HOW TO BURY THE FOOD ACT – Please distribute widely
Greetings from rainy Pohangina! So why does Food Bill 160-2 require even small food sellers to register? Are the international trade people suddenly concerned about our health after giving us irradiation, toxic additives, genetic engineering, growth hormones, antibiotics and consistently opposing transparency in the food industry? No they are not, and I am going to tell you what is really going on, and what you can do about it.
THE PROBLEM
(Note: A second revision of this was necessary when I discovered that HealthFreedomUSA.org, Dr. Rima E. Laibow, and Nutricide are disinformation, and I had been propagating it.)
A United Nations committee maintains a set of food standards called “Codex Alimentarius”. Laws like the Food Bill are the vehicles for its global implementation. The US is forcing this upon us using threats, through the Trans Pacific Partnership, one of dozens of similar trade agreements. This particular treaty is between the US and eight small countries. So this “partnership” is certainly not an equal one.
We have two governments (US and NZ) forcing a trade treaty on us that demonstrably benefits corporations. So it’s corruption through food industry lobbying. But what’s the bigger picture?
The Food Bill allows the government to appoint food safety officers with police-like powers including warrantless searches, “whether or not the person is employed in the state sector.” Private sector law enforcement is a pretty serious conflict of interest. We are talking about Very Very Big Companies That Some Division Of Which Probably Sells Food. At what point do we say “enough” to creeping corporate influence?
We need to stop pretending that corruption doesn’t exist. New Zealand’s private sector is the fourth most corrupt out of 78 countries, according to a 2011 survey (details in footnote 1).
The “Public-Private Partnership” (there’s that word again) model arose in the 1990s because of pressure on government budgets and it is actively promoted by the UN. This term just refers to any venture operated by a partnership between a private company and government. It’s pretty clear from the figures in footnote 1 that this model is a recipe for already rampant private sector corruption to infect government. But the private sector policing provision takes it up to a whole new level. Oh, and did I mention that these private officers are immune from civil and criminal liability?
The “material incorporated by reference” provision allows Codex to be brought in wholesale later. New Zealand is required by its WTO membership to harmonize its regulations with Codex (footnote 2), and any non-compliant country automatically loses in the WTO disputes process against a compliant one, regardless of the merits of the case.
Is this all intentional or not? Where are the journalists? On the Internet, that’s where. Every newspaper in New Zealand, right down to your local paper, is now owned by one of two monster big foreign companies. The government says that small traders will not be tied up in “excessive red tape”. They’re getting all paternal on us saying “misinformation” and “fearmongering” are causing “public confusion”. It’s all “conspiracy theories” because that’s the label for any thought that doesn’t originate in government or the media. I am not making these quotes up. New Zealanders are fair-minded people and like to assume honest motives. But when the intent is evil, this attitude is fatal. And evil people are counting on it.
Since an email on the Food Act went viral before Christmas they are backpeddling like mad and fixing the Food Bill. The latest is that it was all incompetence and ignorance, and seed saving was banned accidentally. The American S.510 bill “accidentally” banned it too. And they’re trying to ban seed saving in the EU. And Order 81 passed in Iraq in 2004 banned it. These legislators are total klutzes. But the Food Bill can’t be fixed. It has a Very Big Agenda behind it. If you chop its head off, it will grow another one. Codex is not a secret, yet the government is pretending it doesn’t exist.
So school cake stalls are safe – phew! What’s really at stake is the right to earn a living as a smallholder – a healthy model of social organization. Sustaining yourself by your own labour and building your community is not a crime. Big companies are not content to compete on equal terms against the farmer’s market and alternative health revolutions. They know that people are turning away from their poison. When corporations gain the defacto power to write their own laws, do you think they will not use it? Why do people persist in thinking that the construction of a mechanism of power does not indicate an intent to use that power?
So how about being a commercial farmer instead? Farmers are hanging by a thread, millions in debt and earning $50,000 in a good year. In a financial crash, they are set up for a giant bank-led land grab. Factory farming multinationals will pick it all up cheap. Would they really hollow out our economy?
If you want to see into the future, study the USA. Osha Gray Davidson describes the effects of the corporatization of agriculture in “Broken Heartland: The Rise of America’s Rural Ghetto”:
“Formerly healthy, mostly middleclass communities throughout the Midwest, the small towns that have given the area its distinctive character since its settlement, are being transformed into rural ghettos – pockets of poverty, unemployment, violence, and despair that are becoming more and more isolated from the rest of the country. As the coastal economies have boomed, the Heartland has collapsed. ‘The most American part of America’ is fast becoming ‘America’s Third World’.”
“The Corruption of American Agriculture” by Tad Williams (https://s242798577.onlinehome.us/media/TadFinal.pdf) gives a good overview of how corruption and consolidation have affected American agriculture. McGovernment leads to McJobs, and make no mistake: That’s exactly what’s intended for us.
European Union, American police operating in Canada, sovereignty-destroying “partnerships” – The separate pieces being assembled around us amount, in fact, to “global governance.” This means the UN would increasingly write our laws, and experience to date shows private sector “partnership” will play a big role. Corruption is the goal, not the side-effect. We’re told we need a “new global financial architecture” to combat crashes through co-ordinated action. On 24 October 2011 the Vatican called for a “world authority” and a “world central bank” which means irretrievable sovereignty and eternal debt servitude. The Australian Green Party says that “global governance is essential to meet the needs of global peace and security, justice, human rights, poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability.” Ask yourself: If the NZ government railroads us now, how democratic would “global governance” be?
I am not saying no food should be regulated, but this regime is not about food safety. It’s about eliminating an entire category of economic independence. Oh, and destroying health and heirloom genetics. And like the Jews before the holocaust, you must first be registered.
Once we are utterly dependent on food corporations, austerity measures would leave us unable to feed ourselves. At that point, we would agree to anything, and this historic global slow-motion coup d’etat will have been achieved. And what would this utopia look like? There’s no need to speculate. The UN has documented their plans in detail, and there are many excellent researchers, but they don’t write for mainstream newspapers.
Albert Camus foresaw our situation when he said, “The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.”
THE PROBLEM WITH THE PROBLEM
But there’s a little problem with this perfect plan. To bring in a law that nobody wants, three tricks are usually employed: 1. “boiling frog” gradualism, 2. plan in secret, and when exposed, make it go away for a year or two then reappear under a different name, 3. “Problem-Reaction-Solution” where the desired change is posed as the solution to an exaggerated or manufactured problem (for example, a farmer’s market food scare).
The first two strategies depend on time, which the invaders no longer have, because the “irate minority” is waking up fast in every corner and at every level of the world. Such a big jump towards tyranny as this Food Act is not what they would like. And Codex is very important to the overall plan. All we have to do, therefore, is to 1. mess up their timetable, and 2. be wise to Problem-Reaction-Solution (do a web search).
THE SOLUTION
The thing that truly sends cold fingers of dread up these people’s spines is peaceful non-compliance. So the first step is to send a letter like the one below to every MP using these instructions (from Parliament’s website):
If you want to send a letter to all members of Parliament, send us 122 copies of your letter in one envelope. Include a covering note that asks us to distribute one copy to each member.
Address your envelope:
All members of Parliament
Care of Distribution Services
Parliament Buildings
Wellington 6160
No postage stamp is needed when you are writing as an individual to a member of Parliament or a Minister. Postage is required if you are writing on behalf of an organisation. This distribution service is available only for letters. We do not forward copies of emails to all members of Parliament or Ministers.
TEXT OF THE LETTER:
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[Your address]
[Date]
Parliament Buildings
Wellington
Dear Minister,
Food Bill 160-2 is a total control mechanism and vehicle for the later introduction (through “material incorporated by reference” provisions) of Codex Alimentarius, a set of United Nations food standards. Codex is being imposed on every country in the world with threats – in our case through the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement. Once accepted by countries, and top-down control is in place, there will be nothing to stop a tyrannical application of these standards to benefit big business by strangling small business with regulation and compliance costs, resulting in low paid jobs and unhealthy, unaccountable, toxin-filled food for all. Codex would apply to everyone, because the bill specifically forbids regulations to differ between domestic and export markets (“Regulations about standards in relation to food”).
This Food Bill was written to enable New Zealand’s Codex compliance. However,
* The UN has no business writing the laws or regulations in a sovereign democracy;
* Foreign coercion has no place in a soverign democracy.
BE IT KNOWN THEREFORE THAT I DO NOT ACCEPT CODEX ALIMENTARIUS. Any law or regulation based upon it lacks legitimacy in my eyes, and wheresoever it is within my power to do so, I will not comply with such a law or regulation.
Yours faithfully,
[Your signature]
[Your name]
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I know you’re incensed, so I know they will be buried in these letters. Your MPs are under a lot of coercion, and if they are to fight for you, they need your mandate, once they can climb out of their offices, that is. The idea here is to identify a clear invasion of New Zealand sovereignty and reject it outright. This is stronger than mere demanding. It is decentralized lawmaking based on four magic words. Government requires consent by the governed, and it is withdrawn by “I do not accept,” which you should use often.
Change is secured by sizeable minorities, and the majority follows in time. This letter should send the Food Bill into a tailspin. If it’s passed, however, the next step is to act on these words.
The fact we need to face is that the government simply does not care what we want except in appearance. Begging and demanding will not alter the trajectory. It is provable that this law’s intent and function is tyranny. It is a symptom of the fact that MPs are subject to extremely corrupt lobbying and influence. Laws that are products of this corruption have no legitimacy whatsoever. When you identify a law of this type, it becomes your duty to joyfully disobey it. Make this attitude part of your life.
Kia kaha, and don’t get mad – get stubborn.
Stephen Blackheath,
Pohangina
January 2012
Any genuine questions can be emailed to me at commuting.rod.stephen@blacksapphire.com.
FOOTNOTES
1. Pricewaterhouse Cooper’s 2011 Global Economic Crime Survey reveals that New Zealand has the fourth highest percentage out of 78 countries of private sector respondents saying that their organisation had “suffered any type of fraud in the last 12 months.” Worldwide, asset misappropriation was the dominant type, but 24% of reported frauds are “bribery and corruption”. Private sector fraud has risen by 13% since 2009.
According to the 2011 Public Sector Fraud Awareness Survey from the Office of the Auditor-General, public sector corruption in New Zealand is mostly in State Owned Enterprises with 6% of those respondents saying “I am aware of fraud or corruption incidents in the last two years that have been reported but gone unpunished by my organisation.” Government departments reported only 1%.
2. The Codex Commission’s FAQ says Codex is optional, but this is not true. It’s compulsory for WTO member countries:
“52. As a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO), Australia is a signatory to the Sanitary and Phytosanitary (SPS) Agreement and is required to harmonize its national standards with Codex standards where possible.”
ALINORM 07/30/32 https://www.codexalimentarius.net/download/report/667/al30_32e.pdf
Detailed analysis: https://www4.dr-rath-foundation.org/features/codex_wto.html