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Sedgwick, Maine, the first town in the US to legalize any kind of food
transaction as free and legal in order to keep the right to produce raw milk,
organic produce, free-range eggs, and more, is revolutionizing the way America
keeps its food rights – including saying no to GMOs. In other words, it is the
first town to declare food sovereignty while opposing both state and federal
laws.
The town has passed an ordinance (PDF) that protects citizens’ rights to
“produce, sell, purchase, and consume any food of their choosing.” The
ordinance laughs in the face of FDA regulations and their hodge-podge way of
giving food a rubber stamp of approval, especially GMO. Three additional towns
in Maine are expected to pass similar ordinances as well.
The move is somewhat
similar to a move one England town made, where the citizens transformed
their entire town’s landscape into a giant food-producing garden. Both are
great examples of moving toward food sovereignty.
It isn’t just a declaration on the whim of a few
city council members. There is a warrant added: “It shall be unlawful
for any law or regulation adopted by the state or federal government to
interfere with the rights recognized by this Ordinance.” This means
that federal interference is prohibited in our food supply – at least
in Maine. If you can’t get Monsanto out of the government, take the government
out of your food. It’s a brilliant way around the convoluted system now in
place that almost gave Monsanto the right to be exempt from federal prosecution
for its poison food and which tries to hoist it upon the whole Nation without
consent.
David Gumpert reports:
What about potential legal liability and state or
federal inspections? It’s all up to the seller and buyer to negotiate. “Patrons
purchasing food for home consumption may enter into private agreements with those
producers or processors of local foods to waive any liability for the
consumption of that food. Producers or processors of local foods shall be
exempt from licensure and inspection requirements for that food as long as
those agreements are in effect.” Imagine that — buyer and seller can agree to
cut out the lawyers. That’s almost un-American, isn’t it?
A simple seller and buyer agreement is entered
into where federal regulations can be bypassed by the seller agreeing to
consume food grown by their neighbors organically in their garden or by the
farm up the street with their own hormone-free dairy cows that customers have
known for decades. It takes the feds and their dirty Monsanto money right out
of the game. It is commercially
grown food that is killing us all, after all – not locally grown
food.
For those with their heads in a noodle about
bypassing federal laws, the citizens of Maine have stated, “We the radicals
who concocted this mutinous act of infamy believe that according to the Home
Rule provisions of our State Constitution, the citizens of Sedgwick have the
right to enact an ordinance that is “local and municipal in character.”
In Maine, citizens can take advantage
of local bounty, seasonal organic crops, and the good-old-fashioned way we used
to produce food without Big Ag and commercial interference. Rural America is
putting the big city budget of Monsanto to shame with this innovative way of
taking down the monopolizing food giant. It’s about time ‘radicals’ in every
small town across this nation did the same
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