Not. Again. CPSIA for Family Farms

Do you know how most of our grand-grandparents weathered the depression? Tiny acts of micro-economics. They took in boarders. They sold baked goods made in their own untested, unregulated, unapproved kitchens. They sold sandwiches made at home to the people at the office. They sold home-grown and home-canned produce. They cut hair for the neighbors on their front porches in return for help enclosing a back porch to make a bedroom they could rent out. They sold things they made, clothing, toys, furniture. They sold services, carpentry, window repair, electric wiring. They bought and sold small, unregulated products and services from their homes, their hands, their back-yards. They sold used items to people, pawned kids clothes,

Pretty much every single option they had available is being blocked at every turn by overbearing, over-reactions from Congress and other petty bureaucrats determined to micro-manage every aspect of our lives. They learned nothing from the unintended consequences of CPSIA, because they are trying the exact same thing now, only worse, with farmer's markets:

The Food Safety Modernization Act, as currently drafted, will ruin most of the farmer’s markets in America.

Without going into a detailed textual analysis (click the link above), the FSMA requires all “food establishments,” which means anyone selling or storing food of any type for transmission to third parties via the act of commerce, to register with a new Food Safety Administration, to keep copious records of sales and shipment by lot and label, to subject themselves to at least annual inspections by FSA inspectors, and to provide detailed handling instructions for safe processing of food. That may work for Nabisco and the people who supply McDonald’s, but it’s probably not going to work at, for instance, the farmer’s market I visit without fail every weekend beginning in late March. The place is infested with hippies and rustic sorts who couldn’t fill out a spreadsheet and can’t afford legal advice on how to farm, but know a thing or two about growing good peppers.

Nor are the more detailed recordkeeping and lab testing requirements, and the monthly inspections, to be required of farmers’ markets which offer delicacies such as bacon or cheese, both of which I purchase at my own farmers’ market because I trust the farmers involved, and because I won’t give up absolutely fresh tomatoes even if I’m not assured they were audited by the government.

More from Patrick at Popehat, who says:

You, you sniveling worms, with your relentless insistence on safety, absence of risk, and your belief that if the government only had more power, over everything, somehow you would not die.

Well you are going to die, and you deserve it, because you elected a government that drafts bills like the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, or as Radley Balko called it via twitter, the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act of Food.

You can bury your local Farmer's Market and mine beneath a murderous pile of paperwork, and you can slay your local CSA with the blunt instrument of the heavy hand of government holding two tons of regulations, and it will not keep you safe.

Nobody benefits when Grandma Mary or the local hippie couple, neither of whom have ever used a harmful chemical in their gardens, cannot sell their garden produce. Nobody is helped when I can't go to the you-pick apple orchard up the road a piece, or the berry farm up the other road another piece, and pick fruit for my family at half the grocery store price. It will only make us all more impoverished,less healthy, and results in a blander market as we reduce a lively and interesting diversity of food in the market place and squelch local commerce, and that growing green movement to eat local.

I would believe these consequences were 'unintended' if I didn't see the same consequences from government action over and over again.

Here are the guilty parties attempting to perpetrate this further act of theft and control on the gullible public:
Ms. DELAURO, Ms. ESHOO, Ms. DEGETTE, Ms. SCHAKOWSKY, Mr. ENGEL, Ms. CASTOR of Florida, Mr. MURPHY of Connecticut, Ms. SUTTON, Mrs. LOWEY, Ms. SLAUGHTER, Mr. HINCHEY, Mr. MCGOVERN, Ms. WASSERMAN SCHULTZ, Ms. HIRONO, Mr. GRIJALVA, Mr. SCHAUER, Mr. NADLER of New York, Mr. BISHOP of New York, Ms. LINDA T. SANCHEZ of California, Mr. MCDERMOTT, Mr. RYAN of Ohio, Ms. GIFFORDS, Mr. FILNER, Mr. HALL of New York, Ms. LEE of California, Ms. PINGREE of Maine, Ms. KAPTUR, Mr. BISHOP of Georgia, Ms. MOORE of Wisconsin, and Mr. DEFAZIO.

I haven't even looked to see their party affiliations because this is what nonpartisan means to me- look at the issue, the legislation, and identify whether it is a good thing or a bad thing (no such thing as 'neutral' legislation- if it's neutral, then we don't need the legislation, ergo, it's bad, a waste of time, a frivolous use of the heavy arm of government).

AFTER this objective, nonpartisan examination of the legislation itself, THEN you look to see who the skunks in your garden are. Are they skunks (Democrats)? Or are they weasels (Republicans)? It's good to know which they are so you know which pesticide and live-trap method to use in order to get the varmints out of your garden.

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