The Economic and Community Development Institute has been helping entrepreneurs in Columbus to start up and grow their businesses for the past five years. ECDI is now currently rolling out a new program to provide a wider range of development assistance. Their new Growing Entrepreneurs Initiative is launching with a focus on food-related industries and provides assistance to folks looking to take their kitchen ideas and turn them into a full time business.

Columbusunderground.com interviews Bob Leighty and Amy Szabo recently to talk about ECDI’s new “Kitchen Incubator” program and what it can mean both for entrepreneurs as well as the community as a whole.

http://www.columbusunderground.com/ecdi-launches-kitchen-incubator-program

The new rules are available in (pdf document) at the ODA web site: New Cottage Food Rules.

The current food saftey rules ORC 3715 can be found here.

Read the draft bill. We will comment on this bill after analysis.

What our farm needs is a cannery that will do meat, broth, soups, and other meat-based products. We’ve made inquiries to ACENet and the ODA–even looked into starting our own facility–and all we heard was “You have to have a big industrial cannery to do meats.” After more than a year of searching, we finally found Keystone Meats in Lima, Ohio. They charge $1.35 per 28 oz. can, and the minimum amount they’ll process is 2000 lbs. of boneless meat.

They don’t slaughter the animals, though. You still need to have that done at an inspected facility somewhere else. Otherwise, the cans will be marked “not for resale.” That means I’d have to take my broilers to King & Sons (presently the only state-inspected custom poultry processor in the state) to have the birds processed first. The trouble with that is that they’re only equipped to do 800 birds a day. Conservatively estimating two pounds of boneless meat per bird, that means you’d need a minimum of 1000 chickens to get enough meat for Keystone to let you in the door. And King’s doesn’t slaughter every day. It’s just one or two days a week, never consecutive days, so I it wouldn’t even be possible to have them do 1000 birds at once. You’d have to drop off 800, store them frozen somewhere, then do another 200 on a different day.

Let’s say this was workable, though. By the time I pay around a thousand dollars for a thousand chicks, and buy feed for them at $11.35 per 50 lb. bag, then pay for fuel to haul them two hours to King’s, pay them to slaughter and de-bone, and pay Keystone $1.35 a can for 2000 pounds worth of 28 oz. cans, I’ve got over $11,000 tied up in cans of meat that I have to sell for something like $9.60 a can just to break even. If I sold it for $11 a can (too low? How much will someone realistically pay for a can of non-organic chicken?), I’d make about $1,500 profit. That’s not accounting for marketing costs, fixed assets, etc. Presently, I can make more than that on 300 birds I sell at the farmers’ markets, and I don’t have to raise them a thousand at a time or take out a loan of $11,000 for operating expenses.

And Keystone won’t do broth. That’s principally what I’m looking for. After my customers make a rush on the chicken breasts and buy about half the leg quarters, I’m left with a bunch of wings, backs, and the other half of the leg quarters. I’d like to cook these down into broth or soup to try to recapture some value, but try collecting 2000 lbs. of those pieces! I have a big pressure canner, but the state won’t let me sell broth or stock canned in it.

If some well-funded entrepreneur were to open a cannery that could do small, custom batches of soups, broths, canned meats, etc., affordably, it would be a fantastic opportunity for small farmers to sell value-added products. We have no shortage of Ohio produced jams and salsas, but there are no small farmers in Ohio doing direct sales of hot dog sauce or chicken noodle soup made from their own meat. And if a cannery is licensed and outfitted to handle meats, they could do other low-acid foods, too. That throws the door wide open to all kinds of canned vegetables. We could fill the grocery stores with locally produced, identity preserved goods, if only someone would package them for us.

Best of luck, though, to Mr. Leard and anyone who gets in on this new fruit cannery co-op.

Wayne Shingler
Frijolito Farm
Columbus, OH

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Renee Hunt
To: oeffaco_oeffadirect@oeffa.org
Date: Wed, 20 May 2009 09:18:49 -0400
Subject: [oeffadirect] [Fwd: Fwd: co-op cannery]
Anyone interested in forming a cooperative cannery, read on… This was originally sent and distributed to the OEFFA Athens Chapter. Best, Renee

*From: *”Ray Leard” <rayleard@purelyamerican.com >
*Date: *May 17, 2009 11:03:01 AM PDT
*To: *<perkaber@juno.com >
*Subject: **co-op cannery*

Hi!

I own Purely American, a specialty food manufacturing concern located in the Poston Station Road Industrial Park – www.purelyamerican.com . I am trying to determine the interest among the region s’ farmers for the creation of a cooperative cannery in which the farmers would contract with my company to provide certain fruits raspberries, blackberries, blueberries, apples for the production of a premium brand of creatively designed fruit based preserves. I would invest the required funds in building the commercial kitchen, product design, marketing, promotion, and distribution at the national level through my existing channels I have already established. The press attached release explains the basic idea.

Wanted to know if, as a member of the Athens Farmers Market, you (or other fellow farmers that you know) might have an interest in becoming an owner/member in our new cooperative. The main purpose in creating the co-op will be to enable the area farmers to join forces to obtain a fair and consistent price for their premium quality fruit. The fruit will be used in a line of preserves that will help establish the Athens region as one of America’s premier locally grown food artisan regions. This will be achieved by maintaining the level of “Athens Grown” fruit in the line of products at 100% thereby creating a product line similar to great wines in which all the grapes are from a certain winery or region. In the preserve world as a company gets larger and larger they start compromising on quality and begin sourcing their fruit from outside the region where the idea started thereby compromising the integrity of the product.

I would appreciate your serious consideration in this matter. Please feel free to ask any and all questions. Don’t have all the answers yet but will work with each of you to make this something we can all be proud of as we proceed.

See you at the market!

Ray Leard and dedicated foodcrafters

Purely American

5991 Industrial Park Road

Athens, Ohio 45701

740-592-3800

740-592-4610 (fax)

rayleard@purelyamerican.com

–
Renee Hunt
Program Director
Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association
41 Croswell St., Columbus, Ohio 43214
Ph: 614-421-2022 Fax: 614-421-2011
renee@oeffa.org

Officials at the ODA are optimistic about the passage of the rule. Patti Haden, of Ohio Proud, in a memo shortly after the hearing, said “The new rule should be in place by mid-June, 2009.”

We will be following this story and will post news as we learn about it.

There will be a public hearing on Wednesday May 13^th at 8:30 am at ODA to review a proposal to expand the list of foods covered under Ohio’s cottage food law.  Full information on the hearing and rules is linked below.

The current rules allow mostly baked goods. The proposed changes will expand that to many other foods. In my opinion, this is one more step toward smaller localized production of food and away from the monopoly large industrial facilities have previously held. It is good for the local economy, good for small farmers and entrepreneurs. I encourage those with an interest in local food production attend the meeting.

Following is the proposed new list:

(1)    Non-potentially hazardous bakery products;

(2)    Jams

(3)    Jellies

(4)     Candy;

(5)    Fruit butters;

(6)    Granola, granola bars, granola bars dipped in candy;

(7)    Popcorn, flavored popcorn, kettle corn, popcorn balls, carmel corn;

(8)    Unfilled, baked donuts;

(9)    Waffle cones;

(10) Pizzelles;

(11) Dry cereal and nut snack mixes with seasonings;

(12) Roasted coffee, whole beans or ground;

(13) Dry baking mixes in a jar, including cookie mix in a jar;

(14) Dried herbs/herb blends;

(15) Dried seasoning blends;

(16) Dry tea blends.

The existing regulations regarding cottage foods are found here.

The public hearing on Wednesday May 13^th at 8:30 will be held in hearing room 133 (seminar “B”of the Bromfield Admin Bldg. Ohio Department of Agriculture, 8995 East Main Street, Reynoldsburg, Ohio 43068-3399. Here is the hearing Notice

• It takes approximately 6 weeks from the date of the hearing for a new rule to become law.
• There is no way of knowing how long the hearing will last. It could be a few minutes or longer depending on how much testimony takes place.

***** Another important fact:  If people cannot be here in person the day of the hearing they can write a letter of support and send it to ODA to the attention of Tim Norris.  This letter will be presented at the hearing as testimony, just as if the person is there testifying.
Details of the rules can be found at the Register of Ohio

Links  of the proposed changes are also in the table below:

Rules for Department of Agiculture
Division: Food Safety

Food & Water Watch’ s Statement on H.R. 875 and the Food Safety Bills

The dilemma of how to regulate food safety in a way that prevents problems caused by industrialized agriculture but doesn’t wipe out small diversified farms is not new and is not easily solved. And as almost constant food safety problems reveal the dirty truth about the way much of our food is produced, processed and distributed, it’s a dilemma we need to have serious discussion about.

Most consumers never thought they had to worry about peanut butter and this latest food safety scandal has captured public attention for good reason – a CEO who knowingly shipped contaminated food, a plant with holes in the roof and serious pest problems, and years of state and federal regulators failing to intervene.

It’s no surprise that Congress is under pressure to act and multiple food safety bills have been introduced.

Two of the bills are about traceability for food (S.425 and H.R. 814). These present real issues for small producers who could be forced to bear the cost of expensive tracking technology and recordkeeping.

The other bills address what FDA can do to regulate food.

A lot of attention has been focused on a bill introduced by Rep. Rosa DeLauro (H.R. 875), the Food Safety Modernization Act. And a lot of what is being said about the bill is misleading.

Here are a few things that H.R. 875 DOES do:

-It addresses the most critical flaw in the structure of FDA by splitting it into 2 new agencies –one devoted to food safety and the other devoted to drugs and medical devices.

-It increases inspection of food processing plants, basing the frequency of inspection on the risk of the product being produced – but it does NOT make plants pay any registration fees or user fees.

-It does extend food safety agency authority to food production on farms, requiring farms to write a food safety plan and consider the critical points on that farm where food safety problems are likely to occur.

-It requires imported food to meet the same standards as food produced in the U.S.

And just as importantly, here are a few things that H.R. 875 does NOT do:

-It does not cover foods regulated by the USDA (beef, pork, poultry, lamb, catfish.)

-It does not establish a mandatory animal identification system.

-It does not regulate backyard gardens.

-It does not regulate seed.

-It does not call for new regulations for farmers markets or direct marketing arrangements.

-It does not apply to food that does not enter interstate commerce (food that is sold across state lines).

-It does not mandate any specific type of traceability for FDA-regulated foods (the bill does instruct a new food safety agency to improve traceability of foods, but specifically says that recordkeeping can be done electronically or on paper.)

Several of the things not found in the DeLauro can be found in other bills – like H.R. 814, the Tracing and Recalling Agricultural Contamination Everywhere Act, which calls for a mandatory animal identification system, or H.R. 759, the Food And Drug Administration Globalization Act, which overhauls the entire structure of FDA. H.R. 759 is more likely to move through Congress than H.R. 875. And H.R. 759 contains several provisions that could cause problems for small farms and food processors:

-It extends traceability recordkeeping requirements that currently apply only to food processors to farms and restaurants – and requires that recordkeeping be done electronically.

-It calls for standard lot numbers to be used in food production.

-It requires food processing plants to pay a registration fee to FDA to fund the agency’s inspection efforts.

-It instructs FDA to establish production standards for fruits and vegetables and to establish Good Agricultural Practices for produce.

There is plenty of evidence that one-size-fits-all regulation only tends to work for one size of agriculture – the largest industrialized operations. That’s why it is important to let members of Congress know how food safety proposals will impact the conservation, organic, and sustainable practices that make diversified, organic, and direct market producers different from agribusiness. And the work doesn’t stop there – if Congress passes any of these bills, the FDA will have to develop rules and regulations to implement the law, a process that we can’t afford to ignore.

But simply shooting down any attempt to fix our broken food safety system is not an approach that works for consumers, who are faced with a food supply that is putting them at risk and regulators who lack the authority to do much about it.

You can read the full text of any of these bills at http://thomas.loc.gov

Sarah Alexander is a senior food organizer. She works to promote a healthy and independent food system and works to improve public knowledge on food issues including factory farms, and country of origi labeling. Sarah has worked on issues related to food sovereignty, genetic engineering, and local food security. Her background is in community organizing, strategic campaigning and legislative campaigns, having previously worked with Green Corps, the White Earth Land Recovery Project, and the American Community Gardening Association. Sarah is a graduate of Northwestern University, where she studied English. She can be reached at salexander(at)fwwatch(org).

It may be worth following their progress for ideas on our own Ohio regional cannery.

Schoharie Co-op Cannery.