The Democratic Party is increasingly a party of urban voters with little to no understanding of rural America. This contributes to a lack of knowledge on the pervisity of our nation's agricultural policies I have encountered many people who have a zeal for government regulation as an inherent good, no matter the circumstances of the situation. Far too often, Democrats allow themselves to be defined as "not Republicans" and focus more on rhetoric than record. If the Republicans call themselves supporters of the free market, the knee-jerk Democratic response is to attack the free market. Only a few Democrats have brought attention to the disconnect between the free market rhetoric of the Republican Party and their statist voting record, particularly in the area of agriculture. Congressman Barney Frank is one such Democrat; while debating an amendment that would cut sugar subsidies he was forced to lecture House Republicans about the principles of the free market. (Continued below)
Mr. Chairman, I am here to confess my reading incomprehension. I have listened to many of my conservative friends talk about the wonders of the free market, of the importance of letting the consumers make their best choices, of keeping government out of economic activity, of the virtues of free trade, but then I look at various agricultural programs like this one. Now, it violates every principle of free market economics known to man and two or three not yet discovered.
So I have been forced to conclude that in all of those great free market texts by Ludwig von Mises, Friedrich Hayek and all the others that there is a footnote that says, by the way, none of this applies to agriculture. Now, it may be written in high German, and that may be why I have not been able to discern it, but there is no greater contrast in America today than between the free enterprise rhetoric of so many conservatives and the statist, subsidized, inflationary, protectionist, anti-consumer agricultural policies, and this is one of them.
Every Democrat, and there were 134 of them, that opposed the amendment supported by Barney Frank and Earl Blumenauer should be ashamed of themselves for siding with big agribusiness against the American consumer. I take seriously the proposition that the Democratic Party should stand up for the little guy. Because of that, I think that we need to take aim at our current agricultural policies.
I can imagine already the screams of protest from out of touch urban voters who cling to a naive idea that the USDA is protecting consumers. In reality, few urban politicians care at all about agricultural policies and because of this agribusiness has been given a free hand to write its own rules and regulations. Some regulation, specifically requirements that consumers are informed about products, are good. But at both the national level and the state level, our nation's food and agricultural policies are not benefiting average Americans.
Just today, we find out that one of the greatest threats to America after Al-Qaeda is raw milk sold by an Amish farmers in Ohio. This isn't a situation in which someone was selling raw milk without informing the consumer. There is a growing market of consumers interested in raw milk because of possible health benefits. Yet instead of allowing the sale of raw milk, as done in Pennsylvania, the state of Ohio believes that consumers shouldn't be free to make their own decisions.
Fighting attempts to inform consumers has long been the strategy of the USDA and agribusiness. Country of origin labeling for agricultural goods was bitterly opposed by the USDA, despite manufactured goods having such labels. The 2002 farm bill included such a requirement, but implimentation has been delayed. Much to the dismay of consumers, the USDA also continues to oppose requirements for labeling genetically modified organisms. The message from the USDA? Just trust us.
But don't trust anyone else. That was the message from the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (part of the Treasury Department, but it will be included in my discussion of food politics) when wineries wanted to have information about the health benefits of moderate drinking of wine on their labels. Minor victories have been won on this issue, but the phobia with which the government treats alcohol is a flash back to the Prohibition Era.
But certainly there's no panic over other foods, such as cherries? Think again. The FDA is going after cherry growers for publicizing health benefits from cherries from peer-reviewed scientific journals. The degree that the FDA actually keeps information away from the public is alarming and must be stopped. I encourage you to contact your Congressman and ask them to support the Health Freedom Protection Act (HR 4282). Too many co-sponsors right now are Republicans, with only a handful of Democrats like Peter DeFazio and Lynn Woosley signed on as co-sponsors.
If you need another example of how the government fails to protect consumers, look at this lawsuit by one meatpacker who wants to test his beef for mad cow disease and is opposed by the USDA. Yes, that's right, the USDA is opposed to allowing individual meatpackers to test their meat for mad cow disease.
One of the biggest problems with our agricultural policies in America is the way that it is ruining the family farm and small business through excessive regulation. The National Animal Identification System (NAIS) is one such example. This huge national ID system for farm animals is an added burden to the family farm as they would bear the burden of paying for the tags and registration. Corporate factory farms, where the animals are stuffed into inhumane conditions, would only need one such ID number for the entire group of animals, not each individual. This program will tilt the playing field even more in favor of factory farms.
I strongly suggest the book "The Omnivore's Dilemma" by Michael Pollan for insight on how our government is able to influence our diet. Pollan's book is extensive in its coverage of ways in which the government has adopted policies that favor the concentration of the food industry in the hands of big business. He mentions everything from large scale programs that encourage the overproduction of corn (harmful both to American diets and the livelihood of Third World farmers) to absurd regulations like the requirement that every meat processing facility have a bathroom for the exclusive use of the USDA inspector.
One of the heros of the book is Joel Salatin, a farmer from Virginia, who is doing his best to maintain the tradition of the family farm despite the opposition of the agribusiness establishment and its puppet the USDA. The biggest problem facing his enterprise is that everything he wants to do is illegal.
I want to dress my beef and pork on the farm where I've coddled and raised it. But zoning laws prohibit slaughterhouses on agricultural land. For crying out loud, what makes more holistic sense than to put abattoirs where the animals are? But no, in the wisdom of Western disconnected thinking, abattoirs are massive centralized facilities visited daily by a steady stream of tractor trailers and illegal alien workers.
But what about dressing a couple of animals a year in the backyard? How can that be compared to a ConAgra or Tyson facility? In the eyes of the government, the two are one and the same. Every T-bone steak has to be wrapped in a half-million dollar facility so that it can be sold to your neighbor. The fact that I can do it on my own farm more cleanly, more responsibly, more humanely, more efficiently, and in a more environmentally friendly manner doesn't matter to the government agents who walk around with big badges on their jackets and wheelbarrow-sized regulations tucked under their arms.
OK, so I take my animals and load them onto a trailer for the first time in their life to send them up the already clogged interstate to the abattoir to await their appointed hour with a shed full of animals of dubious extraction. They are dressed by people wearing long coats with deep pockets with whom I cannot even communicate. The carcasses hang in a cooler alongside others that were not similarly cared for in life. After the animals are processed, I return to the facility hoping to retrieve my meat.
When I return home to sell these delectable packages, the county zoning ordinance says that this is a manufactured product because it exited the farm and was reimported as a value added product, thereby throwing our farm into the Wal-Mart category, another prohibition in agricultural areas. Just so you understand this, remember that an on farm abattoir was illegal, so I took the animals to a legal abattoir, but now the selling of said products in an on-farm store is illegal.
The time for revolutionary change is now. The growth of organic farming and localized food chains through Community Supported Agriculture is being blocked by excessive regulation created by fearful agribusiness. The freedom of food, the right to buy the food you want where you want from the person you want, should be the radical principle that Democrats of the future build their agricultural policies on.
In a free market factory farms would no longer be able to depend on cheap subsidized corn. Family farms and small businesses would no longer face the burden of excessive regulation. This level playing field would almost certainly produce a renaissance in small, localized food networks. In a democratic society we would uphold the right of consumers to be informed about the products they buy, but respect their decisions instead of allowing the government to make them. If you are pro-choice on abortion because you don't want the government to make medical decisions, why are you comfortable allowing the government to make your dietary decisions?