Big new federal regulations proposed for small farms

March 19, 12:22 PMNashville Country Living ExaminerNicole Sauce

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A big new federal food-safety bureaucracy being proposed in Congress could impact how small and independent American farmers do business, and not in ways that promote viability and growth, worries the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund.

Last month, U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a Connecticut Democrat, introduced HR 875, the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009, which includes provisions for establishing a  new “Food Safety Administration” within the Department of Health and Human Services.

DeLauro, chairwoman of a House of Representatives Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the FDA, sees an “urgency that we move on strong food-safety reform,” and says it is a “high priority in Congress.”

According to a March 18 Reuters article, DeLauro wants heavy federal emphasis on preventing food contamination. In addition to the new agency, DeLauro wants to award the FDA mandatory recall authority, implement traceability and stiffen penalties for failing to meet food-safety regulations.

What DeLauro is planning in fact constitutes “a tremendous expansion of federal power, particularly the power to regulate intrastate commerce,” said FCLDF in a press release issued this month. “While the proposed legislation tries to address the many problems of the industrial food system, the impact on small farms if the bill becomes law would be substantial and not for the better,” reads the release. “HR 875 is a major threat to sustainable farming and the local food movement.”

One local Tennessee community subscription farmer, Angela Ott of Birdsong Hollow Farm, worries that without “clear exemption(s)…for small-scale, local producers” written into the bill, America’s food supply “will become less safe.”

“Many of the local growers will simply quit and even more of our food then will come from distant, anonymous agribusinesses,” said Ott.

Even some of the new regulatory efforts supporters, like Food Law Prof Blog, admit there’s legitimate “concern as to the vagueness of the language,” especially considering the “additional power it gives (the feds) to regulate any farm.”

Clearly, this is a bill that bears watchful tracking by advocates of Tennessee agriculture and rural lifestyle.