation, and we sympathize with its frustration,” Chief Judge Joel Fredrick Dubina wrote earlier this month for the Atlanta-based Eleventh Circuit in his 13-page ruling. “Nevertheless, it is not the court’s role to evaluate the wisdom of federal regulations implemented according to the powers constitutionally vested in Congress.”
“I’m still dumbfound. This is overreach by the federal government,” said Morawski, during an interview this week with American Thinker. Morawski said he ran up $500,000 to $600,000 in legal fees over most of the decade in his futile efforts to get the feds off his back and force it out of the cat-regulating business.”

(Read full article here)

Better Not Get Caught With Your Pantry Down

11 Dec 2012 Leave a comment

by truthfarmer in Control, farm loss, food shortage

This year has been an amazingly stressful one on all levels of agriculture. The other day I was looking into stats, and according to the USDA, a whopping 4/10ths of 1 % of the population gets the vast majority of their food directly from the farmer. Now, USDA statistics and their reliability aside, it is obvious to anyone who looks that not very many Americans are engaged in direct trade with their farmers for any significant amount of their food purchases. Since that is the way it is, whether I like it or not, the effects on our ability to simply feed our families anything remotely decent is going to be heavily impacted by the dismal corn, soy and wheat harvests….and the winter wheat planting.

Funny enough, the USDA says that we only lost about 13% of the corn crop. Never mind that farmers report more like 40%. And the EPA kept their mandate to require 37% of the corn harvest be used to make ethanol to put in our cars so they don’t run very well. Since I could go on for hours about the corn controls and foolishness, I will just stop now and ask that you read the following article and decide for yourself if there is any chance that the “abundance” we are so accustomed to in this country may not go on into perpetuity.

Driest six months since 1895 damaging wheat in Great Plains

Oklahoma is among states that recorded their driest May-to-October period in at least 118 years. STEPHEN PINGRY/Tulsa World file

By JEFF WILSON Bloomberg News

Published: 11/28/2012 1:55 AM
Last Modified: 11/28/2012 4:09 AM

The states of Oklahoma, Kansas and Nebraska had their driest May-to-October period in at least 118 years, increasing stress on winter-wheat crops planted during the last two months, according to T-Storm Weather LLC.

Rainfall in the three states, which produced 59 percent of U.S. hard, red winter wheat last year, was 8.6 inches below the average since records began in 1895, Mike Tannura, T-Storm’s president, said in the report Tuesday. That’s worse than the dry spells in 1952, 1956, 1934 and 1939.

The six months ending Nov. 30 also are set to be the driest for that period, and the drought probably will expand, Tannura said.

Wheat futures in Chicago have surged 51 percent in the past year as the worst U.S. drought since 1956 damaged crops and eroded soil moisture. The condition of the winter-wheat crop, which goes dormant in the coldest months and then resumes growth in March or April, is the worst since at least 1985, the U.S. Department of Agriculture reported Monday.

“A lot of fields are partially emerged, and even if we got rain right now we would be lucky to get half a crop,” Jeff Edwards, an agronomist at Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, said in an interview Monday. “A lot of farmers are comparing this drought to the 1950s. It looks rough.”

As of Nov. 25, 33 percent of the winter wheat was in good or excellent condition, down from 34 percent last week and 52 percent a year earlier, USDA data show. About 26 percent was in poor or very poor condition, compared with 13 percent a year earlier.

Plant emergence in the 18 top-producing states was 88 percent, compared with 91 percent a year earlier.

About 56 percent of the six High Plains states from Kansas to North Dakota was in extreme or exceptional drought as of Nov. 20, up from 6.3 percent a year earlier, government data show. In addition, weather damage led to smaller harvests in Russia, Ukraine, Australia and Europe, reducing global production by 6.4 percent this year to a five-year year low.

Wheat is the fourth-largest U.S. crop, valued at $14.4 billion in 2011 behind corn, soybeans and hay, government data show.

What We Have to Look Forward to under S510

30 Nov 2010 Leave a comment

by truthfarmer in Control, Food Destruction Agency

The following article illustrates what will be happening at an ever more alarming rate with food as the Food Destruction Agency (FDA) receives more authority under Senate Bill 510 which passed today in a slam dunk fashion……These are real people with real lives, not some Hollywood screenplay. The destruction of livelihood has serious effects. Don’t delude yourself. This can happen to you, too. Especially if you have products that actually are healthful. We cannot prosper under this regime.

Daniel Chapter One Bound and Gagged

By: Tricia Feijo

Source: Liberty News Radio

11/29/2010

We cannot believe that the Federal judges who ordered Daniel Chapter One to comply with the FTC Order have read it, let alone studied the case. The FTC Order is an egregious afront to our unalienable rights under God as protected by the U.S. Constitution.

The Order goes way beyond advertising/marketing, and infringes on our right to free speech in any realm. THIS IS HIGHLY UN-NATURAL. Imagine a friend asks a question of you, to which you have the answer, but you must say “I am not allowed to tell you.” (What country are we in?!) The Lord gave us a healing ministry which we have devoted ourselves to for 27 years, and the U.S. Federal government has recently ordered us to stop.

Daniel Chapter One has never been charged with or found guilty of lying or harming anyone. We have helped thousands. All our information is true. The FTC does not contest that.

BUT THE FTC LIE, CHEAT, and STEAL! These are the facts:

1. LIES: The FTC made up statements and placed them in quotation marks, for example “7 Herb Formula cXXXX cXXXXX” (we are forbidden to use those last 2 words). Then they charged Daniel Chapter One with making the statements.

When we explained that we never said such a thing, the FTC said we “implied” it. All because of true testimonies, and structure/function information truthfully shared. (Jesus tells an account of a blind man healed after mud was applied to his eyes. The FTC would charge Jesus with implying “mud cures blindness.” Come to think of it, they did order Jesus to stop.)

The FTC said in a legal brief to the judges that Daniel Chapter One had “11 witnesses testify” at the hearing. A bold lie. They blocked all but a few of the people who came to Washington DC to testify. After the first day declaring that Daniel Chapter One is indeed a ministry, besides Jim and Tricia, Daniel Chapter One had only 3 witnesses (ARN general manager and 2 experts).

The FTC said “all” Daniel Chapter One had to do was state that we had not done clinical trials on our products and use stronger disclaimers. Judge Ginsburg asked, “Is that all?” FTC lawyer Daly then replied, “it would be a start.” Then that is not “all”, is it. . .

2. CHEAT: The FTC design things so that they cannot lose, no matter how unjust. First they held a hearing in a mock-court, a Star Chamber, with FTC lawyers, an FTC judge, and FTC Commissioners.

The FTC held Daniel Chapter One dietary supplements to the FDA standard for chemical drugs, demanding double-blind placebo-controlled studies. This is an impossible obstacle, an unfair advantage they are fully aware of. One such study can cost $100 million dollars.

The FTC pretend that “reasonable consumers” think a dietary supplement has been put through such clinical trials. They protest testimonials, although there is NO LAW against true testimonials, nor is there any law saying that an herbal or nutritional supplement or food must go through double-blind placebo-controlled studies.

3. STEAL: Under the false pretense of protecting you, the FTC says that “consumers” cannot know the difference between placebo or a product that “really works”. Thus they take it upon themselves to rob you of your right to information, your right to choice, your right to decide for yourself what you take in times of sickness and in health.

And with that the FTC and the Pharmaceutical companies are laughing all the way to the bank.

Truth Farmer