So Arcata just had its first farmer’s market of the year and amidst all the sunshine and colorful produce were panicked whispers of conspiracy. There’s a bill being pushed through Congress, HR 875 (aka the “Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009”), that aims to create a new Food Safety Administration; among other things, it will monitor all commercial food-producing facilities, require written safety logs, send out inspectors, and enforce minimum food safety standards.
Immediately, there is discontent and panic in this city and in greater Humboldt County; this is an area with a lot of small-time (often family-owned-and-operated) organic farms. No one is opposed to the overall idea of food safety, but in a nutshell, this particular bill supposedly attempts to impose the same standards to all agricultural operations regardless of size, requiring tests and procedures impractical for (and lethal to) small ops.
Immediately I am skeptical. Passionate self-interest rarely lends itself to objectivity, and alongside that basic synopsis I soon heard claims that the bill is supported by and being pushed through by the likes of Monsanto, that it’s being stealthily fast-tracked through Congress before public awareness has a chance to take root, that it would require specific types of machinery and fertilizers, that all in all it’s Big Agri’s plan to decapitate the sustainable-local-organic foods movement in its infancy.
How much of that is true? I’m doing my own research as I post this, but there’s a lot to shit to plow through and the full text is not a fun read. In the meantime, thought I’d ask for opinions here in the hopes that they’ll be more informed than what I’ve found elsewhere thus far.
On my reading of the bill, nothing about the law actually creates substantive standards, it just empowers the new agency to promulgate regulations of food safety. When they do so, they could distinguish between ma and pop organic farms and Monsanto. It isn’t at all unusual for there to be different regulatory standards for different-sized businesses.
Is there some particular provision of the bill that seems like to “kill small organic farms?” Or that would “require specific types of machinery and fertilizers?” I’m not seeing it.
At this point, I think a more justifiable concern would be that the agro-industry will be more capable of lobbying the new agency than small organic farms, so the regulations will inevitably favor them. But that’s more of a criticism of regulation generally and would seem to be true of any regulation of food safety at all.
Right now, a number of different US agencies regulation food safety. The primary ones are the FDA and the USDA, but according to this WSJ article, a dozen different agencies have a hand in food regulation.
The Obama administration has indicated that it wants tougher regulations to control things like bacterial outbreaks and mad cow disease and that it wants to consolidate food safety regulation under one agency.
This bill looks to me like it’s the consolidation bill. Of course, anytime you have a bill moving through Congress, it’s open for special interests to inject something into the bill, and that should be a concern, but I think the basic idea of consolidating food safety regulation is a decent one to try out.
Just a question/osbervation from me - is there any chance this is aimed at hanging on to market share in the US and keeping out imports from countries with less stringent standards?
Like every call for regulation, there is a bootleggers and baptists alliance. Big business has always been the primary driver behind clean food laws. Small businesses and big both will have to comply with the regulations, but since big business can amortize the expense over greater volume it will harm them less. If the regulation presents barriers to entry, big business can raise prices. The correct answer is both.
Big business has always fought inspection and convinced the Repubs that we could rely on the manufacturers to do their own inspections. The regulators were gutted in the last decade.
While I buy that as a general statement about regulation, it is still too early to judge whether that general criticism applies to this law. It depends on what the regulations entail. Not all costs are fixed–many vary with scale. And, indeed, not all regulations entail costs for all of the regulated entities. If the law regulates the type of fertilizer used if you use chemical fertilizers, it will be a subsidy to organic farms instead of a cost.
It it worth noting that the drafters seem concious of the effect the bill may have on small businesses. Section 206(c)(5) provides that small businesses will have a slower schedule for adoption of regulations. The act also provides for assistance to businesses that need help complying.
“Meh,” in this case means the most significant parts of the OP’s concerns are unfounded. There’s been a lot of talk lately about separating the F and the D in the FDA to improve focus. And it’s also true that there have been a number of big food recalls in the last couple of years. Pinning all of that on sinister big business [cue the theremin] or Monsanto, the boogeyman of everybody who thinks organic is a lifestyle rather, is not realistic.