Maine Town Declares Food Sovereignty!
Sedgwick, Maine is making history by declaring all local food transactions of any kind free and legal.
According to the website FoodRenegade.com, Sedgwick is the first city in the U.S. to free itself from the constraints of federal and state food regulation. Published reports say the town has passed an ordinance that gives its citizens the right “to produce, sell, purchase, and consume local foods of their choosing,” regulations be damned. The ordinance includes raw milk, meats that are slaughtered locally, all produce and just about anything else you might imagine.
And what’s more, three additional towns in Maine are expected to take up similar ordinances soon.
Gee – good, ol’ fashioned buyer-seller agreements?
Observers of the Sedgwick ordinance say it is much more than just “statement” legislation. Writes blogger David Grumpert, at TheCompletePatient.com:
This isn’t just a declaration of preference. The proposed 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.” In other words, no state licensing requirements prohibiting certain farms from selling dairy products or producing their own chickens for sale to other citizens in the town.
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?
According to Deborah Evans, a Sedgwick citizen, the ordinance further states:
(1) Producers or processors of local foods in the Town of Sedgwick are exempt from licensure and inspection provided that the transaction is only between the producer or processor and a patron when the food is sold for home consumption.
(2) Producers or processors of local foods in the Town of Sedgwick are exempt from licensure and inspection provided that the products are prepared for, consumed or sold at a community social event.
For those questioning the legality of the ordinance – as in, it obviously circumvents state and federal food laws – she notes:
“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.”
Rural New Brunswick communities should do the same. For far too long, the government has been creating policies and enacting regulations that work against rural NB.
We are a province of tremendous natural resources, water and farmland and we need to act to protect it and regain the know-how to live on and with our land.
We’ve allowed ourselves to be lulled into a false sense of security-that the world economy and food system would always be safe.
But, as we see on a daily basis, this is not so. Economies are crashing left and right in Europe, and the American dollar is in a death spiral.
For us to grow and prosper, rural areas need to become self sufficient again with localized food production that is not strangled by money grasping government licensing fees and rules and regulations.
Every year new rules are enacted to reduce our food freedoms. Food safety inspections, licenses are required to serve a benefit breakfast, licenses are required to sell cookies for charity…the list keeps growing.
The NB government is now working on enacting a fee for sellers at Farmer’s Markets. This fee, in addition to the table rent that sellers pay, will kill our markets.
You may think that this is being done to make us “safer”, but what it really does is diminish our world and enslave us further.
We’ve lost our ability to produce our own food because of the decline in our traditional farms and the rise of Big Agriculture.
Global economic disasters continuously push up the cost of our food. We need to become local producers again, and have the freedom to grow and eat what we choose.
Small farmers and producers have been getting squeezed in the name of food safety, yet it’s always the industrial food that causes food borne illnesses.
Local food is safer food and it will help restore our communities and rebuild our economy!
Stephanie Kelley
