Food Safety Training Proposal

Obama picks fight on taxes, big or just symbolic

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Barack Obama is the renewal of an old fight with the business community by insisting that $ 400 billion in tax increases be part of a package of deficit reduction. His proposals have languished on Capitol Hill, repeatedly blocked by Republicans, often with the help of Democrats.

Some raise a lot of money. Limiting tax deductions for higher income families and small business owners could raise more than $ 200 billion over the next decade. Others are more symbolic, as the enlargement of return of a tax break for businesses that buy business aircraft.

The proposal to increase corporate jet 3 billion over the next decade, according to aid the GOP in Congress. This is a relatively small in the grand scheme of budgets in Washington, but Obama and the Democrats are calling attention to it repeatedly in their efforts to portray Republicans as defenders of the business fat cats.

No matter how many Democrats describe their proposals as recipes or breeders plug tax loopholes, GOP leaders oppose them all, arguing that raising taxes in a bad economy would only worsen things.

"If we choose to keep these tax breaks for millionaires and billionaires, if we choose to keep a tax break for owners of business jets, if we choose to keep tax breaks for oil companies and natural gas make hundreds of billions of dollars, "Obama said this week," then it means we have to cut off some children get a college scholarship, which means that we have learned to stop funding certain grants for Medical Research, which means that food security can be compromised, meaning that Medicare has to assume a greater share of the burden."

The White House has identified approximately $ 600 billion tax increase he wants over the next decade. Approximately 400 billion of them were offered as part of deficit reduction talks led by U.S. Vice President Joe Biden. This would go hand in hand with more than a trillion dollars of spending cuts.

Some of the tax proposals are vague and budget experts have yet to calculate how much they would raise. For example, by limiting deductions for high income families and small businesses could raise anywhere between 210 billion and $ 290 000 000 000, according to this threshold is established as a high income.

Obama is proposing to eliminate $41 billion in tax breaks for oil and natural gas companies, raise taxes on investment fund managers by $21 billion and change the way many businesses value their inventories for tax purposes. The change in inventory accounting would raise an estimated $70 billion over the next decade, hitting manufacturers and energy companies, among others.

ACTION ALERT: Big Ag/USDA Could Run Organic Leafy Green Growers ...

Action Alert

Corporate agribusiness wants to tell the rest of us how to farm, and shut anyone out of the market who does not follow their one-size-fits-all “food safety” standards for leafy green vegetables. The USDA is supporting their plan, which, if accepted, will allow a committee of industry representatives, lobbyists and other officials to write a set of so-called food safety standards for the entire leafy green farming community— this could competitively injure smaller, local and organic producers.

If passed, leafy green handlers/marketers who sign on to this agreement will require every grower they buy from to follow a uniform set of standards, which will be written with large-scale, monoculture, chemical-intensive farming methods in mind. Farmers do not sign on to the agreement – their buyers (brokers, distributors and supermarket chains) do. Sustainable organic and local growers who take different approaches to food safety will likely be shut out of the market when buyers refuse their buy their crops.

With the recent passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act, this proposal by industrial-scale, monoculture interests for industry self-regulation is simply unnecessary and counterproductive.

The USDA needs to hear the widespread opposition from the organic/local community, farmers and consumers together, before the July 28th commenting deadline.

This ill-conceived plan is proposed in the name of food safety, but : the unnatural rearing and feeding practices of conventional beef and dairy cows, hogs and chickens on industrial-scale “factory” farms. There is nothing inherently dangerous about leafy greens—the problem lies in contamination of surface and groundwater, and even the air in farm country, from our nation’s filthy feedlots and animal factories!

Tell the USDA , which does not have the legal authority to supervise vegetable safety (Congress has exclusively charged the FDA with that responsibility) to withdraw the National Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement proposal immediately.

Clay's handbook of environmental health

Second FAO/WHO Global Forum of Food Safety Regulators

Congressional Record

Food Australia, official journal of CAFTA and AIFST.

Homeland security proposal for cabinet agency has merit, but implementation will be pivotal to success