Cornucopia Institute to f/v industry committee - watch out for collateral damage to small farmers

Small farmers are sending the message that they will not necessarily go along with food safety regulations applied to "industrial-scale" operations. One of the guest speakers at the f/v industry advisory committee meeting this morning was Carlea Arnold, research associate with The Cornucopia Institute. During her presentation, she noted that the group is ready to sue over the issue of what they consider onerous regulation. Here are some excerpts from the text of her prepared remarks.

My goal here today, on behalf of the Institute, is to convey a simple message. In the industry's attempts to deal with the fallout from numerous pathogen related contamination incidents, we ask that you please be cognizant of any collateral damage new regulations might have, burdening the thousands of family scale fresh market producers around the country.

While the vast majority of the most dangerous and well-publicized outbreaks have been tied back to industrial-scale operations, in the United States and abroad, three is a vibrant subset of vegetable and fruit growers that by their very nature create less; these are the truly local and/or organic producers.

In the case of organic farms, producers are already highly regulated in terms of nutrient management. For the riskiest crops, they are prohibited from spreading raw manure and are required to compost waste.......

Organic growers are required to develop planning models and document through record keeping their adherence to Federal standards. They are inspected during the growing season by independent third party certifiers that are accredited by the USDA's National Organic Program.

Later....

For these reasons, The Cornucopia Institute strongly encourages any future discussion of voluntary or mandatory protocols to consider the needs of, and potential damage to, these important growers who have developed profitable niche markets.


Later......

We encourage you to enter into a dialogue with organizations representing the interest of local and organic growers in order to assure that they are not damaged by future rule making that addresses problems that they might very well may not be a part of.

In the form of a warning, The Cornucopia Institute filed a federal lawsuit last week challenging the legality of the USDA's almond pasteurization mandate.

The Almond Board of California, and the USDA, had the opportunity to help forge a compromise position, exempting smaller and organic producers form the almond pasteurization mandate. The chose not to collaborate in that effort and the result might be losing the rule that very well could have had legitimate application for the industry's largest growers.


Similarly, and to be very clear, we will aggressively defend the interests of family farmers if their economic well being is threatened y rule making that places them at a competitive disadvantage based on their scale. An insensitive one size rule does not fit all.

Later...

We invite discussion of these issues amicably, before the fact, rather than through debates in the marketplace under intense media scrutiny and the possibility for potential future litigation...


TK: There you have it. Produce safety regulations - whether voluntary or mandatory - may be challenged in courts by groups like The Cornucopia Institute who wish to spare small and organic farmers from "collateral damage." It will be interesting to see how much the committee decides to wrestle with this issue during today's meeting....