Possible costs of tougher U.S. food safety bill worry small farmers

There is no need to wonder where the collard greens or tomatoes came from that are on sale at Whitaker Farms’ stall at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market. They came right from Richard and Faylene Whitaker’s Randolph County farm fields or greenhouse. The farm has developed such a reputation among local veggie lovers that something curious happened in 2008 when a salmonella outbreak had folks running scared from tomatoes.

“People knew where ours were coming from, so our sales went up,” Whitaker said. “It was an advantage for me because people knew my product.”

The Greensboro News & Record’s Mark Binker writes, though, that Whitaker and other small farmers worry about a rewrite of the U.S. food safety regulations expected to be debated by a Senate committee this week. In particular, small farmers say rules designed to prevent transmission of food-borne illnesses by large growers and packers will overwhelm small growers.

“It could eliminate all local leafy greens, I think,” Whitaker said.

The Senate bill is seen as a potential counterweight to a House food safety bill that advocates in the local and organic food movements describe as “hostile” to small farmers. Roland McReynolds, executive director of the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, argues that the House version would impose regulations meant to govern large, industrial-scale farms on small farmers. The association is a nonprofit that promotes organic and local farming in North and South Carolina. “That scale of operation needs a completely different regulator approach than a small farmer who grows a quarter acre of salad greens,” McReynolds said.

Representatives for larger producers, however, have argued before Congress that all vegetables should be treated the same way lest there be repeats of the 2006 Salmonella outbreak linked to spinach traced to one farm.

Thomas Stenzel, president of the United Fresh Produce Association, a national organization of produce growers, called for any new standards to be applied nationally. He made that point to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee recently. “I also urge the committee to reject calls to water down the safety requirements in this bill as a way to satisfy some who say that small farms or organic farms should not have to comply,” Stenzel said. “Our industry has learned the painful lesson that we are only as strong as our weakest link.”

The HELP committee is due to draft, amend and potentially send the bill to the