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

Senate floor Wednesday. Should it pass the full Senate, the bill would need to be reconciled with the House version.

Both of North Carolina’s senators, Republican Richard Burr of Winston-Salem and Democrat Kay Hagan of Greensboro, are part of the HELP committee. “I want to be sure that whatever the FDA is looking at, from the standpoint of regulation, our small farmers are protected,” Hagan said during a recent conference call with reporters.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have inspected various parts of the nation’s food supply. A USDA division, for example, regulates the meat-packing industry. The FDA sets nutrition and safety standards for eggs, cheese, fruits and vegetables. Both pieces of legislation aim to clear up the FDA’s jurisdiction to issue recalls on tainted food products. Now, Burr said, the agency often has to ask for food producers or packagers to voluntarily recall their products if a problem is found. “My perception was they had the jurisdiction to recall,” Burr said. “We’ve clarified it.”

Other parts of the Senate bill would focus on working with and funding state agriculture agencies, who already do much of the food inspection and safety work. “Some states don’t do the job as well as others,” said N.C. Agriculture Commissioner Steve Troxler. He has been working through the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture to help shape the food safety bills.

The FDA, he said, should set national guidelines that local agriculture departments enforce. And he argued the federal government needed to do a better job of funding local food inspections and labs.

“What we’ve got now is a reactionary system where we depend on recalls,” Troxler said. It would be better to prevent outbreaks in the first place. To do that, he said, stepped-up inspections of foreign produce and the ability to trace a tainted product’s origin are needed.

Binker notes that, unlike Stenzel, Troxler says traceability standards could differ depending on where and how produce was sold. “Somewhere in the chain there’s got to be somebody who knows where a product came from,” Troxler said. “But it certainly doesn’t need to fall on the backs of small farmers.”

Mike Causey, who grows vegetables just outside the city limits and sells them at a downtown Greensboro farmers market, agrees with that sentiment. Too many regulations, he said, could make it too expensive for farmers like him to provide the kind of produce that his customers want.<

“We have signs telling the person exactly what farm the produce came from and when it was picked and that sort of thing,” Causey said. “People like that. They like to know where their food comes from.”