by David Gumpert
These are heady times for foodies—you know, the people who love
farmers markets and community supported agriculture (CSAs), and hate
Big Ag. They’ve turned the documentary movies “Food Inc.” and “Fresh!”
into big hits. And they’ve turned “Slow food” into a generic term
(there actually is an organization by that name that boasts more than 100,000 members in 132 countries).
A seeming army of foodie bloggers (of which I am one) sees the hand
of Big Ag’s pesticides and feedlot practices (Monsanto, Con Ag, Tyson,
etc.) in the explosive growth of chronic disease, and genetically
modified food. It’s a neat good-guy/bad-guy scenario, with only one
wild card: Is the U.S. government with or against the foodies?
The movement is about more than symbolism. After years of decline during the last century, the number of small farms (those
with less than $250,000 annual sales) increased about one percent
between 2002 and 2007. Many of these farms have adopted innovations in
farming practices popularized by farmers like Eliot Coleman and Joel
Salatin—using compost and seaweed rather than commercial fertilizers
to build up soil, putting chickens onto pasture so they eat bugs and
grass, using pigs as low-maintenance rototillers, and substituting
mineralization and homeopathic programs for antibiotics and
vaccinations to improve animal health.
Increasingly, the heroes in this ongoing food drama are President
and Michelle Obama, along with the president’s appointees at the U.S.
Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration.
Michelle Obama has received much acclaim for planting an organic
vegetable garden on the White House lawn. A popular blog, Obama
Foodorama, even chronicles the Obamas’ food and eating experiences,
including menus at state dinners, and Michelle Obama’s guest appearance
on Sesame Street, promoting fresh vegetables.
Subordinates are trying to get with the program. Over the summer,
the U.S. Department of Agriculture set up a farmers market in a parking
lot outside its massive Washington headquarters. And to the accolades
of foodie bloggers everywhere, it launched an initiative, “Know Your
Farmer, Know Your Food,” to encourage expansion of the local food
boomlet.
It’s tempting to view all these developments as part of a shift in
long-time official priorities, to encourage small farms practicing
sustainability, at the expense of Big Ag. Unfortunately, this view is
more mirage than reality.
In a classic example of the government speaking out of both sides of
its mouth, the Obama administration is actively supporting another
movement—one that really does favor Big Ag at the expense of the
budding local food movement. It’s the Congressional push for sweeping
food safety legislation, which has passed the U.S. House, and is
pending a vote by the full Senate. It’s overlooked by the foodies
because it’s endorsed by a wide range of consumer organizations, and
besides, who wouldn’t want to counter the high profile cases of serious
illness, and even a number of deaths, from contaminated spinach,
hamburger, peppers, and peanut butter, among others, over the last
three years?
But in their 119-page House and 133-page Senate versions, these
bills do much more than increase the FDA’s army of food inspectors.
They take a sledgehammer to a problem that may well benefit more from
highly targeted, and less invasive approaches. Consider:
Both
bills require all food producers, including even the smallest makers of
specialized cheeses and jams, to put together highly detailed
production plans (known as HACCP plans, for Hazard Analysis and
Critical Control Points), at a cost of many thousands of dollars
requiring dozens and sometimes even hundreds of hours of specialized
input designed to identify potential “hazards” in the food production
process; this despite the fact that nearly all cases of food-borne
illness have come from products made and distributed by mid-size and
large concerns.
Moreover, it allows FDA inspectors complete discretion in approving
or disapproving such plans. Working within such an arbitrary system
isn’t a big problem for multimillion dollar corporations, which can
afford fines of possibly $10,000 a day (under the House legislation)
and expensive consultants to work through any problems.
It was a USDA requirement in the late 1990s that slaughterhouses
have HACCP plans that led to the demise of hundreds of small local and
regional slaughterhouses. Today’s small farms raising cattle and pigs
bear a heavy burden as a result—they must often schedule slaughtering
months in advance and send their animals hundreds of miles away, only
to be shipped back for local distribution, adding substantial costs and
energy consumption.
The pending legislation actually thrusts not only the federal
government, but also possibly the United Nations, right into the middle
of the food production process currently experiencing so much
innovation in the U.S. The Senate bill requires within one year the
development of “updated good agricultural practices”—a seemingly benign
term that is used by the Farming and Agricultural Organization of the
United Nations (GAP, in its lingo) to describe its establishment of
standards covering use of fertilizers, crop rotation, animal grazing
practices, and other such fundamentals of farming. The U.N. organization
has been active working with farmers in places like Egypt, Uganda,
Zambia, South Africa, and Burkina Faso.
How will the U.N.’s standards mesh with those of Eliot Coleman, Joel
Salatin, and other American farming innovators developing sustainable
techniques for rejuvenating soil or aging cheeses or bringing back old
varieties of vegetables and fruits? The Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense
Fund worries that the FDA “will adopt regulations that treat small
farms growing a diversity of crops organically (whether certified or
not) the same as a facility growing thousands of acres of a single crop
conventionally.” Farms that fail to measure up—perhaps fail to follow
government standards for making compost or for crop rotation—would have
their products considered “adulterated,” according to the FTCLDF, and
thus be subject to huge fines.
In allowing for the establishment of “science-based minimum
standards for the safe production and harvesting of those types of
fruits and vegetables that are raw agricultural commodities,” the
Senate bill provides an opening for the FDA to embark on a big foodie
no-no: the irradiation of leafy green vegetables. The FDA gave
irradiation its stamp of approval last year.
On and on it goes. The legislation thrusts the FDA, which has been
limited to regulating food and drugs involved in interstate commerce,
into the intrastate sphere, allowing it to regulate businesses that are
truly local. “The bottom line is that local jam-makers, cheese-makers,
and bread-makers have to register with the FDA, and if (the Senate
bill) passes, they will buried in federal red tape,” says Judith
McGeary, head of the Farm and Ranch Freedom Alliance, and a lawyer.
The real impact of the pending food legislation is difficult to
fully gauge, partly because the language in the two bills is in many
places vague and obtuse. For example, the distinction between farmers
and food producers is up for grabs. “If a farm processes food—which
could be as simple as sun drying tomatoes or making jams from their own
fruits—it will be treated as a processor” under the Senate bill, says
McGeary.
As admirable as this legislative push is for trying to fix flaws in
existing food safety regulations, and thus reduce serious outbreaks of
illness, it is equally onerous for going way beyond the business of
safety. The legislation would do better to focus on identifying and
going after repeat offenders and large producers that are the most
frequent food-borne-illness culprits rather than placing unreasonable
burdens on the budding local-food movement. Otherwise, there could well
be many fewer smaller farms and food producers turning out the
locally-produced items so prized by foodies.
David E. Gumpert writes about the business of food and health at his blog . He is the author of the new book, The Raw Milk Revolution: Behind America’s Emerging Battle Over Food Rights.
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