Elliott Family Farm

Many of us began growing and eating organic and certified organic foods because we felt it was good for us and good for our customers.The Department of Agriculture has given oganic farming a degree of support, but often far less than many of us would like.On the surface, the latest piece of legislation HR 875: Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 woild seem to favor organic farming, but it does not. It isnt even about organic farming nor is it intended to be, so dont assume that it is.

It is an effort to control food safety from the "production facility" (farm), even the home garden. It is a foray into agriculture by the FDA, reaching to control matters better served by USDA. But it is far more nefarious than that. Its regulations extend to the proximity of vegetable crops to animal agriculture even the use of animal manures in crop production, a cornerstone of non-chemical farming practices. It would require  massive testing program of all "production facilities" and mountains of record keeping to assure confromance. Falilure to comply could result in massive million dollar fines and seizure of property. Produce could be siezed under mere suspicion of contamination. Those of us in the farming and gardening community know produce is a time sensitive product. The bill offers no redress for food products siezed  and found not to be contaminated but lost by virture of spoilage or losses incurred due to detention.

The referance to farms as "food production facilities" demonstrates how out of touch these people are with farming. A farm is not a machine, produce is not a laptop. The only people who would benfefit are large agribusiness companies such as Monsanto, ADM, ect. Small farmers, being unable to comply, would be out of business as would be the roaside stands and farmers markets we all frequent. The consumers only food choise would be institutional foods, that which many of us try to avoid.

Read the legislation and attempt to get beyond the shiny legalese. See what the effects would be. Not everything in the bill is bad. There are some things such as country of origin, contamination inspections on large imported instiutional foods that we in the organic farm lobby have advocating for years. This piece of legislation is NOT for us.