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Special Interests Win Over House Farm Bill

  • Spence Cooper
  • July 24, 2012

The Farm Bill, approved by the House Agriculture Committee in the middle of July, includes a frightening new amendment by Republican Rep. Steve King.

King’s amendment would deny individual states the ability to regulate any farm product, overturn the new foie gras ban in California, as well as thousands of animal welfare, food safety and environmental laws related to any farm product in all 50 states.

Additionally, the bill repeals the Organic Certification Program, weakens regulation of GMO crops, includes anti-environmental riders, and much more.

And because the House bill proposes to cut $16 billion in SNAP funding for low-income Americans, more than 2 million Americans will lose benefits.

The amendment by Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, was passed along with the new five-year farm bill during a marathon committee debate.

“To say members of Congress belittled California is an understatement,” said Scott Faber, head of federal affairs for Environmental Working Group, which supports farm conservation.

“This isn’t just an assault on the ability of states to set standards for agriculture. It’s an assault on the Constitution. It is a breathtaking effort to limit the ability of states to set standards for how food is produced in America.”

Writing for Think Progress, Zack Beauchamp says King, an Iowa Republican who represents the country’s leading egg-producing state, claimed he introduced the amendment because the California law and others like it “scrambles and creates a patchwork quilt of state regulations”

“If California wants to regulate eggs that come into the state, fine,”King said. “But don’t be telling the states that are producing a product that’s already approved by the USDA or the FDA how to produce that product”

King said that the California requirement violates the commerce clause of the Constitution, which gives the federal government jurisdiction over interstate commerce issues.

Although King believes Obamacare is an unconstitutional use of federal power under the Commerce Clause, he mysteriously doesn’t recognize that federal regulation of farming is also an unconstitutional use of federal power.

Why?

Special Interests Win Over House Farm BillAs Beauchamp points out, King has a perfectly good reason for being a hypocrite by going against his principles and employing a double standard: saving his own skin; because his largest campaign contributor was — you guessed it — BIG AGRIBUSINESS.

“The largest industry spending on his behalf is big agribusiness, which isn’t thrilled about California’s laws. King’s home state of Iowa has no standards for ethical caging of egg-producing hens.”

And King wants to keep it that way.

Pork and Beef Opposed to Animal Welfare

“There’s a contingent out there, the pork and beef people, and it’s primarily the pork people, who are adamantly opposed to any kind of animal welfare legislation,” said Arnie Riebli, a Petaluma egg farmer and president of the Association of California Egg Farmers who supports California’s hen law, which takes effect in 2015.

Riebli said pork producers fear California’s hen law will lead to bans on gestation crates that tightly confine pregnant sows.

“The pork people should really be looking at their own industry,” Riebli said.

“Go back and read the news of the last 60 to 90 days, and you’ll see McDonald’s, Safeway, Kroger, Burger King, you name the food retailer or service company that is no longer going to be taking pork product from hogs confined to gestation crates.”

“The debate was almost like watching a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit of the House Agriculture Committee,” said Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States.

Farm Bill Delay

POLITICO reports that the farm bill reported from the House Agriculture Committee is blocked.

“POLITICO looked back at 50 years of farm bills and found nothing like this. There have been long debates, often torturous negotiations with the Senate and a famous meltdown in 1995 when the House Agriculture Committee couldn’t produce a bill. But no House farm bill, once out of committee, has been kept off the floor while its deadline passes.”

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