You have found one of them! The proof of this apparently (should you have any doubts), is that the dreaded HR 875 was discussed here a month ago. "One of the interesting meta-aspects of this story is that it has played out almost entirely in the weirder interstices of the Net".

Critics say that the proposed Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 (H.R. 875), introduced in early February by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), will “effectively criminalize organic gardening,” conceivably outlaw “seed banking,” and will serve as part of a concerted Monsanto conspiracy to drive all but corporate agri-business out of the food production racket. . .

875's supporters are mostly just asserting that since the bill’s explicit language doesn’t empower the Food Safety Administration (FSA) to undertake specific tasks or impose specific prohibitions, then it’s rank and absurd fearmongering to suggest otherwise.

But that presumption ignores a long history showing what happens when Congress creates regulatory agencies and delegates broad mandates to them. In this case, the FSA’s mandate would encompass both the responsibility and enforcement power to keep our food supply safe by enforcing rigorous scientific standards on every food production facility, which “means any farm, ranch, orchard, vineyard, aquaculture facility, or confined animal-feeding operation.” (Sec. 3, 14.) Restaurants and other entities directly serving prepared food to consumers are explicitly not covered. (Sec. 3, 13(b).

Yet as history shows, many strong actions taken by regulatory agencies were never explicitly laid out in the legislation that created them, including the Clean Water Act’s current expansive definition—backed up by court decisions—of “navigable waters;” the Food and Drug Administration’s regulation of cigarettes as “nicotine delivery devices;” and the Endangered Species Act’s reinvention as a widespread, niggling, and extensive land-use regulation.

As Walter Olson recently pointed out, supporters of the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act claimed that it was not intended to regulate certain small businesses, yet, lo and behold, that's exactly what the act has done. As detailed in a forthcoming Reason magazine feature by Katherine Mangu-Ward, that law is hobbling small makers of unique toys and sellers of old children’s books in ways entrepreneurs were assured they didn’t have to worry about.

And while it’s obviously an issue of temperament and judgment to believe that it’s dangerous to empower a federal agency to do anything it wants in order to ensure food safety, it’s by no means clear that just because DeLauro says that H.R. 875 is only meant to apply to those engaging in “interstate commerce” that small farmers and organic gardeners will actually fall outside its reach. Remember that the Supreme Court in Wickard v. Filburn (1942) defined growing food on your own land for your own consumption to be regulatable interstate commerce. Similarly, in Section 406, H.R. 875 declares: "In any action to enforce the requirements of the food safety law, the connection with interstate commerce required for jurisdiction shall be presumed to exist.” Rep. DeLauro's office says they are working on language to make the small garden exception more explicit.

I think that it is worth repeating the points made a month ago.

The NYT recently published an op-ed in honor of the 100th anniversary of publication of Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. . .

“The Jungle,” and the campaign that Sinclair waged after its publication, led directly to passage of a landmark federal food safety law, which took effect 100 years ago this week. Sinclair awakened a nation not just to the dangers in the food supply, but to the central role government has to play in keeping it safe.

The only problem with the official version is that it's just about a 180-degree reversal of the truth in every detail. To get around the Art Schlesinger mythology, all you have to do is read Gabriel Kolko's The Triumph of Conservatism, a brilliant work of New Left history on the role of the regulated industries in formulating "The Great Trust-Buster's" regulatory agenda. You see, the big meatpackers were already subject to a federal inspection regime. The federal government had adopted the older system at their behest in the late nineteenth century, when an embarrassing tainted meat scandal threatened their market in Europe. The federal government at the time adopted inspection regulations for all meatpackers engaged in the export trade. It was a classic example of cartelization through the state: the meat exporters, which happened to be the largest firms, for all intents and purposes adopted an industry code enforced by the state. It was exactly the kind of code an industry might have adopted on its own initiative, with the added benefit of being non-defectable. So the costs of compliance were not a competitive issue between the big packers. There was only one drawback: it didn't apply to the small packers that didn't produce for the export market. What TR's Meat Inspection Act did was bring the small packers into the regime, to remove the competitive advantage they received from their exemption.

Add that to the sordid history of food regulation. Corporatist advocates and apologists (like the NYT) revise history to fit their desired narrative. HR 875 is another bit of that history in the making. It can't be known for certain just how it will play out, but it is so vague and so all encompassing that literally anything could happen, and when real history is the guide it is reasonable to expect that the special interests with the most vote buying ability will determine what happens. Whether that is Monsanto or some quasi-religious food purity cult matters little since in any event the majority of people will be poorly served.