Food Safety News! Bill Unanimously Approved by Committee

Which Bill is This? 2749? (4.00 / 1)

Farm to Consumer Legal Defense Fund has raised some serious concern about that particular bill. Thing that makes me nervous is "the best practices" being determined by the FDA and the very limited set of checks and balances put upon this agency.

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by: hamesfarmer @ Wed Jun 17, 2009 at 18:09:51 PM UTC

Does "best practices" (4.00 / 1)

limit farmers from going beyond said "best practices"?

The FDA is currently one big joke, especially when it comes to "best practices".  

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by: nycstray @ Wed Jun 17, 2009 at 19:15:20 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

This is not good news (4.00 / 1)

The small producer who is in my CSA network and who just got her license to produce cheese from her goats' milk will now have to pay yet another fee, after she just shelled out a whole bunch of money to get started. I hope she can make the payment if this thing goes through.

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

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by: Joanne Rigutto @ Wed Jun 17, 2009 at 22:47:51 PM UTC

May help to talk to the CSA members (4.00 / 1)

When we were discussing pricing etc, it was a matter of doing what is best for our farmers and the community. Her CSA members may be willing to pay a bit more for the cheese to help her get through the fee hike and up front.

As a CSA member, when you divide those costs over the group, it really isn't that bad, and most of us would rather pay a bit more than lose the food source. We have over 100 members (in our location), so splitting it would be doable. Even in the smaller groups, spreading it out makes it doable. If any one of my farmers suddenly became responsible for an unmanageable fee, I'm sure our core group would discuss it and then throw out options to our community. More than likely, the new fees could be incorporated into the next season as I would be surprised if they didn't have a future date for this to start. We added a small admin fee this yr (new tent, tables, scales, farm trip transportation etc) and we still sold out early. The demand is there. We have 3 new CSAs in our hood this season.

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by: nycstray @ Wed Jun 17, 2009 at 23:23:14 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

I don't think she is a regular subscription CSA (4.00 / 1)

I think she sells buy the piece like I do. So there are no captive customers to split the expense of extra licensing between.

The problem with applying these inspection fees at the level they are using to the extremely small producers is that they have a much harder time covering the costs than the large processors. If you're making $50,000/year from your cheese, $500 is a lot higher percentage of your income than even $1,000 for a plant producing several million dollars worth of income.

I'd like to know if this will also apply to bee keepers, as Bud Dingler said. When you sell honey, generally you're harvesting, straining and packaging it. If that's the case, when I eventually have bees, I'll harvest the honey for myeself. I can drink mead and honey Kvaas as easily as I can drink grape wine and beer.

It also means that there is now way in hell that I'll ever get a license to make cheese or anything else from the extra produce or milk I grow or the goats produce.

Geeze, I wonder if they're going to start applying this to onfarm poultry slaughter. That'd do in a lot of the pastured broilers people buy at the farmers markets.

That's the problem with one size fits all policy making.  

Regarding locavores as elitists - explain to me how supporting local business is elitist....

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by: Joanne Rigutto @ Thu Jun 18, 2009 at 00:08:17 AM UTC

[ Parent ]