Bob Unruh
Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., dropped a potential bomb into the ongoing battle between local food producers and federal bureaucrats who want to regulate all food transactions.
Paul introduced an amendment that would disarm Food and Drug Administration bureaucrats and accomplish several other goals.
“I’m troubled by images of armed agents raiding Amish farms and preventing them selling milk directly from the cow,” he said in a Senate floor statement posted online. “I think we have bigger problems in our country than sending armed FDA agents into peaceful farmers’ land and telling them they can’t sell milk directly from the cow.”
Mike Adams, who writes at NaturalNews.com as the “Health Ranger,” said the move was “stunning and completely unannounced.”
The amendment, he said, “would disarm the FDA and make the agency stop using guns against the American people; it would halt the FDA’s armed raids on raw milk farmers; it would also stop the FDA’s outrageous and longstanding censorship of truthful health claims of dietary supplements and medicinal herbs.”
“This is a big deal,” he said. “While it may not pass … the very fact that U.S. Sen. Rand Paul has introduced such an amendment is proof positive that Rand Paul is exactly the kind of leader that can help take our nation out of the age of government tyranny and censorship and into a new era of transparency, accountability and liberty.”
In fact, the amendment hours later was defeated 78-15.
The core of the conflict stems from the federal government’s desire to regulate the food industry from start to finish. Local growers and producers who would like to sell their products often face enforcement actions for not having a proper packaging facility or following some other regulation. A major dispute has developed over the sale of unpasteurized milk, which many people consider more healthy. Thirty states allow it but 20 don’t, and the federal government forbids it in interstate commerce.
Paul’s amendment addresses those concerns.
