Seemingly overnight, there appears to be mass hysteria among the small family farm and organic food movement about “The Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009″, or HR 875. It seems that folks believe this legislation – along with other bills currently alive at the legislature (SB 425, HR 814, HR 759, HR1332) – are intentionally positioned to kill the family farm in America.
In the past year or so, we’ve seen nation-wide food safety scares that included poison peanuts, unsafe spinach, and bogus beef. Much of this is due to the carelessness and negligence of “factory” farming and filthy packaging plants. Clearly we need a new regulatory focus that keeps our increasingly industrialized food production systems in check. It makes perfect sense that lawmakers are listening to their constituencies and working to ensure that they can safely consume whatever food they want to. But, therein lies the rub. Can we eat whatever food we want to and still be safe?
The short answer is no. There are almost 2 million farms in the United States. We must think about where our food comes from at the point of sale. Sure, legislators want to fix what’s broken – and we applaud them for that, but we need to continue to make decisions about our food consumption that are based on what we know about factory farms. We also need to do our jobs as citizens to make sure that smaller farms don’t end up competitively disadvantaged by the new laws.
Long story short: us organic foodies and family farmers need to put our voices where our mouths are and become engaged in this process. Let’s make sure they don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater here. (Wow, two clichés in one paragraph!)
While some folks speculate that there are inherently evil intentions behind HR 875, that kind of judgement is a dead end and turns some people off. Let’s try a little harder, shall we folks? Instead of accusing them of being the devil’s handmaidens, what we really need to do is let our legislators know that we are watching as they mull over these so-called “food safety” bills.
We can pretty much count on the fact that their focus is to try and prevent quality control nightmares in our food production system. Here in Hawaii, 85% of what we consume comes from someplace else. That means that we have an 85% chance that what we eat is contaminated – we didn’t see where it was grown, we can’t visit the packaging plants, we didn’t witness it’s journey thousands of miles to get here. There is something wrong with that – and there are multiple ways to approach that problem.
Wading through dense legal language and long documents is a challenge for a lot of us. The folks at Cornucopia Institute in Wisconsin did a great job and we suggest you read their report.
There are a few things we can do to ensure our food safety while protecting family farms and organic food products. Here are some suggestions:
- Join the Cause. Requires a Facebook account.
- Sign the petition.
- Contact the legislators involved in the bills. Let them know that the American farming community is not “one size fits all”. While ensuring our food safety is a good thing, they must be sure to protect smaller, local, family farms in the process. They are already struggling to bring us healthy food – we don’t want to see them go away because of laws that make them unable to compete.
- Contact the Sponsors of the Bills:
- The Energy & Commerce Committee – Chairman is Henry Waxman (D-CA).
- John Dingell (D-MI), the sponsor of HR759
- Rosa DeLauro (D-CT), the sponsor of HR 875
- Jim Costa (D-CA), the sponsor of HR 1332
- Contact the Sponsors of the Bills:
- Check to see if your legislators are co-sponsors of the bill. If they are, PLEASE contact them. Click here and scroll down to the bottom of the press release to see if they are a part of this. If your legislators are not co-sponsors, write/call them anyway. Click here to look them up.
- Buy local. There is no better way to support local family farms than to put your money where your mouth is. If your neighborhood grocery store doesn’t carry locally produced foods, demand that they do, or shop someplace else. (Local Harvest has a great guide to farmer’s markets near you.)
- Grow your own! We’re just a week after the Spring Equinox, and it’s the perfect time to plant a garden!
- Offer support to your local organic farming organizations. On Maui, we suggest you support the Maui Aloha Aina Association.
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Thank you for you insights on these bills.
“there are almost 2 million farms in the United States.”
The number of farms and farmers has been steadily shrinking for half a century, since about 1940, from a high of about 31 million, and is a direct result of the work done by motorized equipment- the very machines that are responsible for the a not too small percent of carbon emissions, inefficient space use in industrial ag, and the displacement into service sector jobs- slinging coffee, slinging burgers, and so on.
There are now less than 2 million farms in the USA, and less than 4.5 million farmers, over half of which are migrant laborers. 85-90% of the food eaten in this country is produced on industrial scale by industrial practices, all of which degrade the landscape and ecology, produce less healthy foods and more disease. Meanwhile, we loose one small farm every thirty seconds.
The increase in disease can be overwhelmingly attributed to these industrial factory farm processes. HR 875 and the associated legislation is, in fact, aimed at making these farms accountable. Unfortunately, the bill also applies to the small farms, and as a one solution package for the problems of industrial agriculture, threatens the historically and factually healthier and more productive-per-unit small and family farms by making them answer to the same maintenance and accountability programs as industrial producers, which is not only cost prohibitive, but in many cases wold make their farms and produce LESS SAFE and LESS PROFITABLE.
In addition to the link that Sara has posted, I recommend looking at
which has a line by line review of HR875.
There are many other ideas about the unequal distribution of burden and results of these bills, and they are easy enough to google.
Read Chris Cooks.
Youtube interview with
This outlines WHY the Industrial Agriculture producers must be monitored and brought to accountability.
But we cannot apply these laws to all farms, as they will challenge and even destroy small farms, and other practices such as biodynamics, integrated animal-vegetable polycrop systems, traditional agroforestry, cultural ethnobotanical practices, even seed saving.
And then Read anything by you can get your hands on.
Educate yourself, your neighbors and your legislators.
GOOD LUCK. EAT WELL. THRIVE.
Thank you for posting this message. I read HR 875 for the first time last night and I think I am still in a bit of a state of shock. I intend to use the above links to contact my congressional representatives and register my concerns about this resolution. After reading HR 875 I understand that if this becomes reality every small farm, orchard, rancher, or restaurant would simply close their doors.
As I interpret this legislation, the government intends to have literally every molecule that ends up as a bite of food tracked and surveilled from DNA inception to human ingestion. I imagine that the amount of paperwork is going to be intolerable. Infractions could create fines of up to $1,000,000 per infraction. An appointed Administrator determines the level of the penalty. Criminal penalties of 5-10 years in prison may be incurred if someone becomes ill or dies. Only the biggest players in the food industry could afford to take the risks of growing, producing, and serving food.
I have mentioned just one area of the legislation which concerns me. Read it for yourself.
Thanks for both of your comments. Deston, I really appreciate your offering of statistics about the decrease in the number of farms in America, as well as the additional links. I find the information at the Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund especially useful and I look forward to their updates as the Bills move forward. And Terri, thanks for sharing your specific concerns regarding the ability for the biggest players to assume the risks. These are very important points and I look forward to continued sharing. Feel free to post more links here in the comments – I’m trying to get this article in front of as many eyeballs as possible, so that we can solve this together.
To track HR875, use this handy link:http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=h111-875