S510

Some things should just be killed right off the bat.  Like slugs.  And Senate Bill 510.  But no, like my girls used to do with slugs when I wasn’t watching, S510 is slowly being dismantled and still crawling around, albeit with a tiny twig stickin’ out its ear hole.  But really, it just needs to die, there is no reason to try and keep any part of it alive. 

I am sure the authors of the bill thought it was noble of them and noble of Americans to take on the cost of adding additional regulations to the food industry so that supposedly we can all rip open our next bag of salad with a clear conscious (or a dead one), no longer fearing that it may be our last bag of fluffy greens.

But I hoped it would die rationally, reasonably like a good swift aim with the scissors on the slugs that cross my path.  No freaking out necessary, no screaming, no calling it a wolf or a man-eating shark on land.  Just say, “hey, its a slug, lets calmly cut it in half and be done with it so that it won’t eat the marigolds or hide in the spinach ’til I serve it to company.”

The only thing that is served by my screaming and calling a slug a man eating shark, or demanding its death because it will certainly eat my grandchildren and cripple my husband, is to prove that I am a nut-case and should not be listened to about… well, about anything really.

And that is how I feel about S510.  Please call or e-mail your senators and ask them to put S510 out of its misery, but do so rationally, threaten if you must, but threaten rationally.  Threaten to put your time and money, as well as your vote, where your irritation lies and that next time they will indeed be out of a job if this nonsense continues.

By the way, did you read it?  It only took me a few days but I slogged through it, (why is everything they write so bloody boring and tedious).  Dirt did not read it, nor did he really want me to read it to him, he doesn’t have any trouble falling asleep on his own.  I may have missed some of the more recent changes, I read through it before we had power outages and such that messed with my computer a bit, causing me to lose the spot where I could get updates, I looked it all up once and responded, and I am known for being lazy.  But I figured I’d read enough. 

Enough to convince myself that no, no one was going to be told that they couldn’t grow a patch of veggies in their backyard and give Mr. Wilson a bundle of carrots for watering the garden while they were gone on vacation.  I just couldn’t find the wording for that no matter how many times I reread paragraphs.

Enough to convince myself that no, no one was going to stop you from saving seed from you carefully pollinated squash so that you could continue to grow the exact same blue hubbard grampa grew.

Enough to convince myself that small seed houses, the likes of which I order seed from every year, were not going to be shut down or forced to sell only genetically modified seed (GMO) so that my tomatoes would have a salmon gene in them.  (Wait, my tomatoes are actually redder than salmon!)

But I also read enough to convince myself that these new regulations would really not accomplish what the authors nobly thought they were doing.  (I try to think the best of folks, I was taught I ought).  I was convinced from my reading that really, our nation’s food supply is already very safe, and the only ones that can really make it any safer than it already is is the consumer.  And yes, just recently some folks were made sick by a large corporate farm product.  And yes, we can all recall the recent recalls of spinach and lettuces and uh, peanuts was it?,  that have caused illnesses and sometimes death in folks with already compromised health. 

I don’t mean to be mean or careless with other people’s lives, but our food is pretty stinkin’ safe.  Certain foods need to be cooked, washed or rinsed.  Much of our food is closely connected to poo and it ought to be that way.  It’s really that simple. So cook it or wash it.

And yeah, I think that you can have an educate-the-public program.  But really, do you really think people don’t know what they are supposed to do with their food?  Those are some pretty literate looking women I see walk out of the restroom without heeding the “wash your hands” sign, (here tell well suited guys too) so do you suppose they really don’t know that they should wash their veggies?  But they’ll wipe their kids down with antibacterial poisons daily eh?

How ’bout we actually teach the young buggers, uh I mean young adults, to cook a meal, to learn to prepare foods from scratch, to process foods, to learn the techniques of food prep and preservation and the why behind the how.  Instead we discontinue traditional home-ec but spend billions more on scaring the small children and regulating the heck out of the already conscientious producers.

One of the things I find ridiculous about this whole new additional regulation business is that it will ultimately fall on regional and local governments to reinforce and regulate much of it.  And right now our state can’t afford to do what it is already being asked to do, what it thinks it needs to do.  Oh wait, the federal government isn’t exactly rollin’ in spare change either! 

So stop.  Senators.  Just stop.  Some things aren’t as broke as they seem, some things aren’t actually broke at all.  Some things are actually way better than they used to be.  Some things that exist already, like current food safety regulations and reinforcements, would be improved if you would just concentrate on what you already have.  That new blender you’re about to buy, turn around, you already have a perfectly good functioning one on the counter, you do have to plug it in from time to time, clean the container and wipe down the base, but it still works and works great if you actually use it and maintain it.  Don’t go buy a new one.  No one really needs a ninja blender or ninja government food safety regulations.

But the hand-wringers also need to stop.  Stop yelling about the falling sky, when all there is to report on are a few errant snow flakes.  You only sound nutty and then no body listens to the real problem and that is how we manage to get a lot of our messes that we have.  Little boys actually do get hurt because mom sounded like a fruit-cake when she was yellin’ about loosing an eye or severing an arm, so the boys (and some skeptical girls) went out and did the very things mom was hyperbolatin’ about.  We don’t need to head to the bomb shelter when all we have to do is get out the salt and snow shovel.

Oh by the way, please make a rational call or e-mail to your senator and representative persons.  The senate is due to vote tomorrow on the revised 510, thanks for the heads up Patty Mor Mor so I could send my concern to Washington’s senators on this.  But there is a similar item in the House that also just needs to go away as well. 

Those poor folks are so confused, chasing their tails and all, git’in in a dither, or as ERB would say gittin’ in a lather for ‘nuthin.  I just wish they’d take some time off.  Maybe we should give them all a year’s vacation.  They’ve all already admitted that they can’t get anything done any way.  I think it would be cheaper if we just gave them a holiday.