On March 28, the Maine Senate leadership killed LD 783, a proposal to send a food freedom constitutional amendment to the November ballot. It was scuttled “under the hammer” following a very quietly raised motion and a swift gavel. The parliamentary ploy effectively short-circuited a carefully prepared intent to reconsider and allow a substantive discussion of the bill on the Senate floor.
Climate change drives home the point that everything is related to everything else. Sometimes, however, it is necessary to disentangle things to ensure that the weave of otherwise disparate elements in a policy discussion produces whole cloth, not just tatters. Food freedom (or food sovereignty), food safety, regulation (and the hard corporate-controlled realities of regulatory politics), and the support of regenerative agriculture are matters that must be disentangled before they can be woven into a productive whole.
Food freedom is the one element LD 783 addressed. Does each Mainer have the right to choose for himself or herself what food will pass his or her lips? Food sovereignty asserts that it is up to those of us who eat food and who grow it to make those decisions. The Food and Drug Administration explicitly denies we enjoy this right. Proponents of the right argue what we choose to eat is just as important as freedom of speech, or religion, or the press, or the right to bear arms, to name just a handful of principles protected already in Maine’s Declaration of Rights. LD 783 was about who gets to decide what we eat, protecting our inherent right to choose the nourishment each of us would employ.
Food safety is an entirely different matter. No one wants to get ill or succumb as a result of contaminated food. But how to define the risks, measure them relative to others we undertake and cost out addressing them are important considerations. How to achieve the aims — as well as who gets to judge that they have been — are key considerations. National attention to the matter has occurred as a consequence of the emergence of food production and processing that has increased, exponentially, the distances food travels, the number of hands it’s exposed to, and the time it takes from harvest to table. And it needs to be addressed mindful — given over the last 30 years or so the carefully cultivated hostility to government — of the seriously underfunded apparatus to protect the public against incurred risks. Furthermore, there are other models of food safety associated with much smaller scale food production and processing where personal knowledge of consumers and producers in the context of community norms can be brought into play.
Regulation is a third critical and distinct element. But of whom? The producer? The processor? The consumer? And following what principles — e.g., inspection of food by professionals, assurance of safe practices by third party inspection supported by documentation, self-enforcement with record-keeping for tracking purposes, common sense and inspection by the direct consumer? When these matters are considered in the context of the hard realities of corporate influence in policy formulation, especially in agriculture and food, it is plain that the citizen consumer is, in fact, far down the list of influentials. One need only consider the huge corporate effort aimed at undermining believable organic farming standards and fighting GMO labeling to get the point.
Finally, there’s recognition that fundamental changes in farming back toward regenerative practices can restore sequestration of carbon to the soil. For eons, carbon was stored up there. Only recently has it been returned to the atmosphere by the disruptive plowing and fertilization practices of industrial, chemical agriculture. Food policies that inhibit the needed vast expansion of small-scale, regenerative farming practices all over the globe amount to species suicide.
Each of these four is a critical matter. LD 783 addressed only the first, not the others. In any case, fear and parliamentary maneuvers preventing discussion are not a good basis for action. What is needed is rationality, openness, and hope. Narrow participant self-interest, as exemplified in Rep. Jeffrey Timberlake’s ill-informed testimony opposing the food freedom bill, is no substitute for serving the knowledgeable articulations and aspirations of constituents. Still, the inherent right to decide what we eat needs constitutional expression along with support for production of such food in ways that are consistent with larger societal and agro-ecological principles. It is a shame that Maine voters will not have the opportunity to vote this November to protect this right in Maine’s Constitution.
But tomorrow will be another day.
Hendrik Gideonse of Brooklin is a retired professor and policy analyst turned citizen activist.