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  • From: Lawrence London <lfljvenaura@gmail.com>
  • To: permaculture <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: [permaculture] Opinion from Cornucopia Institute: New FDA Rules Will Put Organic Farms Out Of Business | Off The Grid News
  • Date: Sat, 19 Oct 2013 05:41:33 -0400

New FDA Rules Will Put Organic Farms Out Of Business | Off The Grid News
http://www.offthegridnews.com/2013/10/14/new-fda-rules-will-put-organic-farms-out-of-business/
New FDA Rules Will Put Organic Farms Out Of Business

Written by: John Evans <http://www.offthegridnews.com/author/jevans/> Survival
Gardening <http://www.offthegridnews.com/category/survival-gardening-2/>
October
14, 2013 4
Comments<http://www.offthegridnews.com/2013/10/14/new-fda-rules-will-put-organic-farms-out-of-business/#comments>

image credit NewsDesk.SI.edu

In its efforts to ensure the safety of food, the US government may actually
be ignoring the real problem while shutting down small organic farms.

So says the Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy research
group which released a 16-page analysis accusing the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) of implementing the Food Safety Modernization Act
(FSMA) in a way that will crush “the country’s safest farmers” while
leaving what
Cornucopia<http://www.cornucopia.org/FoodSafety/FoodSafetyWhitePaper.pdf>calls
the “root threats to human health” – contaminated manure made on
“factory” livestock farms and certain produce-processing methods –
untouched.

“In response to deadly outbreaks involving spinach, peanut butter and eggs,
Congress acted decisively three years ago to pass the Food Safety
Modernization
Act<http://www.opednews.com/articles/Organic-Industry-Watchdog-by-Will-Fantle-Fda-Poisoning-Food_Food_Food_Food-Contamination-130919-505.html>,”
said Mark A. Kastel, co-director at Cornucopia. “Better oversight is needed
but it looks like regulators and corporate agribusiness lobbyists are
simultaneously using the FSMA to crush competition from the organic and
local farming movement.”

The paper noted a recently-released research report by Cornucopia that
looks at the FDA’s regulations for implementing the FSMA, along with
guidance meant to control Salmonella in eggs from outdoor flocks. The
report concludes that such regulations would fall hardest on family
farmers, and it alleges that the abuses the regulations were meant to
correct “are mostly emanating from industrial-scale farms and giant
agribusiness food-processing facilities.”

“The FDA freely acknowledges that the farm cost of implementing their
proposed
Rule<http://www.fda.gov/Food/guidanceregulation/FSMA/ucm334114.htm>will
drive some producers out of business,” the paper says. “Record
keeping, testing protocols, and the need for an auditor will cost thousands
of dollars. The FDA estimates an approximate annual cost of $4,700 for very
small farms and $13,000 for medium-sized operations. In a very narrow
margin business, these costs can amount to a significant percentage of a
farm family’s net income. And these FDA numbers may be an underestimate.”

**<http://www.survivalseedbank.com?utm_source=OrganicFarms_SSB_Oct14&utm_medium=OrganicFarms_SSB_Oct14&utm_campaign=OrganicFarms_SSB_Oct14>

The report also says an amendment to the FSMA designed to protect farmers
doing less than $500,000 in business will be practically useless; the FDA
is proposing that it can still force small farms to submit to the same
record-keeping and testing requirements as large enterprises.

“In practical terms,” said Judith McGeary, a member of Cornucopia’s policy
advisory panel and executive director of the Farm and Ranch Freedom
Alliance, “the FDA will be able to target small farms one-by-one and put
them out of business, with little to no recourse for the farmers.”

Cornucopia’s report says the FDA has “wildly inflated” the number of
food-borne illnesses coming from farm production (which the paper defines
as “seed to harvest rather than contamination that occurs later in
processing and distribution”).

“The proposed rule is a mess,” Daniel Cohen, owner of Maccabee Seed
Company, a longtime industry observer, told Cornucopia. “The FDA has much
greater expertise on food safety issues from harvest to the consumer, but
focused instead on farming issues from planting to harvest. Limited,
modest, and more focused steps to improve on-farm food-safety could have
produced simple, affordable, effective, and enforceable regulation.”

Cornucopia says the biggest problem is the lack of attention paid to giant
concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs) – otherwise known as factory
farms. It says the huge amount of manure stored at these operations is
“commonly tainted by highly infectious bacteria that have been polluting
America’s air, water and farmlands.”

“Federal regulators propose nothing to address sick livestock in animal
factories and their pathogen-laden manure that is contaminating surrounding
rural communities, nearby produce farms and our food supply,” Kastel said
in the article.

According to the article, the issue of food safety is causing rifts between
organizations that have historically been aligned, such as family farm
organizations and nonprofits focusing on consumer interests. Some advocates
wanted no exemptions to the FSMA act at all.

“Only an idiot would not be concerned with food safety,” Tom Willey, a
Madera, California, organic vegetable producer and longtime organic
advocate told Cornucopia.

“The antibiotic resistant and increasingly virulent organisms contaminating
produce, from time to time, are mutant creatures introduced into the larger
environment from confined industrial animal operations across the American
countryside,” he added. “The FDA’s misguided approach could derail
achievements in biological agriculture and a greater promise of food made
safe through respect for and cooperation with the microbial community which
owns and operates this planet upon which we are merely guests.”



  • [permaculture] Opinion from Cornucopia Institute: New FDA Rules Will Put Organic Farms Out Of Business | Off The Grid News, Lawrence London, 10/19/2013

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