President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act today, after a long bout of legislative wrangling by local food advocates, small farmers and their allies for food safety rules that protect consumers without curbing the growing movement toward fresh, local and regional food.  The food safety bill passed by the House in July of 2009 would have imposed a one size fits all regulatory system biased toward  industrial agriculture with a regressive registration fee, expensive food safety plans, and regular on-farm FDA inspections regardless of the degree of the potential risk for food borne illness.  The new regulatory burdens threatened to erect formidable barriers to the developing local and regional markets for many small and moderate sized farms.

In the past two years, small farm advocates worked to win small and mid-size farm amendments to the legislation.  One organization that was key to the efforts was the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition.

The  amendments incorporated into the Food Safety Modernization Act and signed today by the President include:

• An amendment, sponsored by Senator Sanders (I-VT), giving FDA the authority to either exempt farms engaged in low or no risk processing or co-mingling activities from new regulatory requirements or to modify particular regulatory requirements for such farming operations.
• An amendment, sponsored by Senator Bennet (D-CO), to reduce unnecessary paperwork and excess regulation required under the preventative control plan and the produce standards sections of the bill, including instructions to FDA to minimize the number of different standards that apply to separate foods, to make requirements scale appropriate, and to prohibit FDA from requiring farms and other food facilities to hire outside consultants to write food safety plans.
• An amendment, sponsored by Senator Debbie Stabenow (D-MI), to provide for a USDA-administered competitive grants program for food safety training for farmers, small processors and wholesalers, with a priority on small and mid-scale farms.
• An amendment,  sponsored by Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA), to strip the bill of wildlife-threatening enforcement against “animal encroachment” of farms and require FDA to apply sound science to any requirements that might impact wildlife and wildlife habitat.
• An amendment, sponsored by Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), to exempt farmers from extensive and expensive traceability and recordkeeping requirements if they sell food directly to consumers or to grocery stores, to allow labeling that preserves the identity of the farm through to the consumer to satisfy traceability requirements, and to in most cases limit farm recordkeeping to the first point of sale when the product leaves the farm.
• An amendment, sponsored by Senators Jon Tester (D-MT) and Kay Hagan (D-NC),to provide a size appropriate and less costly alternative to preventative control plans and produce standards for farmers who:
  • Direct market more than 50% of their products directly to consumers, stores or restaurants,
  • Have gross sales (direct and non-direct combined) of less than $500,000,
  • Sell to consumers, stores, or restaurants that are in-state or within 275 miles, and
  • Provide their customers with their name, address and contact information.

The NASC will now engage the Administration over the details of how they implement the important provisions we all fought so hard to secure.  Please help them to do this work and to respond quickly to other threats and opportunities for sustainable agriculture by making a tax deductible donation to NSAC today.

The food safety bill hit a roadblock after passing the Senate in late November because a provision requiring the collection of user fees violated the Constitutional mandate that all revenue-generating measures must originate in the House.  House leaders then attached the bill as an amendment to two separate spending bills, neither of which were able to gain Republican support in the Senate.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) circumvented the original technical mistake by attaching the bill to a House-originated measure (HR 2751) authorizing a cash-for-clunkers program – a “shell bill” with bipartisan support.  Senator Tom Coburn (R-OK), who had threatened to filibuster S.510 in November, dropped his objection at the last minute, allowing the food safety bill to pass unanimously.  The Washington Post reported this morning that Coburn staffer John Hart did not know why the Senator relented.

Text of the Bill: HR2751

President Obama is expected to sign the bill before Christmas.

The two-day conference will be packed with presentations, displays and networking opportunities and is geared toward farmers market managers, vendors, and community development stakeholders who want to start or grow farmers’ markets in their local communities.

Topics to be covered include food safety, market funding opportunities, direct marketing, and more. Opportunities to network also will be available, which will give participants the chance to discuss ideas with other farmers market professionals.

The Statewide Farmers Market Conference is a collaborative effort of Ohio State University South Centers, the Ohio Department of Agriculture, the Farmers Market Management Network (FMMN) and the Farmers’ Market Coalition.

The conference will begin with registration at 8:30 a.m., March 4, and run through 4:00 p.m., March 5.

Registration fees for FMMN members are $100 for both days, $70 for Thurs. only or $50 for Fri. only. Non-member fees are $125 for both days, $80 for Thurs. only or $60 for Fri. only. Registration fees include all presentation materials and meals.

Hotel accommodations will be available at the Fairfield Inn and Suites Marriott in Reynoldsburg for an $89 discounted double-room rate until Feb. 22 and will be $109 after that date.

Conference participants are asked to bring their farm or market’s best marketing piece for the “Show n’ Tell Marketing Contest”. All conference attendees will have a chance to vote on the best marketing piece. The winner will receive a prize and publicity in the event news release. The winner will be announced on March 5 during lunch.

For more information about the conference, including hotel information, agenda and directions, log on to: http://ohiofarmersmarkets.osu.edu/conference.htm . To register, contact Melissa Hurtt, at 800-297-2072 ext. 222 or email at hurtt.8@osu.edu .

Issue 2 would establish a Livestock Care Standards Board. It’s about time we had some standards for livestock care! Do you know what horrible things they do to animals on those factory farms?

That’s just the point.  It’s those factory farms that want Issue 2 to pass. They’ve seen voters in California and elsewhere outlaw the use of battery cages so small that the laying hens in them can’t spread their wings and gestation crates that prohibit a hog from turning around for the entire duration of her pregnancy.  Factory farms in Ohio don’t want to have to abide by rules like these, so they’re seeking to preemptively cut off the ability of the voters or the legislature to make any such rules. They hope to do this by creating a board of non-elected political appointees who will have absolute power to make rules related to agriculture in Ohio.

I’m not exaggerating when I say “absolute power.”  This board would be established by our state constitution.  This means that no Ohio court could judge their rules to be unconstitutional. They’d have no direct oversight by the legislature, and the Ohio Department of Agriculture would be obliged to enforce whatever rules this board comes up with.  Issue 2 doesn’t say how the Board is to come up with its rules.  It does say that they shall consider certain things, like food safety and disease prevention, but it doesn’t say that those are the only considerations, or that the stated considerations should supersede all others. That is to say, the Board could declare, “Yes, battery cages probably cause some stress to the hens inside them, but requiring that cages be roomier would increase the cost of producing eggs, and that’s simply unacceptable.”

The board wouldn’t have absolute power. All their regulations would have to be approved by the General Assembly.
Issue 2 doesn’t say that.  (Here’s a link to the actual text of the Joint Resolution from the General Assembly.) It says, “The Board shall have authority to establish standards governing the care and well-being of livestock and poultry in this state, subject to the authority of the General Assembly.”  That doesn’t mean that each regulation that comes out of the Board would have to be submitted for approval from the Assembly.  It just means that the Board has authority to make these rules so long as the Assembly says they do.  In other words, it’s not the standards that are subject to the Assembly’s authority. It’s the Board’s authority that’s subject to the Assembly’s authority. Presumably, if the Board started making rules that resulted in really egregious human rights abuses or something along that line, the Assembly could step in and establish some guidelines.  Still, the existence of the Board would be constitutionally mandated, and the members would be appointed as stated.  There’s nothing the assembly could do to change that.  Basically, if we vote this Board into existence and decide we don’t like some of the rules they’re passing, the only way to do anything about it is for the Ohio voters to pass another constitutional amendment repealing this one.

Besides that, even if the Board did have to get approval from the Assembly for any new agriculture regulations, what’s the likelihood the Assembly would contradict them? This board will be regarded as “the experts” in agriculture in Ohio.  If they–veterinarians and industry bigwigs–say that something is a good practice, how reasonable is it to think that a majority of the General Assembly is going to oppose them?  It’s true that elected politicians like to get re-elected, and that legislators need to be responsive to voters.  They’re not going to want to get caught between the voters and the Board, though, so it’s easier for the legislature to skirt the whole dilemma by giving the Board blanket authority from the outset. Then, if voters protest to their Representative about a new Board regulation, the legislator can say, “I share your concerns, but this isn’t a legislative matter.  It’s the Board that makes these rules. You should appeal to the Board directly.”

The commercial said a Yes vote will ensure safe, locally grown food, and that livestock are well treated.

Big Ag isn’t clueless. They know consumers prefer safe, locally grown food, and that consumers want livestock to be well treated. In other words, they know that the public objects to the way they do business. This is why they fought so hard to prohibit natural dairy farmers from advertising their hormone-free milk as being hormone-free.  (The compromise the courts came up with is that labels can say that milk is rGBH free, but they also have to say that rGBH-free milk is no different than milk from cows on steroids.) They know that if consumers get to choose between safe, ethical, locally grown food from a small, family farm, or scary, questionable stuff produced by a multinational corporation, they’re going to go for the former, often even if it costs more.

To stay in the game, they’ve co-opted these buzz words to push public opinion in favor of a constitutional amendment that can protect them.  Really, it’s a bold move.  Big Ag is trying to win the support of the people who hate them most, because they know that if Issue 2 passes, they don’t have to do anything to please anybody ever again.  The Board can give a free pass to factory farm abuses and outlaw anything that gives small farmers a market advantage. Things like the milk labeling issue wouldn’t be settled in court anymore.  The Board would decide.

Did they lie? Not exactly. It’s not lying if you believe it yourself.  In the opinion of the industry, industrial food is safe.  In their opinion, factory farms are humane.  If a facility in Ohio is raising cattle in a confined feeding operation to sell to Japan, it’s still an Ohio farm.  That makes it local food, right?  If a family owns a farm with several hundred acres, millions of dollars in assets, and several employees, and it raises half a million chickens a year on contract for Tyson, it’s still a family farm, isn’t it?  In their view, what they’re doing is providing safe, local food from family farms. What farmers like me are doing–raising animals naturally and selling directly to the people in our own communities–doesn’t even count.

If you talk to the farmers at your local farmers’ market, most of them will tell you they oppose Issue 2–assuming they’ve researched the matter.  The reasons vary, but the bottom line is the same: whether it will hurt us or not, changing the constitution to establish the Livestock Care Standards Board will not do anything to help us. Having a bunch of corporate lobbyists get together to make rules–whether they favor Big Ag or not–is not going to make my animals happier, me wealthier, or you healthier.  It could possibly have the opposite result, but it can’t improve on what I’m already doing.

Actually, I guess that’s not exactly true. With this enormous amount of power they’d be given, the Board could issue an edict that rules null and void all prohibitions against livestock. They could see to it that chickens, pigs, and dairy goats are welcome in every city, subdivision, and gated community across Ohio, even if clotheslines and non-conforming house colors are not. Yeah…that’ll happen.  I’m sure that’s exactly why it’s being supported by all the factory farm organizations–because they want people to raise their own food in their own communities.  More likely, if we see a loosening of these restrictions come to pass, it’ll be because they want to allow a hog factory to be built in a place where the zoning prohibits it.

Election day is tomorrow.  If you haven’t already voted, please go vote NO on Issue 2.  A local, free-range farmer asked you nicely.

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

H.R. 875 is not likely to make it out of committee. The article points out a couple of other bills that are likely to get more traction and have scarier ramifications for small farmers and producers. Make sure you read the excellent position statement and information by Main Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.

Food safety is all the rage this year in Congress, and rightfully so: between tainted jalapenos, spinach, peanuts, and pistachios, the food supply needs some major help. Everyone seems at the ready with their own version of the solution. But as I feared in a previous post on produce safety, many of the proposed solutions are expensive, technologically complex, and may not actually work.

Perhaps the worst of the lot is HR 1332, Rep. Costa’s Safe FEAST Act of 2009, which is backed by the Big Ag group Western Growers. It would create a HACCP system for produce. (HACCP is the set of burdensome recordkeeping requirements credited with hastening the demise of many small-scale slaughter facilities.) It doesn’t take the size of operations into account. It would pay for inspections by charging fees to farms and processors and would hand the duty of inspection over to third-party certifiers. Because yeah, that’s worked so well for us to date.

Then there’s Rep. DeGette’s H.R. 814, which actually does mandate a National Animal Identification System, which we and lots of other people have major concerns about. And there’s H.R. 759, offered by Rep. Dingell, which requires traceability of food from farm to restaurants and requires that the recordkeeping be done electronically. It also charges fees to processors — small or large — for inspections.

None of these bills are good for small farmers, and I hope we might agree that they would all be worse than H.R. 875.

So here’s the kicker: According to everyone with whom I’ve spoken on the Hill, H.R. 875 is dead in the water. Rep. Waxman, the chair of the committee with jurisdiction over food safety legislation, has made it clear he is not going to move DeLauro’s bill forward. Rep. Dingell’s H.R. 759 is the one that the committee will run with in all likelihood. Many inside-the-Beltway observers assume we’ll end up with a hybrid between Dingell’s bill and Costa’s Safe FEAST Act, much to the delight of Big Ag. In a slightly better-case scenario, parts of DeLauro’s bill will get inserted into the final product — parts that we are not helping her improve by calling her a Monsanto shill and promptly disengaging after we forward this email to all our food-movement acquaintances.

So what can we do?

I’m not OK with the assumption that we’ll end up with a Dingell-Costa monster hybrid to govern the safety of our food system. That’s because I think we have the potential to dramatically reform these bills when they move forward (which they haven’t yet). The frenzy over H.R. 875 shows that it is possible to mobilize a lot of people around a food safety bill, and it shows that there’s a groundswell of support for making food safety regulations small-farm friendly. If we can shift that energy to where it’s needed and hammer home our message — we want safe food and a diverse food system! — and then offer concrete alternatives, then I think we have some hope. MOFGA has a great synopsis of the principles that should guide this work; other groups from New England to North Carolina to California are developing on-farm food safety guidelines that work for small farms. That means we’ll have effective alternative models to show our legislators.

Congress isn’t going to move forward quickly with any of these bills, but we can start early by calling our representatives and telling them what we want to see in food safety legislation. Begin with MOGFA’s list and add your own from there. Mention the serious concerns with Costa’s and Dingell’s bills, H.R. 1332 and H.R. 759. When these bills begin moving forward, we’ll let you know and suggest other actions to take. Join the list-servs of the groups mentioned above that are working to strengthen DeLauro’s bill. And if you receive a misleading e-mail about H.R. 875, point the sender to some of these groups’ resources.

‘Cause I don’t know about you, but I think it’s high time that we set the food safety agenda instead of just reacting to it.

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).