KUFM Commentary - August 2009

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The Food Safety Act is Hard to Swallow
AERO Commentary by David Oien of Timeless Seeds
Aired August 20th, 2009 on Montana Public Radio

When our US Senators return to Washington after their August recess, the Food Safety Enhancement Act of 2009 will eventually be on their plates. This bill was spawned by the spate of massive food poisoning outbreaks over the past couple years. Salmonella in peanut butter products last March, dirty spinach before that, and numerous regional and national food product recalls, each based on thousands of food poisonings (including deaths), costing millions of dollars in medical treatment, government action, and product recall procedures.

The House has already passed its version of the Food Safety Act by an overwhelming majority, with Montana's Congressman Denny Rehberg voting against.

The goal of the Food Safety Act is to protect consumers against food contamination with increased oversight of the production, processing, and distribution of the nation's food supply. On the face of it, it's probably a good idea.

But as with all legislation, the devil is in the details. And in this case, details don't bode well for our critically important, and growing local food system, including family farms, small processors and local markets. As a co-founder and the manager of Timeless Seeds (a small processor, packager, and marketer of food-grade, organic legumes and specialty grains), I share the sustainable agriculture community's concerns about the House version.

Let me highlight just 3 issues.

1. First, the Act takes a regressive, “one size fits all” approach that forces small producers and processors to subsidize the oversight of industrial giants. For example, a $500 annual inspection fee would be assessed on all food handling establishments, regardless of size, to help pay for inspections. Thus the factory that cranks out half a billion Hostess Twinkies per year would pay the same $500 as the Sweetgrass Bakery in Helena, which daily makes a few dozen loaves of whole wheat bread from fresh ground flour, and sells them to customers they know by name. The fee would be the same for the industrial-scale Anhauser Busch brewery in Fort Collins, Colorado as it would be for the artisan Lang Creek Brewery in Marion, Montana.
   
   
2. My second concern is that the so-called Food Safety Act fails to address risks that may be both greater and more insidious than food poisoning. For example: the bill makes no effort to limit agricultural-chemical and antibiotic residues in our food, both of which are widely recognized as posing a risk to human health. Nor does it address the potential leaching of industrial chemicals widely found in food and beverage containers and other packaging materials. In short, the Act's focus on microbial contamination is important, but is only part of the story. Passing the Food Safety Act will not guarantee safe food.
   
   
3. My last concern with the Act is that the legislation actually casts too wide a net. It is primarily the centralization, the industrialization, and the globalization of the food system that has magnified the risk of wide-scale endangerment to human health. This year's national outbreak of salmonella poisoning was traced to an industrial processing facility in Texas, not to small farms selling directly to consumers. If Congress's zeal to protect the food supply results in misdirected costs and burdensome regulation for family farmers and small processors, it will inadvertently discourage and diminish innovative value-added agricultural enterprises that are actually the source of more healthful and safer food.
   
   

So if you value cheese from the Bitteroot Valley, cherries from the Flathead, fresh bread made with organic Montana flour, and if you want to see the next generation of our homegrown food system flourish, please contact our Senators. Tell Senator Tester and Senator Baucus that our goal should be food safety legislation that supports our local producers and processors rather than hinders a truly safe and diverse food supply.

Thanks for caring about the food you eat and the enterprises that provide it. This is David Oien with Timeless Seeds in Conrad, Montana. This commentary is brought to you by the Alternative Energy Resources Organization. AERO has been building communities by linking people with sustainable agriculture and energy solutions for over 3 decades. Learn more about the issues at AERO's 35th Annual Meeting in Livingston, October 23-25. To join the conversation call us in Helena at (406) 443-7272.

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