Sunday, November 15, 2009
By Mark Binker
Staff Writer – News-Record.com
RALEIGH — There’s no need to wonder where the collard greens or tomatoes came from that are on sale at Whitaker Farms’ stall at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market.
They came right from Richard and Faylene Whitaker’s Randolph County farm fields or greenhouse. The farm has developed such a reputation among local veggie lovers that something curious happened in 2008 when a salmonella outbreak had folks running scared from tomatoes.
“People knew where ours were coming from, so our sales went up,” Whitaker said. “It was an advantage for me because people knew my product.”
But Whitaker and other small farmers worry about a rewrite of the nation’s food safety regulations expected to be chewed over by a Senate committee this week.
In particular, small farmers say rules designed to prevent transmission of foodborne illnesses by large growers and packers will overwhelm small growers.
“It could eliminate all local leafy greens, I think,” Whitaker said.
The Senate bill is seen as a potential counterweight to a House food safety bill that advocates in the local and organic food movements describe as “hostile” to small farmers.
Roland McReynolds, executive director of the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, argues that the House version would impose regulations meant to govern large, industrial-scale farms on small farmers. The association is a nonprofit that promotes organic and local farming in North and South Carolina.
“That scale of operation needs a completely different regulator approach than a small farmer who grows a quarter acre of salad greens,” McReynolds said.
But representatives for larger producers have argued before Congress that all vegetables should be treated the same way lest there be repeats of the 2006 Salmonella outbreak linked to spinach traced to one farm.
Thomas Stenzel, president of the United Fresh Produce Association, a national organization of produce growers, called for any new standards to be applied nationally. He made that point to the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee recently.
“I also urge the committee to reject calls to water down the safety requirements in this bill as a way to satisfy some who say that small farms or organic farms should not have to comply,” Stenzel said. “Our industry has learned the painful lesson that we are only as strong as our weakest link.”
The HELP committee is due to draft, amend and potentially send the bill to the 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 and the Food and Drug Administration 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.
But unlike Stenzel, Troxler said 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.”
Contact Mark Binker at (919) 832-5549 or mark.binker@news-record.com
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