Dear (Name of Representative or Senator)
There are several bills currently under consideration or review by the United States Congress that have the potential for dramatically changing our nation’s agricultural and food system, for better or for worse. These bills include:
- H.R. 759, “The Food and Drug Administration Globalization Act”;
- H.R. 814, “The Tracing and Recalling Agricultural Contamination Everywhere Act”;
- H.R. 875, “The Food Safety Modernization Act”; and
- H.R. 1332, “The Safe Food Enforcement, Assessment, Standards and Targeting Act”.
When bills H.R. 759, H.R. 814, H.R. 875, and H.R. 1332 come before you in Congress, I urge you to work to ensure that the language within the bills is scale-specific and acknowledges that small farmers who direct-market to consumers are faced with different logistical considerations and operating constraints than large agribusinesses and food processors.
In the State of Maine, we have a thriving agricultural community running the gamut from large vegetable and dairy farms that sell their products wholesale, to small organic farms that are becoming increasingly active members of our local communities. MOFGA, the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association is the largest and oldest state organic certification organization in the country, indicating the importance of small organic farms and home gardening to the people, economy, and culture of Maine. MOFGA has expressed concern that these food safety bills, although well-intentioned, may be lacking appropriate language and provisions to protect small family farms from unnecessary costs and regulations.
We are all aware of the dramatic health and economic problems posed by recent cases of food contamination, costing lives, and prompting expensive recalls and investigations. For this reason, few would disagree that our industrial agricultural system, both organic and conventional, needs greater oversight, accountability, and tractability to prevent these types of food disasters from recurring. In each case of food contamination, the problem was identified at its source to originate from the negligent actions of large food corporations or agribusiness farms. Typically, large farms sell their products to wholesale distributors or processors who purchase the raw foods from dozens if not hundreds of sources. As a consequence, food contamination problems in highly processed or distributed products are exceedingly difficult to trace back to their origin. For this reason, I wholeheartedly support any efforts to enhance oversight and accountability for the safe food growing and processing practices of large corporate farms, food processors, and agribusinesses.
However, let us not forget that there is a growing sector of our food economy that consists of small farmers who direct-market their products to local consumers, either at farmers’ markets, through CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) programs, at local grocery stores and restaurants, or at farm stands. These small farms are a vital aspect of many communities’ economies, as well as forming an integral component of our American culture, celebrating relationships between food, consumers, farmers, and the land. The farmers, who often consume the same food that they grow, have a strong vested interest in maintaining its high quality and safety, as their own health depends upon it. Small farmers are also directly accountable to their customers, rely upon devoted clientele that trust the quality of their food, and almost always provide guarantees of their food’s quality. As a consequence, food contamination problems from small farms are highly tractable and very rare.
Unfortunately, much of the language contained within H.R. 759, H.R. 814, H.R. 875, and H.R. 1332 does not distinguish between small farms that directly market to consumers and large agricultural operations that distribute their food through wholesalers. Some of the provisions specified in the bill, if applied to small farms in the same manner as large farms, could be entirely cost-prohibitive for small farmers who do not operate economies of scale.
When you debate the upcoming food safety bills in Congress, for the sake of Maine’s small family farms, and for the people who enjoy locally grown food purchased directly from their farmers, please support scale-specific language which recognizes that the safety challenges of small farms are distinct from large wholesale producers and must be addressed differently. Please also consider the impact of non-microbial health and safety issues associated with food production, such as the effect of potentially toxic pesticides upon farm workers and the environment, the harmful impacts of over-fertilized fields and untreated animal wastes upon watersheds and fisheries, and the overuse of antibiotics in confined animal feeding operations (CAFOs) that has caused the evolution of dangerous, antibiotic-resistant strains of bacteria.
Sincerely,
Thomas H. Young
Alia W. Al-Humaidhi
—
Orizaba Farm
Thomas Young & Alia Al-Humaidhi
2487 Ohio St.
Bangor, ME 04401
207-941-6427
Preserving Nature through
sustainably grown food.
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