Food Safety Bill Will Hurt Pennsylvanians

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Over the past few years, there have been multiple food safety issues involving everything from peanut butter to lettuce to eggs.  In response to these issues, Congress recently passed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) in a supposed attempt to get safety concerns under control.

This legislation requires more frequent inspections of, seeks to establish new standards for, and levies fees on food production facilities of various kinds.  It also grants the government the power to declare mandatory recalls of foods.  This legislation will cause undue and perhaps unintended hardships for smaller farming operations.

It is important to note that the repeated food recalls rarely if ever result from problems at small farm operations but rather from problems at large industrialized farm operations.  Small farmers growing crops organically already must adhere to state and local standards as well as those of their customers. They also have to pay money to get certified as Naturally Grown (the organic certification commonly used for small farms). With this new piece of legislation, another layer of regulation will be added.  At first it looked as if the mountain of new regulations was going to swallow up all of the small and mid-level farms until Congress approved the Tester amendment to the bill.

The Tester amendment will “exempt small farmers who make less than $500,000 a year in revenue and sell directly to consumers, restaurants, or grocery stores within their states or within 275 miles to avoid expensive food safety plans required of larger operations.” However in order to obtain this exemption, farmers will have to apply to the FDA which will impose upon them much burdensome and time-consuming paperwork.

Also, why should small farmers or co-ops be artificially limited to $500,000 in revenue?  And why should they be restricted as to whom they can sell their crops?  This is a sad in a state that is supposed to be one with free market capitalism.  The sale of organic foods is rapidly expanding and much of these foods are grown in small farm operations like these.  Why should these farms have an artificial limit placed on their business growth when it is quite possible that demand for their products will explode in the next few years? It is also not prudent to set a nominal cap on revenue when inflation and food prices are both rising. Because of this, the $500,000 will not equal the same amount of produce in coming years.

Small farms are not and will not be exempt from inspections for which they are billed, licensing requirements with expensive quality controls, product confiscation without cause or recourse, and even armed raids. Worse, these extreme impositions on entrepreneurs, including armed raids on small farms, are already happening.

For example, in Oregon last year, county health inspectors felt the need to shut down a 7-year old girl’s lemonade stand. First they asked to see her vending license, which would have cost her $120, and then they threatened to fine her $500 which sent her away in tears. Officials were subsequently forced to publicly apologize for their conduct.

Around the same time in Venice, California, an organic food store was raided.  The store was selling raw dairy products, foods with growing demand among health conscious consumers. The security camera caught the raid on film and it is clear that the police were overzealous, even checking under store fixtures with guns drawn.

Here in Pennsylvania similar acts take place as well.  In 2010, the FDA twice went to Dan Allgyer’s farm in Kinzers, PA and accused him of conducting interstate commerce by selling his raw milk. Allgyer is Amish and claims he does not sell his milk to the public at all. He was harassed on two separate occasions and the FDA agents also harassed a visitor to Allgyer’s farm. This resulted in the police being called to deal with the unruly FDA agents.

If such acts are already taking place on an increasing basis, how can we trust the FDA with the greater regulatory and enforcement powers granted to it in the FSMA?  It appears that the federal government has been on a crusade against small organic farms and those that sell their products for years.  A partial exemption for these farms now does not mean that the FDA has any intentions of letting Pennsylvania small farming operations continue operating with what freedom they have left.

The federal government has no business deciding what Pennsylvania citizens can and cannot consume. It is also not the government’s place to be involved in our state’s local operations where farmers are already accountable to the consumers and stores that buy their food.  At best the legislation will make food prices more expensive across the board in a time when most Americans are already struggling financially as well as place an undue burden on family farms -likely shuttering those barely scraping by. Overall the bill gives Americans less choice and competition for the foods they eat.