Food Safety Policy Update: September 23, 2009
Russell Libby, MOFGA Executive Director
Food safety issues continue to move forward on multiple policy fronts at the Federal level. Between Congress, FDA, and USDA, three major proposals are being considered.
Legislation. The House of Representatives passed HR 2749 at the end of July. The question now is whether the Senate will act this Fall. Senate Bill 510 will be the initial focus of discussion, and it has bipartisan support.
Just as with the House Bill, the major issue from MOFGA’s perspective is a definitional one. What kind of businesses, including farmers, need to be covered by Federal food safety oversight? Is that decided based on the type of business (retail sales vs. wholesale), or on the basis of the size of business? How are farms to be treated? Does USDA oversee food safety on farms and does FDA oversee processors? And if a farm does on-farm processing, which agency is responsible.
Through a long series of discussions, including four trips to Washington so far this year, this has become the critical hinge for discussions. MOFGA and a variety of organic and sustainable agriculture groups have been trying to develop clear definitions, and we’ve had continued discussions with a range of consumer groups to see where there might be agreement.
It’s clear that the conversation starts from a point where everyone, whether farmer or processor, has a shared food safety responsibility. But the solutions need to be appropriate to the size and type of activity. In discussions earlier this month, it is clear that this message is being heard. FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg said this month that “In the agricultural sector, FDA will carefully focus its standard setting on produce commodities and issues that are important for improving food safety, and we will be very sensitive to the wide diversity of practices, which we know vary by commodity, geography and scale of operation.” We want to make sure that both FDA and Congress pay attention to these issues.
Leafy Green Marketing Agreements. Since the major outbreak of e. coli in spinach in California three years ago, the large national shippers have worked to upgrade their systems for food safety oversight. Over time that evolved into the California Leafy Greens Agreement, where large processors and shippers developed standards for farm production and processing, and the California Department of Agriculture enforces the standards through inspections. There is a push to turn this into a national model. USDA is currently holding hearings around the country on whether, and if so, how, to implement this idea. MOFGA, as part of the National Organic Coalition, is opposing this proposal as a precedent that lets each industry work its way out of Federal oversight by setting up its own set of standards and then preventing farmers who don’t meet them from entering major national markets. Some of the National Organic Coalition comments at the first California hearing are posted at: http://www.nationalorganiccoalition.org/testimony.html
FDA Produce Standards. In late July, FDA issued draft produce standards for melons, tomatoes, and leafy greens. Comments on these proposals are due in late October. MOFGA will be submitting comments urging FDA to meet the same standards that Commissioner Hamburg laid out in her September talk. The standards, as now written, focus a lot on keeping extensive records of production and processing systems. We will be encouraging them to focus their efforts on those businesses that ship into commingled markets where the identity of the farm and its product is often mixed with that of many other farms. We hope to have draft comments for MOFGA farmers to review and submit in early October.
If you are interested in discussing any of these issues in more detail, please feel free to contact me at the MOFGA office or via e-mail, <rlibby@mofga.org>.
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