S. 510 Passed with the Tester-Hagan Amendment
Posted: December 1, 2010 Filed under: Farming, legislation | Tags: farming, food, legislation, nais, S 510 28 CommentsAs many of you may have heard, S 510 the food safety bill, passed the Senate yesterday. I’ve discussed this bill once before. In that post I asked that people ask their Senators to vote for the Tester-Hagan amendment if they must vote for this poorly done bill. I’m happy to say the Tester-Hagan amendment passed with the bill, along with several other amendments that will make it a bit easier on small farmers. Thanks so much for writing and calling about this!
Even with bill’s passage all hope is not lost by any means. Because of Democrat foolishness, the Senate bill includes provisions about taxes, a House perogative. So the House Democrats will probably stop the Senate bill for a bit.
The bill has to be reconciled with the House version once all these mistakes are rectified, if they can be rectified. The House version of the bill is much, much harsher to small farmers. I might, therefore, be asking you all to write and call as the reconcilation process goes forward.
There are several other ways to stop the worst of this bill. One is when the UDSA/FDA/HSA (Why the heck is Homeland Security involved?) actually make up the rules. There will be hearings, committees, ‘listening’ sessions and more. Although the path to public involvement in these hearings is convoluted and arcane, it can be done.
For example, up until last year small farmers, and anyone who owned a horse, goat, sheep, cow, chicken, duck, or pig as a pet, had NAIS looming before them. NAIS, the National Animal Identification System, was to mandate an RFID for every ‘farm’ animal in this country. It was meant to facilitate disease outbreak tracing and enhance the ability for American meat producers to sell their products overseas.
NAIS mandated one RFID per ‘lot’ of animals. So a ‘lot’ of 10,000 chickens hatched, raised and slaughtered together would need one RFID tag. That’s great for a CAFO. But for a small farmer, who hatches maybe 100 chickens here, 100 there, or even less, it’s disaster. Each chicken or small lot would need a number. The system worked the same for horses, cattle, goats, etc. So I, with my 17 18 (keep forgetting the little one) goats, would pay 18 times what someone with 1,000 goats kidded at once would pay. Yea, that’s fair. The NAIS rules also meant a ton of other impositions. Farmers would be required to report any movement of animals within 24 to 48 hours. If you rode your horse down a trail, every farm you passed would have to report your movement into and off of their property. Take your pet goat to the vet in your car? Report that movement within 24 to 48 hours or face a fine. Animal die? Report it. Animal born? Report it. Animal moved to a different pasture through a common area? Report it. In order to facilitate all this reporting your property would be registered as a ‘premises’ and given a ‘premises number’. Legally, the owner of a premises has a different set of rights, lesser rights, than the owner of property.
When the particulars came out the government ignored the unrest. Then the listening sessions started, and they had to add more, and more. Comments on the Federal register grew long and loud. The listening sessions were attended by people 80% to 95% against NAIS. People dared the government to pass it, promising stubborn, non-violent resistance.
NAIS died last year, supposedly. Funding was dropped by Congress and the FDA/USDA stopped pushing it. However, elements of it are in the S 510 bills.
We can do this again with the Food Safety Act. We can make it palatable and workable for the little farmers. People power CAN fight against corporate ruled government if we are united. Unity is the key. With NAIS all sides came together to fight it. I was on mailing lists with people who became rabid tea-partiers. I didn’t agree with their solutions for everything, but I, and other liberals like me, did agree with how to fight NAIS. And so when someone made a political comment, the rest of us chastized them. ‘The list is only about NAIS, keep the rest out of it. We need everyone to fight it.’ This kind of unity is going to have to happen more and more, to fight against government take-over of our rights to privacy, freedom of speech, travel, and more. I welcome it.
Added the following to discuss the Washington Post article mentioned by BB in her great news roundup. These are my admittedly argumentative thoughts on the points in the article. I think the Food Safety bills could be good, but they need to be gone over very carefully and the wording needs reflect reality. It’s too vague right now.
Point 1: ‘ Would require farmers and food manufacturers to put in place controls to prevent bacteria and other pathogens from contaminating food.’
The bill requires ‘GAPS’ (Good Agricultural Practices) to be put in place for farmers. These are basically flow charts that are meant to identify problem areas and tell the farmer how to prevent them. They probably work ok for a farmer who grows 10000000000 acres of lettuce. However, I grow about 2 4 x 100 ft beds of lettuce, 4 4 x 100 ft beds of broccoli, 8 4 x 100 ft beds of potatoes… well you get the idea. I’d have to have a GAPS, generally designed by a food engineer ($$$$) for each vegetable and for how the growing of each vegetable impacts the other. I really resent this kind of linear, engineering thinking that is applied to everything. Learning about, and deciding to follow ‘good agricultural practices’ is something every farmer does. If they don’t, they go out of business.
Point 2: ‘Would require the Food and Drug Administration to regularly inspect all food facilities, with more frequent inspections in higher risk facilities. ‘
Who defines ‘higher risk’? Right now, it seems the FDA thinks little dairies and creameries are high risk. The factories that produced the 550 million egg recall had the equivalent of ‘GAPS’ in place. They had inspections, and got fined and written up, over and over again. Most of the HAACP (equivalent of GAPS) stuff requires them to self inspect and self report. The problems in these factories were ongoing over years. But a little cheese producer that has never tested positive for listeria is shut down because a California seized sample, held in improper conditions by the government, stripped of all the actual tracing lot numbers which are supposed to allow backtracing of food by that same government, ad nauseum, came back positive for listeria.
Point 3: ‘Would allow the FDA to order a mandatory recall of any product it suspects may harm public health. ‘
This one sounds great. Of course, the FDA basically already has this ability. Note the wording ‘suspects may harm’. This could mean that a small farm or food producer is effectively destroyed while the FDA determines with the glacial slow movement of government facilities dragging their collective feet, that the farm/food producer did nothing wrong.
Point 4: ‘Would improve disease surveillance, so that outbreaks of food poisoning can be discovered more quickly’
I like this one. But how are they actually going to do it? More testing I suppose. Who pays? The consumer and the farmer. What about testing post slaughter, post canning, post wrapping, etc?
Point 5: ‘ Would require farmers and food-makers to maintain distribution records so that the FDA can more quickly trace an outbreak to its source. ‘
This is NAIS-like. At one time the government was talking about requiring every head of lettuce or broccoli to have an RFID. Interesting concept, and it may come to that. It would provide great tracing, until the RFID is removed. And even then, what if you return to the store with an RFID tag from lettuce that you said made you sick. You neglect to mention you ate that lettuce right after you cleaned the cat box… RFID tags won’t do anything about post-slaughter contamination, which is where MOST of the contamination of meat happens. The tag is removed from the animal when it’s slaughtered, of course.
Having said that, I don’t know of a farmer or food-maker that doesn’t maintain distribution, aka sales, records. Maybe it’s different in the big ag operations.
Point 6: ‘Would require foreign food suppliers to meet the same safety standards as domestic food-makers. ‘
I love this one. Could we reverse it and make it so that our food suppliers have to label GMO products and so on? That would rock.
Point 7: ‘Would exempt small farmers and food processors.’
This is good. I’ll believe it when I see it. Tester’s amendment says that small food producers have to abide by either the state regulations or the fed regulations. In practice, the fed usually tells the state how to regulate, or withholds money. So it’s all one in the same. I’m a bit worried about the part (they might have removed this in the final bill) that sends a farmer to jail for 10 years if they ‘distribute adulterated food’. The problem is the definition of distribute, adulterated and even food. Heh. Raw yogurt can be considered adulterated by some, because it’s still got the little raw beasties in it that make it so good.
Final point: ‘Would add 17,800 new FDA inspectors by 2014.’
I’ll believe that when I see it. Paid for by what? Are they going to be like the TSA? Who’s training them?
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There are good parts to the Food Safety act. It does attempt to regulate Big Ag, Cafos and the like. However, the bills are supported by Big Ag, Cafos and the like. That should send up a huge warning flag.
Here’s a link to a breakdown of who contributed to which Congress critter and how they voted.
http://maplight.org/us-congress/bill/111-s-510/880093/contributions-by-vote
Note: Some of my links go to farming websites that have a libertarian bent. Farmers tend to be such, I guess. I realize I sound like a ‘keep the government out’ crazy sometimes. However, I myself am firmly a liberal/socialist. I want good government for and by the people. I want safety nets, effective food inspection, factories that work, safe roads and bridges, minimal intrusion into privacy, easy and sane travel inspections, etc. I don’t want government run by and for corporations, whether they be big military or big ag or anything else. I don’t want government run by ‘fear’, by fear of airline anal bombers, fear of food contamination, fear of leaks on the internet. So I do sound libertarian at times. What can I say? Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.
Another link, just because, an interesting map of Cafos:
http://www.factoryfarmmap.org/
Kudos on the s510 roundup! I never really thought of how much small farmers had to deal with in this country. I’ll be looking forward to more posts here about farming now. And you have a huge point about HSA being involved. If terrorism or biological warfare was the issues with food coming INTO the United States, then the defence department would have the resources to combat that…..
Hillary 2012
Thanks Rock! I do worry about biological warfare on food. Not a lot, but it is a concern. However, with many small farms the food system would be highly resistant. With only a few large farms, not so much.
It’s like when there were problems with the canned pumpkin supply last year (or year before). Turns out almost all the canned pumpkin in this country is grown in one state and even one county of that state. So when there were floods and unseasonable wetness the pumpkin supply was in jeopardy.
Here’s a link:
http://dinersjournal.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/17/libbys-warns-of-a-canned-pumpkin-shortage/
It never even occurred to me, before last year, that the area of pumpkin growing was so limited.
We heard about the supposed pumpkin shortage a while back. Not around here! When the word first came out it drove up the price of pumpkins at the grocery and box stores- then the local harvest started! LOL by the day after hallowe’en pumpkins were $1 each.
Our pumpkins did not do so well this year- but we got enough for our purposes. I put some in the mudroom and had enough for soup and pie and pumpkin roll and bread……….
Good post Sima- I was glad to see the tester amendment made it- but am warily watching to see what happens in reconciliation.
We have the one goat, 5 hens and a rooster, dog, cats, horse is boarded out now because of my back. Then we have the asparagus bed and the ancient apple orchard- and the kitchen garden.
Having been a restaurant manager for years I know what a pain in the ass a HACCP plan is to write and implement- and the documentation the bill calls for is very similar.
In my opinion the small farmer is not the problem- it’s the factory farms. We buy what we do not grow from Al- a local farmer, employing local people. Growing in manageable sized fields- and all of us locals know where those fields are. He values our business- and we support him because we know his operation is clean.
Similarly we purchase a lot of our meat at the yearly 4-H market auction and have it processed at a local meat processing place. Again- a local family run business- where we can see into the meat cutting room- which is always immaculate.
What in the world will happen to these local farmers if they have to start maneuvering through a whole new bureaucracy?
We will be watching! Thanks for keeping us informed!
Thanks PMM!
I agree that factory farms are the problem, right now. I think small farmers need to be very, very careful of their own products. I believe most will do so, without being hounded by regulations meant for the big guys.
On my farm I let everyone who wants to own a share come and see the facilities. They can go out to the fields. Heck they can weed if they want. That’s not always feasible as one gets bigger, but I think if consumers are close to their farmers/ranchers/dairies they can choose wisely.
Which brings up another whole ball of wax. What about city people and the food they eat? (I see a new post coming up soon).
Agreed Sima- I know our locals are extremely careful with their produce- we know who they are and whee they live- and in a small town- well bad news travels like wildfire- and if people got sick from a locals produce – that farmer would be out of business- FAST!
Wish I could have developed a CSA- if you have any good info to share I would appreciate it. We just garden for ourselves and we have a few friends that take the excess.
Does your farm have a website you can share a link to?
If you have a few friends taking the excess, you have in essence a CSA! That’s how we started. We have the land, but were only growing a really small amount. For the first couple years we just supplied friends, and they paid by the week (instead of a lump sum at the beginning of the year). That way if we didn’t have anything that week, it was no big deal.
Now almost all our customers start out as strangers. In these economic times we offer payment plans, so the lump sum isn’t as huge all at once.
I think you’ll have to learn to live with the RFID, Sima. It’s actually a good idea, because it means if you have to pull a batch from the market you may not have to shut down your entire operation–you only have to pull that one batch. As someone who ran a small food manufacturing company, I can tell you that every item sent out of our company had a batch i.d. I considered it a safety feature for us. You’ll have to figure out a way to pass on the costs, but most of us would rather pay a few cents more if it makes our food distribution safer.
I don’t mind the batch id for many things, but RFID as applied to individual animals and individual heads of lettuce is not a batch id. A batch id is the one RFID per ‘lot’ for a CAFO. I’m fine with that, for the big producers. I don’t want to be mandated to do the same, with rules that mean small farms’ RFID costs are way higher than the CAFOs. RFIDs are anywhere from 2 to 20$ a piece, last time I looked. That doesn’t include all the stuff needed to inject, detect and record them, either. I use them when I sell registered purebred goats, so I do have some familiarity with them.
As I mentioned in my post, there were batch ids (tracing lot numbers) on the cheese the Feds and California got during the raids in California. The FDA ignored them and obscured them in photos and the little dairy in Missouri can’t trace the supposedly contaminated product back to the actual batch and test the batch. So their entire inventory has been seized and they are going out of business. In theory, the batch ids should have worked. They often do.
I can’t imagine an RFID on each head of lettuce. I mean, it sells retail for 2.95$ and I’m supposed to put a tag that costs 2 to 20$ on each one? Unless everyone wants to pay 10$ for a head of lettuce. The chip guys’ll be really happy!
If the costs go down to mere cents per chip and the application becomes time reasonable I can see using such for lots of veggies destined for market. It’ll be funny handing a bag of veggies to a CSA customer and then giving them the 20 or 30 chips that’ll be needed to go along with it. Heh.
Thanks for posting this Sima, I saw Glenn Beck ranting and raving how this law will make it so that the “Government can decide for all us Americans” that we can no longer eat meat. (I can see all the people watching that show getting worried that they will be forced to become vegetarians.) Anyway, thanks for this…
It’s highly unlikely the government will stop any meat eating.
It’s more likely to stop bean sprout eating, or something marginally fringy like that. Beck is such a tool.
I know, he really is a big “tool.” Like I said, I did not watch him willingly, my IH was watching his show.
People on those lists I talk about in my post were calling him up to get him going. It was only on the last day or two of his ranting that they managed to get him to call the bill by the right name. They figured any publicity was good publicity, I guess. I hate that good causes get linked to Beck though.
Oh yay, job openings! How do I apply to be a food inspector?
You know, I kind of thought the same thing… tehe.
Except so far, the bill looks like an unfunded mandate. I forgot that the House bill was different. I guess we’ll still have to wait and see.
Anyway, thanks for the great post, Sima!
Maybe we get paid in food from the places we inspect. 😯
I read that Pelosi wants to pass the senate version to avoid reconciliation. That’s what she did with the health care bill.
Not related to the food bill but still food news…
Jeffrey Smith will be on the Dr. Oz Show this Tuesday, December 7th, discussing the
health dangers of genetically modified foods. Also on the show is Dr. Michael
Hansen, a scientist from Consumers Union who has been an avid critic of GMOs for two
decades, and Dr. Pamela Ronald, a pro-GM scientist who has been proposing that
organic foods include GMOs.
‘Would add 17,800 new FDA inspectors by 2014.’
Bwahahahaha! Now if they were all inspecting the big factory farms, great. Not holding my breath.
Our local Sustainable Neighborhood group has started a community garden project allied with a local food bank to donate fresh produce. I hate to think how that could be affected. I wrote Senators Murray and Cantwell about SB 510 and the Tester amendment. I’d better get to writing my Repcritter, Jim McDermott. He’s usually pretty good on standing up for small people.
Thank you, Sima, for this post. As I’ve said before, this is all relatively new to me. So, I truly appreciate your very informative and interesting posts about it. I’m learning a lot from you. I e-mailed my Senator’s and House member about the bill as you advised previously and I’ll follow your lead as the reconciliation process goes forward and you let us know when to write and call our Reps. I’m only too pleased to help in any way I can. It benefits all of us.
Thanks so much, Newdealdem. The Ag stuff is arcane. It’s taken me forever to even get a toe wet in understanding it all. I still don’t really know how subsidies get divvied up, who gets what, why the powers that be think oil from corn is more important than food, and so on.
Sima, fantastic post and I’m only halfway through. Love, love, love this part:
Brava!
Thanks Wonk! I really do think ‘we’ can make a difference. Oftentimes it just takes being ready to write at the drop of a hat. We all are ready to do that, I think :).
Great post!
What this sort of reminds me of is when NYC put the Letter Grade Health Inspection into place. While in theroy, it sounds like a great, reasonable idea however it has been devestating to tons of small restaurants.
Yea. Rules for the small guys need to be different than those for the big guys. Scale matters.
Couple of years ago, I purchased hamburger from local grocery store. It was put in the freezer. When I thawed it out in fridge, and was ready to prepare a meal. I notice some awful, maggots moving in the meat. Holy cow, I called the grocer to find out where that meat came from, and called the county inspector. It came from out of state, and I was told that it was likely caused by a fly. I couldn’t help but wonder how
that worked as the mean was frozen. At any rate I was told that it would not have hurt me to cook and eat the meat as it was not harmful, and had more protein.
The grocer asked to bring all the packages in for a refund. Since then I order from local
butcher here in California. Yesterday, of all things I was looking to purchase Dungess
crab, and one woman said come look here, and their was beef coming from Canada.
I gave her the name of the local butcher.