Dear Friend,
MEMBERSHIP
If you’re not yet a member but are considering joining our food freedom family, make haste! There are just a few more days left in our annual Membership Drive. All new members will be entered to win one of many prizes donated by current members, including:
Serenity Kids Baby Food Gift Certificate (Valued at $100)!
Vintage Tradition Gift Certificate (Valued at $100)!
Farmer Brad Automatic Chicken Waterer. Either 2 gallon or 4 gallon – your choice! (Valued at $65)
Buck Moon Farm Goats Milk Soap Multi-Pack (Valued at $75)!
Mentink Family Farms – Organic vanilla beans, Redmond’s smoked salt bottle, handmade lavender soap, lip balm, half pound native raw pecans (Valued at $60)!
David’s Pasture Pasture-raised beef snack sticks (Valued at $75)!
Healing Cycles 1-Hour Energy Healing Session by Dori Steiman Schoonmaker, a Brennan Integration Practitioner (six years of professional training at the Barbara Brennan School of Healing) and a Reiki Master (Valued at $115)!
Provision Family Farms 45-minute facetime/phone consultation for new farmer doing pastured meat production (Valued at $60)!
Plus all current members are welcome to join us for the annual virtual Member Meeting on Thursday, March 30 at 1 pm Eastern.
To learn more about the membership drive including member benefits, visit HERE.
PUBLIC COMMENTS
FTCLDF has been monitoring several food and agriculture policy initiatives across the country. To see our latest action alerts, please visit www.farmtoconsumer.org/actionalerts
In addition, regulations are often implemented at the agency level, many of which require a formal notice and rulemaking process, which requires the agency to consider public comments. At the federal level, FTCLDF plans to submit comments, due on March 20, relating to a proposed rule that would require electronic animal identification through the use of ear tags that can be read electronically (RFID). The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Services (APHIS) proposes this rule without evidence that the current system of metal tags is not working to provide animal traceability or that it is needed for food safety. In fact, most food safety issues are caused at the processing plant, where traceability ends after slaughter. The proposal benefits large corporate-controlled operations by permitting “group / lot identification,” i.e., designated thousands of animals with one ID number while independent producers would need to tag each individual animal. In addition are the obvious privacy issues that could also arise. Again, FTCLDF will be filing comments opposing the new proposed rule.
To review the entire rule and provide comments, please visit
www.federalregister.gov
Additional Rulemaking Comment Due tomorrow, March 10, 2023.
Also, on March 10, 2023, the USDA Food Safety Inspection Service (FSIS) will close the comment period on a Petition to end the USDA prohibition on haggis and other dishes containing lungs, found in 9 CFR 310.16(a), which states that livestock lungs cannot be used as human food. Haggis is a traditional Scottish dish that, along with certain dishes popular Nepal, China and several European countries is simply not available in the United States. Butchers can and do sell most other animal body parts for food, and there is little evidence to suggest that livestock lungs are particularly unsafe. To submit a comment, simply email fsispetitions@usda.gov Please reference Petition No. 23-01.
For more information, please visit www.fsis.usda.gov
In good health,
Alexia Kulwiec
Executive Director
