Food Fight: North Carolina Strikes Back
As readers of PunditHouse may know, North Carolina’s Campaign for Liberty spent most of last year sounding the alarm about a bill winding its way through Congress that posed a serious threat to competition and choice at the grocery store. This bill sought to impose greater regulations and costs on food producers, and like most overreaching legislation, justified it all in the name of safety. This bill was lobbied for by large agri-businesses like Monsanto, ConAgra, ADM, and others. Small family farms and organic food producers stood to lose much, as they would be less able to absorb the added costs associated with a ramped-up schedule of inspections and record-keeping requirements.
The bill passed the U.S. House in 2009, but languished in the Senate as items higher on the Obama Administration’s priority list were pushed through. Several times it appeared to be dead, particularly when Oklahoma Republican Tom Coburn put a hold on it, and it was revealed that additional fees and taxes placed in the bill by Senate Democrats proved to be unconstitutional; only the House may originate new taxes and fees on citizens, not the Senate.
Nevertheless, as the post-November lame duck session of Congress came to a close, Harry Reid used the specter of a government shutdown to try one more time to ram what Campaign for Liberty has labeled the Federal War on Food through. Reid attached the bill to a continuing resolution to fund the federal government in the absence of a real budget, warning that a failure to pass the resolution (and with it, the food bill) would result in seniors not receiving their Social Security checks and Medicare claims going unpaid. As is often the case, the Hail Mary play succeeded, and S. 510 is now law. Harry Reid had chalked up another win for President Obama, who considered the bill a lame duck priority.
It was also a win for North Carolina’s own Richard Burr, who had been a co-sponsor of the bill since its introduction. Senator Burr received thousands of phone calls, emails, and faxes from North Carolinians angered by his part in helping greatly expand the FDA’s size and power, but he insisted again and again that it was necessary to fight terrorism (in some vague, ill-defined way). He also insisted that he realized it was essentially a bad bill, but that he must co-sponsor it so that he could keep it (again, in some vague, ill-defined way) from being even worse.
Usually, when a bill like this passes Congress and is signed into law, that’s the end of the story. But that was in the pre-Tea Party world.
Enter North Carolina Representative Glen Bradley.
Representative Glen Bradley is the just-elected Republican representative of North Carolina’s 49th House District. Held since 2002 by Democrat Lucy T. Allen, the seat became competitive last April when Allen was appointed to NC’s Utilities Commission, and Governor Perdue appointed John May, a retired member of the Franklin County Board of Education, to fill the seat. Bradley ran hard against May, knocking on thousands of doors and campaigning everywhere, including Roanoke Rapids, a Democratic stronghold. His efforts paid off, and he defeated May 51% to 48% in a district where voter registration heavily favors Democrats.
Since his swearing in, Bradley has wasted no time picking a fight. He is set to introduce the NC Farmer’s Freedom Act, which will nullify S. 510 and interpose real legal penalties against any attempt to enforce it. The bill, which does not have a bill number yet (Bradley is still working on securing co-sponsors), is the first of several bills Bradley is drafting to push back on the Federal government, using the 10th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution as its legal basis. These bills can be found at Rep. Bradley’s legislative website.
The Farmer’s Freedom Act is extremely brief and to the point, much like Senator Rand Paul’s 12-page bill to cut over $500 billion out of the Federal budget. It states, “All foodstuffs, or products produced for the purpose of consumption as nutrition, food (fruit, vegetables, meat, and spices), vitamins, or supplements, that are produced in and remain within the borders of the State of North Carolina, to include the producers, the means of production, and the produce shall fall solely under regulatory authority of the State of North Carolina and are not subject to Federal regulation.” In essence, any attempt to by Washington, DC to regulate food products or supplements made in North Carolina and kept within North Carolina is illegal.
The bill then goes one step further. This is important, as many nullification bills being passed by state legislatures do not include interposition. Nullification says, “Washington cannot legislate on Topic A, Topic B, or Topic C.” Interposition says, “If this law is broken, here are the consequences.” Lots of recently passed nullification bills in other states don’t include the second part. The NC Farmer’s Freedom Act does.
It reads, “Public employees employed at the Federal, State, or local levels, including but not limited to agents of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Homeland Security, the Food and Drug Administration, State Bureau of Investigation, Highway Patrol, sheriff’s departments, and municipal and county police departments may not within North Carolina enforce the provisions of the federal statutes upon foodstuffs and produce in intrastate commerce. Violation of this section is a Class 1A misdemeanor.” Under North Carolina structured sentencing law, a Class 1A misdemeanor is the most severe misdemeanor, punishable by 1 to 60 days in jail, assuming no prior offenses.
This bill has teeth.
Again, it’s important to note how Bradley’s bill to nullify S. 510 is unique. One of the campaign promises made by the leaders of the new Republican majority in the General Assembly was to nullify Obamacare, and to their credit, they’ve introduced HB 2, the North Carolina Healthcare Protection Act, to do just that. However, a careful reading of the bill reveals that there is no criminal classification of attempts to enforce Obamacare within North Carolina. Thus, there can be no penalties for doing so. In other words, North Carolina’s Obamacare nullification bill has no teeth. The full text of the bill can be found here.
For now, Glen Bradley presses on. The NC Farmer’s Freedom Act now has 21 co-sponsors, with more signing on every day. If you want to put the federal government back in its constitutional box and tell the FDA to get out of your kitchen, look up your NC House and Senate representation here and tell them to co-sponsor Glen Bradley’s Farmer’s Freedom Act. You can also call Speaker Thom Tillis at (919) 773-3451 and Majority Leader Paul “Skip” Stam at (919) 733-2962 and tell them to bring the Farmer’s Freedom Act to the floor for a roll-call vote as soon as possible.
And while you’re at it, tell Tillis and Stam to nullify Obamacare like they mean it, and give HB 2 some teeth.
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Adam Love is the NC State Coordinator for Campaign for Liberty. The Mission of Campaign for Liberty is to promote and defend the great American principles of individual liberty, constitutional government, sound money, free markets, and a noninterventionist foreign policy, by means of educational and political activity.
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