A food-safety bill in the Senate has gained bipartisan support and is expected to pass easily when Congress returns from recess next week. Large farms have mostly supported the bill, which would "require more FDA inspections of farms, food production and processing facilities, give the agency enhanced authority to order recalls, and force better recordkeeping as food moves from farms to store shelves," Jean Spencer of The Wall Street Journal reports, but small farms "worry the measure's fees and inspection requirements would be ruinously expensive and are pushing for exemptions."
"I know people who have been small farmers for 25 to 30 years who are looking to get out of the business because food safety is becoming so alarmist," Mary Alionis, whose eight-acre Whistling Duck Farm in Grants Pass, Oregon, sells produce to farmers markets and restaurants, told Spencer. Deborah Stockton, executive director of the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, a coalition of small farmers, added, "Small farm groups seriously have problems with this bill. We are not afraid to stand up to it."
Sponsors hope the bill will help "prevent widespread outbreaks of food-borne illnesses and give the FDA more resources to trace those that occur to their source," Spencer writes. Large farmers have mostly agreed that the costs they would incur from added regulation would be small compared with the potential financial damage of a product recall. Small farmers and advocates of the local food movement, which some fear would be hurt by the bill, argue these producers should have less restrictions, a decision that large producers say is unfair. (Read more)
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