The Food Safety Enhancement Act: HR2749

Many of you all have already heard about this Food Safety Act. It is being voted on today (Thursday) early afternoon in the House. Yesterday it failed to acheive a 2/3 vote, thanks to many of our Oklahoma representatives, but congress has suspended the normal rules to allow a simple majority vote to pass the act today. This is the Act that you probably received emails about saying "their going to make Organic farming illegal!!!" and whatnot, which is quite an exaggeration. However, as small scale vegetable producers, we do have MANY concerns about it.

The Act as it stands requires frequent FDA inspections of all farms and processing facilities, an across-the-board $500 fee for all farms big or small, and extensive expensive traceability guidelines. Luckily there is an exemption for producers who sell the majority of their products direct-to-consumer.

Here are the biggest problems we have with this Act:

1. It does little to address the real food safety problems such as: sourcing food from China, industrial food processing and confinement animal feed-out operations. The scale and complexity of the industrial food distribution system severs the farmers' accountability to the consumer. There has NEVER been a Food Safety issue arising from Organic produce. Food borne illness usually originates from large scale processing facilities, not Organic Farms.

2. It is not scale appropriate. Small scale family farms do not pose the same risks as corporate farms and processing facilities. Small scale farms have inherent traceability because there is rarely more than 1 stop between farmer and customer. Small scale farms should not be required to pay the same fees, provide the same extensive paper and electronic records, and pay the same penalties for noncompliance.

3. Small scale farms that wholesale directly to a retailer or food preparer (restaurant, cafeteria), should also be exempt from these requirements.

Read more about it at the Organic Consumers' Association website.

We'll be on the news again tomorrow morning to discuss this Act. It is Channel 6 news at 6am.