New federal food-safety rules pose a serious threat to small producers, farmer writes

New U.S. Department of Agriculture regulations aimed at making food safer may sound good, but will be devastating for small producers, a farmer-columnist writes. On the surface, USDA's food safety program, "Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point Principles," sounds great, northwest Missouri farmer Richard Oswald writes for the Daily Yonder. "Everyone wants safe food, but it assumes that food suppliers are all large corporations involved in producing, processing, and merchandising," Richard Oswald "The requirements of HACCP generate mountains of paper, the kind of detailed reporting that only resource-rich big business can handle."

"Small farms work a little differently than big corporations do," Oswald writes. "Farmers do bookwork on rainy days, weekends, or evenings after supper. Hiring a fulltime bookkeeper is something few can afford." While the Obama administration has been a staunch advocate of local food, Oswald writes new HACCP regulations threaten to derail the movement by treating small local producers like "big multinational corporations." The problem with HACCP is that it "fails to recognize that a lot of food ills are cured simply by doing it right, locally, in the first place," Oswald writes.

"Food is not inherently dangerous any more than air or water is dangerous. They’re only dangerous when man or nature has polluted them," Oswald writes. "The way to stop pollution may not be to put more laws on the books but to enforce the laws we have." Farmers across the country have voiced support for USDA-administered "Good Agriculture Practices," a farmer-produced, seven-page rulebook, as an alternative. "HACCP assumes food producers and processors need strict rules to follow, but GAP relies on basics combined with ethical standards of food production by caring local providers," Oswald writes. "Oversight isn’t removed, but it's carried out in a better, less costly context for more effective outcomes." (Read more)