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There are concerns that newly re-drafted food safety rules could place an unfair burden on small, organic, and family farms in Ohio. The FDA made changes to key provisions of the proposed Food Safety Modernization Act.
Amalie Lipstreu with the Ohio Ecological Food and Farm Association says while there are improvements in the rules, they are not scale-appropriate and could subject smaller producers to regulations designed for industrial operations.
“Everyone does have a role to play in ensuring that food is safe but if the rules don’t work for family farmers they’re not going to make our food safe,” Lipstreu said. “So it’s really important that the rules aren’t ‘one size fits all.'”
The rules are expected to apply to about 80 percent of the nation’s food supply. The cost for compliance is estimated at more than $12,000 for small farms and $30,000 for large farms.
The proposed rules define activities occurring on a farm as being in one physical location. Lipstreu says smaller farmers who have multiple parcels, or are aggregating for community supported agriculture programs, could be labeled as larger facilities and forced to comply with costly regulations.
“The way the rules are written, if they’ve aggregated produce for distribution in a different location than where it was grown they may be subject to regulations designed for large-scale food processing businesses,” Lipstreu said.
The proposed changes are based on thousands of comments sent to the FDA. While Lipstreu says it’s encouraging to be heard, the final regulations must protect conservation and sustainability.
“Conservation and food safety are not mutually exclusive,” Lipstreu said. “We want to make sure that the rules explicitly encourage key conservation practices, things like maintaining wildlife habitat or stream buffers along waterways. ”
According to the FDA, changes make the original proposals more flexible, practical and targeted. Comments will be accepted on the revised draft until December.