Food Safety and Local Food - At Odds?

There's been some buzz lately about how the pending food safety legislation may impact local growers and producers ability to sell their goods. Fundamentally, the argument is that having standards requiring inspection and lots and lots of red tape will inhibit small producers from selling their foodstuffs.

The text of the bill is available here. (Hint - skip to page 121 - that's where the bill actually starts, past all the strike-outs.) The more concerning parts are on pg. 129 - how is a small producer to conduct in-depth analyses of all potential hazards, and, furthermore, verify the effectiveness of their preventative measures (pg. 130)? The bill does grant small and "very small" businesses more time (pg. 139) - while most businesses have 18 months to comply, small businesses get 2 years and "very small" businesses get 3. Still, for a small producer, even a 3 year window to put all of this together may not make it significantly less burdensome. It seems that simply extending the time frame is not the only concession the bill should be making to small farmers.

There's a strong argument, I believe, that the legislation will promote centralization - which is how we got huge outbreaks in the first place (peanut butter factory has salmonella, now peanut butter all over the country is tainted vs. small producer has salmonella and the small community of their consumers is affected).

Small farmers have spoken up, and Senator Stabenow has introduced the Growing Safe Food Act (S. 2758), which purports to teach farmers how to do their job safely, and "stipulates that existing conservation, biodiversity, and organic farming standards would have to be taken into account in the development of any training program receiving funds." I'm all for expanding Extension programs, but it seems like saying "well, we'll educate you, so the bureaucratic burden on you won't matter" avoids the fundamental issue.

Of additional note, having prior food safety regulations in place has not necessarily made us all that safer. Consider pink slime (sounds delish, no?) which has been more widely used as a result of ammonia treatments in processed beef. Ammonia treatments were supposed to virtually eliminate E coli and salmonella from beef products - but has actually led to increased dispersal of parts of the cow known to be more susceptible to contamination.

Don't get me wrong - I'm all for regulation of large producers. But there must be loopholes to provide for small producers or all the work that has gone into developing local food economies may turn for naught. This would be a step backward for the planet and for all of us who like knowing our farmers and eating truly fresh, picked-when-it-oughta-be food.

Antitrust Times Two

Both of these stories have been out for a while, but I think they still deserve some air time.

Seed Control

The Department of Justice announced that it is investigating a potential antitrust claim against seed companies for their essential takeover of U.S. agriculture. Ten companies account for 65% of seed sales with intellectual property implications. Four companies control half of the proprietary market (seeds with IP protections) and 43% of the common market (public and IP protected seeds). Check out the Farmer to Farmer's report here. As if this weren't bad enough, Monsanto itself controls 90% of U.S. grown soybeans and 80% of U.S. grown corn. When you consider how many forms of processed foods contain some form of U.S. grown corn or soybeans, we're talking about an unbelievably large market share.

The AP recently reported on Monsanto's competition-squeezing practices. The AP report notes concern that, if Monsanto chooses to up its prices, all the cheap processed food that we've gotten used to may not be so cheap anymore. (Maybe then people will eat less bad food. Or we'll just be fat and poor.)

In indirectly related news, Grist recently reported that soybean yields have increased to the point that they are now leading to deforestation in the Amazon. We're sacrificing carbon sinks in favor of cheap food additives AND profiting Monsanto at the same time.

Speaking of soybeans...

Dean Foods

(Dean is the owner of WhiteWave, which produces Silk Soymilk.)

While dairy farmers have posted average losses of $180,000 this year, Dean Foods, the largest dairy distributor in the U.S., has seen profits increase by 30%. As a result, a group of dairy farmers in the Northeast have filed a class action suit against Dean Foods and Dairy Farmers of America. The suit alleges that Dean and DFA monopolized dairy distribution, forcing farmers to sell through them if they wanted to remain in the market. Farmers currently make about $1 per gallon of milk, which is only 2/5 of the actual price.

As things get worse for dairy farmers, it isn't only the loss of small family farms that we have to worry about. When farmers don't make any money, they can't afford to pay their workers well. Barry Estabrook just wrote in The Atlantic Online about the plight of dairy workers following the death of a 20-year-old illegal immigrant who was caught in a manure removal conveyor belt.

Whatever the result of this investigation and this suit, they both emphasize the true costs of cheap food.

UPDATE: The DOJ has filed an antitrust suit against Dean for its 2009 acquisition of Foremost Farms. MarketWatch article here.