Double standard?

For retailers, the hot social trend is minimizing food miles and sourcing local produce. Does a grower with a six-week deal in Rhode Island have to jump through the same hoops as a year-round supplier from California?
Is there a double standard relating to food safety audits for home grown produce compared with fruits and vegetables from commercial shippers? If so, is a double standard defensible?
I think conventional shippers are wrong to think that locally grown produce is not produced responsibly. Still, there can be no doubt that some local produce growers don't have the checks and audits of larger shippers. Allowing for that, smaller growers in some cases must be certified to do business with schools and other buyers; many are moving toward that end.
That topic of food safety certification for smaller growers is addressed in this link.
From the winter 2007 article from the University of Rhode Island:

For the last five years, the New England Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) program, centered at URI, has been educating small farmers as to how they can take steps to eliminate the risk of pathogens in the produce they sell. Now with the resurgence of consumer interest in locally grown food the importance of that education-and the certification process-has taken on even more significance.
Recently several small farmers gathered at the US. Department of Agriculture conference room in Warwick to take the first step toward getting their farms GAP Certified. The afternoon-long series of presentations by Lori Pivarnik and Martha Patnoad, both URI food safety experts, covered such topics as water quality, soil amendments, worker hygiene and proper storage and transportation issues. Both professors are in the CELS Department of Nutrition and Food Sciences.
Some of the farmers present were interested in becoming a supplier to schools and in order to do that, Chartwells, a distributor of foods to schools in the state, requires that participating farms be GAP Certified. So far just two GAP Certified farms in the state are enrolled with Chartwells. There are 18 farms in Rhode Island that are GAP Certified.
Kenneth Ayers, chief of the state Division of Agriculture, told the gathering that federal guidelines are pushing for an increase in fresh foods in the schools.
"The schools are an untapped market for local farmers," he said noting that the farmers can usually sell their produce at prices between wholesale and retail.
In addition at least one insurer, Farm Family, is exploring the idea of offering premium credit for GAP Certified farms. Farm Family already offers the credit (10-15 percent of the liability premium) for some types of farming operations.