With the passage of the USA Food Safety Modernization Act will you quit gardening? I don’t really believe that my possession of two tomato plants and a few other assorted vegetable producing plants will cause my yard to be called a “food production facility”. I’ve tried not to worry about this act, though I do agree that it is unconstitutional (a direct violation of the Tenth Amendment) and just another example of excessive legislation.

It appears that US government lawmakers have nothing better to do than to make more laws and regulations to control the people with. This is such a shame, that such a wonderful country should be saddled with law after law… because they’re always focused on making new laws whether we need them or not. Legislators must write laws – that is their purpose. But when the laws are there to control more than to help the people, there’s bound to be problems.

Sometimes I wish we could go back about 200 years – back to a time when there were enough laws to provide a simple safety net… but not so many as to make life uncomfortable and distressing. For example, wouldn’t it be nice to start up a home business without first having to shell out cash for a business license, home use permit, and fictitious business name? I started a business in 2003 and it cost almost $200 for these fees, and that was before I could even start making money! It is a bit prohibitive for the person who wants to work at home but doesn’t have any start-up cash. Why make it so hard? My business license for a one-person webdesign business was the same amount that Walmart was paying!

So, this is only one small example of the “too many laws” syndrome that has taken over America and the state. Another example I am appalled by: education laws. I don’t know what it is like in your state, but here in California there are way too many laws about education for public schools. Thankfully they are not nearly so tyrannical about controlling private and homeschools, which is where my kids fit in. I homeschooled my two youngest for many years. They’re adults now.

So – back to food safety – I know there are many unsafe food manufacturing facilities. The peanut scandal a few years ago showed us that… along with e-coli incidents in fast food restaurants. I’ve even been witness to unclean restaurant food handing and now am hesitant to go to restaurants because of what I learned while working in one – mainly that the two supervisors just didn’t seem to care much about keeping things clean or following guidelines from the food inspector. So perhaps there’s a good reason to inspect food processing facilities. But gardens? Get real.

I don’t know how anyone thinks they can keep people from growing their own food and saving seeds. If that is to be regulated by law enforcement it will probably have the same success as the marijuana prohibition, to wit: people are still using marijuana by the millions and nobody can stop the popularity of this drug. Likewise, prohibiting the growing of gardens or saving of seeds isn’t going to be effective. However, that’s looking into the future with someone else’s paranoid projections in mind. As for me, I’m not worried about it. I’m planning to keep doing what I was doing and will continue to live life one day at a time.

We’re not going to stop congress from passing controlling laws. That’s just the natural progression of a government. Lawmakers need something to do – so they pass laws – needed or not.

My opinion on home gardening? It isn’t likely to stop. I’m going to keep on gardening as long as I can.