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+--- Thread: Anyone worried Senate bill 510 Food Safety Modernization Act? (/thread-11606.html)
Anyone worried Senate bill 510 Food Safety Modernization Act? - bubba7734743 - 10-15-2012 08:01 PM
A friend of mine posted on her facebook page that the Food Safety Modernization Act will make growing your own food on your own land illegal. Does the bill actually State that it will be illegal to do that and sell it at farmers market?
- coldfuse - 10-15-2012 08:09 PM
The bill is designed to help large farming interests, and definitely not the family farmer. The tracking mechanisms are burdensome.
Here is the bill in a nutshell:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bill.xpd?bill=s111-510&tab=summary
Here it is in its entirety:
http://www.govtrack.us/congress/billtext.xpd?bill=s111-510
- Ohiorganic - 10-15-2012 08:09 PM
No this bill will not outlaw home gardening, seed saving or organics and with the Tester Hagan amendment small farmers that gross less than $500K and year and sell over half their crops direct to their customers will be exempt from most everything in this bill
Realize this bill is there to clean up the big industrial food and farming entities so this is not exactly a boon to them other than it should make out food system somewhat cleaner as there will be a bit more inspection for produce and eggs (but not for meat as the FDA still has no say over such). This bill is going to cost the big guys millions of dollars annually to comply.
For us small guys if the Tester Hagan amendment were not in there it would cost most farms at least $50K just to upgrade facilities and another $25K to draw up and implement a HCCP/Food hazard plan along with hiring a few extra people to deal with the paper work and the FDA its self. So yes this one size fits all "fix" would have put most small farmers out of business. but with the tester Hagan Amendment the vast majority of small farms will be exempt.
This is one of the best articles i have read over this. It does away with all the fear mongering and discusses the pros and cons of this bill http://www.grist.org/article/food-2010-12-03-the-real-nitty-gritty-on-small-farms-and-food-safety-bill