Peak Oil News and Message Boards

Industry Aims to Strip Local Control of Food Supply
By Britt Bailey, Environmental Commons and Brian Tokar, Institute for Social Ecology, Environmental Commons.org, Tuesday May 24, 2005:

New laws being pushed by industry prevent local decisions about plants and seeds.

Legislation aiming to prevent counties, towns and cities from making local decisions about our food supply is being introduced in states across the nation. Fifteen states recently have introduced legislation removing local control of plants and seeds. Twelve of these states have already passed the provisions into law.

These highly orchestrated industry actions are in response to recent local decisions to safeguard sustainable food systems. To date, initiatives in three California counties have restricted the cultivation of genetically modified crops, livestock, and other organisms and nearly 100 New England towns have passed various resolutions in support of limits on genetically engineered crops.

"These laws are industry's stealth response to a growing effort by people to protect their communities at the local level," said Britt Bailey of Environmental Commons. "Given the impacts of known ecological contamination from genetic modification, local governments need to retain the power to protect the health, safety, and welfare of their citizens. Local restrictions against genetically modified crops have provided a positive and hopeful solution and allowed citizens to take meaningful action in their hometown or county."

"Over the past several years in Iowa, we've seen local control taken away for the benefit of the corporate hog industry," said George Naylor, an Iowa farmer and President of the National Family Farm Coalition. "With these pre-emption bills signed into law, we are now losing our ability to protect ourselves from irresponsible corporations aiming to control the agricultural seeds and plants planted throughout the state."

According to Kristy Meyer of the Ohio Environmental Council, "The amendment to our House Bill 66 would strip cities and villages of their authority to implement safeguards and standards concerning seeds. Supporting local control is quintessentially American, clearly reasonable, and represents the standards our country was founded upon."

Behold NatureWorks: the largest lactic-acid plant in the world. Into one end of the complex goes corn; out the other come white pellets, an industrial resin poised to become—if you can believe all the hype—the future of plastic in a post-petroleum world.

The resin, known as polylactic acid (PLA), will be formed into containers and packaging for food and consumer goods. The trendy plastic has several things going for it. It’s made from a renewable resource, which means it has a big leg up—both politically and environmentally—on conventional plastic packaging, which uses an estimated 200,000 barrels of oil a day in the United States. Also, PLA is in principle compostable, meaning that it will break down under certain conditions into harmless natural compounds. That could take pressure off the nation’s mounting landfills, since plastics already take up 25 percent of dumps by volume. And corn-based plastics are starting to look cheap, now that oil prices are so high.

Zardoz wrote:Corn is going to get really expensive isn't it? Give ADM credit. They're good at what they do.

pstarr wrote:you two have crummy attitudes. Jesus himself could come down from the mount (or where ever it is he is hold up?) and give your free pixie dust and you'd have some smart-ass comment.

what is wrong with sustainable eco-groovy forks and spoons? the better to eat your tofu with!

rwwff wrote:...They've engineered the perfect storm.