"Food Safety" Bills and Small Local FarmsA great deal of concern has been expressed recently by members and others contacting us about the "food safety" bills that are being filed in Congress. Callers and E-mailers have heard that these bills may restrict, or even prohibit, small or organic farms. They have asked us for our perspective. First, NOFA/Mass has long felt that there is a problem with the American food system. Not only do we have some 76 million cases of food-borne illness per year in the U.S., but diabetes is practically an epidemic, cases of asthma and allergies are at all time highs, residues of the pesticides and antibiotics used to raise our food are too often present on it, and obesity is rampant among us. Genetic engineering of seeds, cloning and widespread use of antibiotics in livestock, and irradiation of food also stand out as clear threats to human health resulting from our food system. By any measure (deaths, hospitalizations, pain and suffering) all these problems with our food supply are deserving of attention. But when they speak of "food safety", legislators usually are speaking not in this larger sense of "will this food cause me dis-ease?" but rather in the narrow sense of "is it free of microbial contamination?" In response to the latest in a series of microbial contamination scandals -- salmonella in peanut products -- a number of bills have been filed in Congress to regulate food growing and handling.
These are obviously very cursory summaries of complex bills. To see more information about these bills yourself, or to read the full text of any, go to http://www.govtrack.us/ and enter the bill number (using the format "H 759" or "S 425") in the bill search box. Other bills are being drafted and filed as you read this. We expect that many provisions will be borrowed and swapped between bills before a final consensus emerges. The House Committee on Energy and Commerce (chaired by Henry Waxman D-CA) is apparently where the house will make many of these decisions. For the Senate, the Committee on Health (chaired by Edward Kennedy, D-MA) will be the important forum. With Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress and President Obama supporting stronger "food safety" protection, it is quite possible that in this Congress we will see federal legislation that will change the playing field for many small American farmers. We are concerned that the bills, as filed, will not so much increase food safety as decrease the number of small and organic farms in America - those which are producing food of the highest quality. We feel there are several reasons why such legislation is ill-advised and that small farms selling locally do not require the same sort of regulation as large national or global ones. 1) Legislation is not necessary to prevent problems like the salmonella-peanut contamination. Existing state and local authorities had adequate authority to require a cleanup at the Peanut Corporation of America. They simply failed to use it. The problem was that neither the United States Department of Agriculture nor the Food and Drug Administration had the capacity (in terms of staffing and coverage) to fulfill current statutory mandates. If Congress fails to appropriate enough funds for current requirements, how can they expect these agencies to do even more work? 2) To prevent the likelihood of microbial contamination in our food we must undertake a deep reformation of our food system. Most of such cases occur because of the scale at which our food system operates. High speed slaughterhouses process hundreds of animals an hour at speeds which mean a mistake can spread intestinal material over many carcasses before being noticed. Massive harvesters carried contamination from localized cattle feces in a spinach field to millions of bags of leafy greens in 2006. Yet no one in Congress has proposed slowing down the conveyors to a speed humans can reliably inspect, nor restricting the size of fields from which crops may be harvested and then commingled. 3. If we allow large scale food production, with it's inherent problems, to continue, we must design safety regulations appropriate to it. When a problem in one storage facility or processing plant or one field can impact eaters in dozens of states simultaneously, the bulk of the regulatory and enforcement focus should also be directed to these same large facilities. These bills do not differentiate between farms on the basis of scale or risk. 4. Similarly, small farms must be treated in a way consistent with the minimal risks they pose. The Food and Drug Administration has shown a marked inability to find solutions that work for small farmers without expensive and product-changing technology (e.g., juice regulations that drove most apple cider producers out of business; proposed leafy green protocols that would require high cost testing of each batch of greens.) Enacting laws or regulations that work for large farms but can't be met by small farmers is fundamentally wrong. Many small farm groups have been working on a food safety approach that is: a) focused on each farm identifying and monitoring potential problems, b) appropriate for the market being supplied, and c) tied to existing farm plans. This approach makes better sense for these farms. 5. Current bills before Congress ignore the perspective of farmers who are primarily supplying markets where the buyer and the farmer know one another. Food raised on small, local farms -- where the consumer can see the operation, meet the farmer face to face, ask questions, and inspect the food directly - is already passing a far more stringent inspection than that provided by a short annual visit from a federal agent. 6. Certified organic farms currently operate under a number of rigorous federal standards that address key food safety concerns:
We feel that these facts suggest the current food safety bills are ill-advised and that small, local, and organic farms deserve different treatment because they pose a different level of risk. We are urging people to call their Congressional representatives (if you're not sure who represents you, go to www.congress.org), write letters to the editor, and Email their friends with this message: do not lump small and industrial farms in the same category. Yes, there are problems with the health-giving qualities of much of the American diet. But we need to repair our food system without hurting the providers of the highest quality food available right now - small, local organic farmers. Here are some talking points for such calls and letters: Any produce safety bill must be:
To learn more about food safety and how it impacts small farmers, visit:
This page was last modified on March 23, 2009 at 5:41:33 AM.
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