Revisions likely in bill seeking safer foods

After a string of outbreaks and recalls in the past three years related to salmonella, E. coli and listeria contamination in food products ranging from fresh spinach and peanuts to organic tahini, legislation that would strengthen the regulatory powers of the Food and Drug Administration could be enacted as early as January of next year.

S-510 (the Senate version of the Food Safety Enhancement Act that was recently passed by a nearly 2-1 margin in the House of Representatives) is supported by Democratic and Republican lawmakers, the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the FDA and numerous consumer and industry groups. But with the Senate preparing to debate the bill — and with it a massive overhaul of the FDA — some sustainable agriculture experts say that the measure will do little to correct the systemic flaws that have turned minor incidents into national catastrophes.

Regulation or strangulation

Additionally, some small farmers also say they are concerned that the bill will favor the larger farms that have been responsible for most of the recent outbreaks.

“There is some fear that the Food and Drug Administration is going to show up unannounced and start interfering in farmers’ day-to-day operations,” said Tony Corbo, the senior lobbyist for the consumer group Food and Water Watch.

Corbo said that, while the new laws were going to change the way small farmers do business, he believed that the legislators would be sensitive to the needs of small farmers and that there was a definite need for food safety laws to be updated.

“We’re operating under a law that is essentially 70 years old,” he said. He noted that his organization, which is part of a coalition of consumer groups that has been working with legislators on food safety reform, has been pushing for measures that will make the food supply safer, without undue burden on farmers and producers.

“Our organization doesn’t want these regulations to be totally impossible to live under,” he said.

Corbo said that the bill is likely to change significantly as it is debated and amended in the Senate and then the conference committee, which will reconcile the House and Senate versions of the bill. 

Senator Harkin, who chairs the committee responsible for marking up the legislation before it moves to the Senate floor, said in a hearing that he wanted to be mindful of small farmers' concerns.

“We agree that regulations should be effective, but not excessively burdensome,” he said.

But some farmers say they’re still worried that the restrictions will have an adverse effect on their livelihoods.

Fred Kirschenmann, who manages an organic farm in North Dakota and has written numerous books and articles on organic farming and food policy, said he was worried that food safety regulations would conflict with sustainable agriculture practices, such as planting vegetation around crops and allowing wildlife free access to farmland, both of which have been shown to promote soil conservation.

“We sort of have this vision of growing foods in a sterilized environment, and it’s really working at cross purposes,” he said. “The whole notion that we can create these sterile environments for food processing seems kind of silly to me.”

Additionally, the House and Senate bills include provisions that require certain farms to pay a $500 annual registration fee and hire consultants to develop plans to identify contamination risks and control them.

Although the provisions will not affect farms that don’t process food or sell their products across state lines, under the Senate version of the bill farms that make products such as jams or preserves would be required to develop Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (HACCP) plans if they wish to sell their products at farmer’s markets in neighboring states. 

Corbo said that although there are no provisions in the bill to help small farmers offset the costs associated with developing these plans, the bill directs regulatory agencies to take small farms into account when implementing the law.

Kirschenmann said he was worried that these provisions would unfairly burden small farmers.

“It’s going to favor the more capitalized farms because they’re in a better position to absorb the cost,” he said, referring to major agriculture producers such as Archer Daniels Midland and ConAgra. “I think it will have a much bigger impact on smaller producers.”

“A $500 fee is nothing to a big farm, but it’s a lot to a small farm,” said Barbara Damrosch, who runs an organic farm in Maine and who has written several books on organic gardening along with her husband, Eliot Coleman.

Damrosch’s farm would not be affected by the new regulations because they sell only within the state of Maine, but she said that she was worried about the bill’s effects on other small farms.

“Whenever they enact big blanket bills with all these different restrictions, they’re going to make it difficult for small farmers,” she said.

Controling outbreaks and recalls

Kirschenmann also noted that many outbreaks are a result of the current system of food production and distribution in this country and that food safety legislation will do little to address the flaws inherent in the system.

“None of the action addresses the way in which the system is organized,” he said.

While improving traceability and increasing enforcement powers were both important, the government should also focus on promoting a decentralized food distribution system so that small outbreaks stay small, Kirschenmann said.

“You’re not going to solve the problem if you try to eliminate all the bacteria,” he said. “You’re never going to control systems well enough to eliminate these kinds of incidents.”

In the case of the 2006 E. coli outbreak that resulted from contaminated spinach, Kirschenmann said that the problem had less to do with the fact that a small amount of spinach was contaminated and more to do with the fact that the spinach had been sent to a centralized processing facility, which allowed a small contamination to result in a national outbreak.

“In complex, tightly coupled systems, accidents become catastrophes,” he said.

The 2006 outbreak sickened almost 200 people in 26 states, according to the Centers for Disease Control. At least three people died and more than 100 people were hospitalized.

“The question we need to be asking is whether we can really maintain the current system,” Kirschenmann said.

The future of food

Beyond ensuring safe food, Kirschenmann said the government needs to develop policies that encourage soil conservation and increase biodiversity. He said that soil conservation and restoration would increase efficiency and allow small organic farms to be more productive than their industrial counterparts.

“The main thing we need to do is enhance the capacity of the land to renew itself,” he said.

While Kirschenmann said that the government was starting to make some small steps in the right direction, he felt that rising energy costs and dwindling water resources would provide the real impetus for farmers to look for ways to increase productivity without chemical fertilizers and excessive irrigation. He also noted that continuing climate change would highlight the need for greater biological and genetic diversity, “because that’s what’s going to give us the flexibility to adapt to changes in the system.”

Kirschenmann said that he was hopeful that sustainable agriculture would be the way of the future. But he also indicated that transitioning away from industrial farming methods would be complicated and difficult because agribusiness has become an integral part of our daily lives.

“To some extent, we’ve all participated in the system, and it seemed like the right thing to do,” he said. “And the companies that have invested in the infrastructure aren’t going to want to hear that we want to do things differently now.” 

While many sustainability experts say the Senate bill will prove overly burdensome to small farmers, some consumer advocates say that the it does little to eliminate the bureaucratic tangle of 13 federal agencies tasked with enforcing food safety laws that has produced major gaps in the national food safety system.

Corbo noted that the new laws would only apply to products already regulated by the FDA, which currently has jurisdiction over 80 percent of the national food supply, according to the Congressional Research Service. 

He said the bill would not eliminate such regulatory paradoxes as the fact that frozen-cheese pizzas and closed-faced sandwiches are regulated by the FDA while frozen pizzas with pepperoni and open-faced sandwiches fall under the jurisdiction of the USDA.

Corbo said that legislators and White House officials had indicated that reforming the FDA is only the first step toward reforming the food safety system.

“I think they’re going to try to do it in pieces,” he said. “Because the FDA was such a basket case they decided to take care of it first.”

Corbo said that each agency will have to be fixed separately before Congress and the Obama administration can even begin to untangle the bureaucratic mess of criss-crossing jurisdictions.

Still, Corbo said that he was optimistic that officials from the administration and congress were starting take important steps in reforming food safety and increasing sustainability.

“Everyone should be interested in safe food,” he said. “And there is a growing movement to promote local and regional food sources.”