Timothy Carney
Obama food policy may mean end of farmers markets, family farms
By: Timothy P. Carney
Examiner Columnist
March 20, 2009
President Barack Obama made some foodies’ hearts melt on the campaign trail by referring to writer Michael Pollan, who has helped spark a revival in local, unprocessed food. But Obama’s push for strict new federal food-safety regulations could drive organic food and farmers markets into the back alleys.
The Food Safety Modernization Act, touted as a consumer protection bill, is backed by the giants of the affected industries, such as General Mills and the National Restaurant Association, while posing possibly lethal threats to smaller market players like family farms and local produce.
Last Saturday, Obama dedicated his weekly radio address to food safety, declaring “there are certain things only a government can do, and one of those things is ensuring that the foods we eat… are safe and don’t cause us harm.”
Obama didn’t specifically back any legislation, but his words gave momentum to House and Senate bills that would expand federal control over farms—or, as the House bill, HR 875, calls them, “food production facilities.” Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., is the sponsor of HR 875, the “Food Safety Modernization Act.” Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., has introduced a similar measure in the upper chamber.
Both measures would ramp up federal inspection of farms, impose reporting requirements on farmers, and dramatically lower the threshold at which the federal government can seize food it believes could make people sick.
The lineup of backers and opponents of these bills has surprised some observers, but it shouldn’t. Big food processors—including the makers of some recently recalled foods—support the legislation, while leading advocates of local produce, organic food, and farmers markets are vocally resisting the measures.
Science and environment writer Steve Nash in The New Republic Monday praised Durbin’s bill as a “good idea,” and expressed surprise that Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack, “who many decried as corporate, conventional, and something of a shill for Big-Ag” would come out for greater federal regulation, too.
But also supporting the Durbin bill, the DeLauro bill, or both, are Kraft Foods, General Mills, Kellogs, Pepsico (maker of Frito-Lay brand snacks), the Grocery Manufacturers Association, and the National Restaurant Association.
Meanwhile, the Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund (FTCLDF), which supports organic farmers, raw-milk sellers, and other small growers, calls the DeLauro bill “a major threat to sustainable farming and the local food movement.” The Organic Consumers Association also opposes the bill.
Regulation falls more heavily on smaller businesses, and DeLauro’s bill is no exception. For one, according to the FTCLDF, “Farmers selling direct to consumers would have to make their customer list available to federal inspectors.”
DeLauro’s measure would create a new federal Food Safety Agency to regulate all farms. Both bills order federal regulators to set new “minimum standards related to fertilizer use, nutrients, hygiene, packaging, temperature controls animal encroachment, and water.”
As Debbie Stockton of the FTCLDF puts it, “Anywhere food is produced, the federal government can send someone out to the farm and tell them how to run things.”
These rules would also cover food factories, but Galen Reser, vice president for government affairs at Pepsico, which processes snack food under its Frito-Lay brand, told this columnist “I think the industry is pretty comfortable with” the regulatory burden of Durbin’s bill, maintaining there are no significant “unnecessary costs.”
Big business is not only more able to bear the costs of regulation, but also better positioned to craft the regulation in beneficial ways. Kraft Foods, for instance, spent $3.68 million last year on its lobbying effort, which includes William Lesher, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Agriculture.
When the fine print is ironed and when the agencies implement the regulations, Kraft and Big Agriculture will have a say, but your local organic farmer won’t. As Stockton puts it, “There is no distinction now between industrial agriculture and federal regulatory agencies.”
The irony—typical in these political rushes to regulate—is that this food safety regulation could harm food safety by consolidating the food industry. The Centers for Disease Control make this very point: “An increasingly centralized food supply means that a food contaminated in production can be rapidly shipped to many states causing a widespread outbreak.”
Obama can pay lip service to local, unprocessed food, but if he joins the rush to regulate, Stockton argues, “There will be no more small farms. Consumers who have come to depend on local food will find it’s not available anymore.”
Timothy P. Carney is The Washington Examiner's Lobbying Editor. His K Street column appears on Wednesdays.
