photo credit: Raphaël Fauveau

Is Our Well Meaning Congress Preparing the Hangman’s Noose for America’s Small Farmers?

So-called food safety legislation may spell doom for our small farmers, farmers markets, farm buying clubs, and CSA’s.

Food safety may seem like a laudable goal in this day of massive food recalls and e-coli-scares. But, I contend that our government is ill equipped to keep our food safe, and giving it more power and control over our farmers is not the answer.  After listening to Pete Kennedy’s radio  interview, I fear that the only hope for a safe and sound food supply are the local farmers–just the ones who will be most hurt by the increase in regulations.

The massive food recalls we have seen in the last few years stem from mega farms and highly processed food products, not our local farms. In fact, these recalls demonstrate the unsustainability of our centralized, industrialized food supply.

Congress, instead of fostering the local foods movement, wants to put a heavy regulatory burden on all farms, as though they were all alike. Those of us buying from local farms know there is a huge difference!

We need less centralization of our food supply, not greater. The concentration of power in the hands of a few multi-national food conglomerates is the problem, and government regulation and our nations food policy have fostered the current mega-agribusiness model. I believe that these entrenched interests are so threatened by the locavore movement that they have had a big hand in the drafting of this legislation, in order to crush their local foods competition.

Please voice your concern today. Make a phone call and send an email to your Congressional Representative.  Send them Fridays’ blog post Small Farmer Warns HR2749 Will Put Me Out of Business.  Congress will rush to vote yes on this bill because it sounds like such a noble goal–but the bill criminalizes non-compliance and makes all our small farmers potential jailbirds. We can’t let this happen to our salt of the earth, stewards of the land.

I just sent my Congressman an email regarding the HR2749 bill that will be voted on this week, either today or tomorrow.  Please visit the website below, where you can easily express your concern.

Here is the Organic Consumers Association alert on this, send your Congressman an email here:
http://capwiz.com/grassrootsnetroots/issues/alert/?alertid=13799941
Gotta sign off now, so I can call my Congressman’s office.  If you have never picked up the phone before, call Congress today. Tomorrow may be too late!
Please join the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund to fight for your right to direct commerce with local farms, without government interference.