Contact September 19, 2013 for an instant release: kastel mark, 608-625-2042 watchdog for the organic industry: The good food movement faces extinction due to FDA food safety regulations. Proposed regulations may force the safest and most skilled farmers in the country out of business, according to a recent study http://www.cornucopia.org/2013/09/fda-food-safety-rules-threaten-crush-good-food-movement/ cornucopia, wi The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is finally ready to put the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) into effect after years of congressional debate, interagency meetings, lobbyist activity, and an endless string of food poisoning incidents. However, the FDA’s draft regulations are so misguided that they could financially ruin the nation’s safest farmers while ignoring the real threats to public health: high-risk produce processing procedures and manure contaminated with deadly infectious pathogens produced on factory livestock farms. This is according to a recently released white paper by the Cornucopia Institute, which can be found at http://www.cornucopia.org/foodsafety/. Congress acted decisively three years ago to pass the Food Safety Modernization Act in response to deadly outbreaks involving spinach, peanut butter, and eggs, said Mark A. Kastel, codirector of the Wisconsin-based agriculture policy research organization Cornucopia Institute. better oversight is needed but it looks like regulators and corporate agribusiness lobbyists are simultaneously using the fsma to crush competition from the organic and local farming movement. The FDA’s draft regulations for implementing the new food safety law (http://www.fda.gov/food/guidanceregulation/fsma/ucm334114.htm) and a new FDA guidance (http://www.fda.gov/food/guidanceregulation/guidancedocumentsregulatoryinformation/eggs/ucm360028) intended to control salmonella in eggs produced by outdoor flocks are both thoroughly examined in the Cornucopia report. The analysis comes to the conclusion that the new plans, which are a misguided effort to curb abuses mostly coming from industrial-scale farms and massive agribusiness food-processing facilities, will trap some of the safest family farmers in the nation in expensive and onerous rules. Advocates for family farms and organizations that support customers seeking premium food believed they had won when Congress passed the Tester/Hagan amendment, which exempted farmers with annual sales of less than $500,000 from the new regulations. However, the FDA is more interested in a one-size-fits-all approach to food safety regulation, according to Cornucopia’s research. The research really implies that small farmers are not so exempt after all. The FDA is suggesting that it may almost instantly order small farms to adhere to the same costly testing and record-keeping standards as industrial farms, without the need for a due process. The FDA’s economic analysis also reveals that farms over $500,000—still small in the produce industry—will be significantly impacted, with some being forced out of business. In practical terms, explains Judy McGeary, executive director of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance and member of the Cornucopia Institute’s Policy Advisory Panel, the fda will be able to target small farms one-by-one and put them out of business, with little to no recourse for the farmers. the added expense and record-keeping time will potentially force many small and medium-sized local farms — owner-operated, selling at farmers markets directly to consumers or to local grocers and natural food co-ops — out of business, said kastel. The FDA has greatly overstated the number of foodborne illnesses that result from agricultural production, according to the institute’s study (from seed to harvest, as opposed to contamination that happens later in processing and distribution). Additionally, it claims that 90% of harmful outbreaks in fruits and vegetables are the result of certain processed crops, such fresh-cut or produce cultivated in particular areas, which the FDA has neglected to acknowledge. the most recent Taylor Farms cyclospora epidemic (http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/30/business/taylor-farms-big-food-supplier-grapples-with-frequent-recalls.html?_r=0) in addition to imports from nations like Mexico] However, the data shows that sprouts, other pre-cut veggies, and fresh-cut packaged or boxed salad mix are much more prone to contamination. Longtime industry watcher Daniel Cohen, owner of Maccabee Seed Company, called the new regulation a mess. While concentrating on agricultural difficulties from planting to harvest, the FDA has significantly more experience with food safety challenges from harvest to consumer. Simplified, inexpensive, efficient, and legally enforceable regulations may have been the result of taking small, targeted efforts to enhance food safety on farms. Cornucopia claims that the biggest missed opportunity in the cooperative process including the FDA, Congress, and the US Department of Agriculture was the disregard for the massive concentrated animal feeding operations, or CAFOs (factory farms), that raise cattle. These industrial farms contain enormous amounts of manure, which is often contaminated by extremely contagious germs that have been contaminating America’s air, water, and farmlands. federal regulators propose nothing to address sick livestock in animal factories and their pathogen-laden manure that is contaminating surrounding rural communities, nearby produce farms and our food supply, said kastel. Not another organic egg? The industrial-scale egg buildings that house thousands of chickens in hazardous and unclean circumstances came to light in 2010 after the salmonella epidemic in eggs that was concentrated in Iowa. A new set of guidelines and extensive regulation for organic growers were brought about by the salmonella epidemic. Federal law mandates that organic farms provide their hens access to the outdoors, and Cornucopia claims that the new FDA guidelines seriously jeopardize this management strategy. And instead of growing birds outdoors, they are doing this in spite of scientific data linking older, large industrial farms with cages and forced molting—practices prohibited in organics—to greater incidences of disease contamination. their new guidance, on one hand, will make it difficult, expensive and maybe even impossible to have medium-sized flocks of birds outside, said kastel. Meanwhile, the national organic program of the US Department of Agriculture has been manipulated by the FDA to declare that little ‘porches,’ which house a negligible portion of the flock, would henceforth be recognized as legitimate ‘outdoor access.’ This serves as a warning to traditional egg producers who are keeping up to 100,000 chickens in cages and marketing them as organic. According to the Organic Foods Production Act (http://www.ams.usda.gov/amsv1.0/getfile?ddocname=stelprdc50603700), if enforcement action is not taken against large industrial operations that confine laying hens and broilers indoors, the Cornucopia Institute has publicly stated that they are investigating legal action against regulators. In Washington, the topic of food safety has generated controversy and divisions even within consumer advocacy charities and family farm associations that have traditionally supported organic and regional food. Consumer activists pushed for no exemptions, despite data from agricultural policy experts showing smaller, family-run farms are safer by nature. Tom Willey, a longstanding supporter of organic farming and grower of organic vegetables in Madera, California, said that only an idiot would not be concerned with food safety. Added Willey: Mature animals released into the broader environment from restricted industrial livestock operations over the American countryside are sometimes the antibiotic-resistant and virulent microbes polluting products. The FDA’s flawed strategy has the potential to undermine advancements in biological agriculture and a larger promise of safe food produced in collaboration and respect for the microbial community that owns and runs our planet, of which humans are just visitors. -30- The Cornucopia Institute is a charity dedicated to study and instruction in support of the ecological and sound business practices that underpin organic and sustainable agriculture. The Cornucopia Institute conducts research and investigations on agricultural and food problems in order to provide family farmers, consumers, good food movement partners, and the media with the necessary knowledge. related articles: fda regulations, organic,
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