Our community frequently talks about “voting with your dollar.” Using the power of your wallet is important—you get healthy food to nourish your body, and you help the farmers who are raising that food stay in business. But the widespread change we need in our food system requires changes in our legal and regulatory system to empower the market to function properly.
The problem is that we don’t have a functioning free market system where the act of being a consumer is enough to drive change. In the idealized market system, the sellers of goods—in this case, food—respond to consumers’ buying decisions by providing the goods the buyers want. But the idealized market system assumes many things, including the free flow of accurate information and numerous sellers in competition with each other, so that the buyers can exercise informed choices. Looking at the food system as a whole in this country, neither of these conditions is met. So we need people to be citizens, not just consumers. The easiest way to be a citizen, rather than just a consumer, is to sign up for email alerts and act on them. (If you are not getting email action alerts from WAPF, please contact the office and we will make sure that you do.) You can also help educate your community by talking with your friends and co-workers about these issues, and encouraging them to become involved.
The next step is to develop an ongoing relationship with your legislators. Call and talk with their staffers about how important food issues are to you, and invite them to visit your farm (or, if you’re not a farmer, make arrangements with a local farmer). Meeting with your legislators in person is a very powerful way to put a face to the issue and impress upon them the significance of food issues to their constituents.
Becoming an activist can be a daunting task, and many people don’t know where to start. But you don’t have to do any of this alone. WAPF has resources to help you, including recordings of the conference session on effective activism, available at www.fleetwoodonsite.com/index.php?cPath=40_307.
To see the latest action alerts from the Weston A. Price Foundation, visit http://www.westonaprice.org/2011-action-alerts.
FDA CONSIDERS FEES ON SMALL BUSINESSES
The issue of “food safety” has been, and will continue to be, one of the major challenges on the policy front. At the national level, FDA is continuing the process of implementing the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). This fall, the agency requested public comments on the issues of the fees to be imposed for re-inspections. The FSMA directed the agency to recover the costs of re-inspections through user fees. In theory, this makes sense: with the government struggling with funding, businesses that fail to pass inspection “should” pay the costs. The problems start, however, when that theory is applied by the FDA. The first issue is when the fees would be imposed. Given the morass of laws and regulations that govern food production, it is almost always possible for an agency to find something wrong at a facility. But that violation may have nothing to do with whether or not the food is safe. In its comments to the agency, WAPF urged FDA to impose re-inspection fees only when there is a violation that poses a “credible risk of serious illness or injury to the public” during the initial inspection. The second issue is the total cost. Astonishingly, the FDA calculated that it would need to charge $224 per hour to cover the costs of its re-inspection program. The charges would apply to all of the time spent preparing for an inspection, traveling and writing reports, in addition to the re-inspection itself. Not only does that rate reflect exorbitant costs by the agency, but the application of an hourly rate creates an incentive for even more inefficiencies. For example, an hourly fee encourages agency officials to utilize multiple inspectors when only one may be needed.
With this high hourly rate, the fees for reinspection could easily total several tens of thousands of dollars. Such fees would quickly drive many small businesses out of business. In addition, by charging an hourly fee based on travel time, the agency would impose a significant penalty on rural businesses simply because of where they are located.
As stated in WAPF’s comments: At a time when Congress is debating how to reduce the regulatory burdens on small businesses, it is wholly counter-productive for the agency to create a fee structure that makes it impossible for a small business to survive a simple re-inspection. In contrast, large businesses are more able to absorb additional costs and already have a competitive advantage due to economies of scale. The fee provisions under FSMA should not be applied in a way that favors, yet again, large businesses over small. By adopting the Tester-Hagan amendment to the FSMA, Congress recognized that businesses that gross under five hundred thousand dollars annually (to be adjusted for inflation) are in a special category. Given the small profit margins many such businesses have, any fees imposed by FDA could be destructive. Congress also recognized that businesses that sell directly to consumers are accountable to their customers through an efficient, transparent system that cannot be duplicated by government regulation or inspections. Even as the businesses grow, a bill for several tens of thousands of dollars for a reinspection would be prohibitively expensive. The Small Business Administration (SBA) uses a range of definition for what constitutes a “small business” in the field of agriculture and food. For food manufacturing, SBA generally provides that businesses qualify as “small” when they have between five hundred and one thousand employees, depending on the precise industry classification. (See http://www.sba.gov/sites/default/files/Size_Standards_Table.pdf Subsector 311.) In order to pay that many employees’ wages in addition to the facility and input costs, these businesses presumably have a gross income of several tens of millions of dollars. While this amount may not seem small, it is understandable in the context of the food industry, in which the dominant companies have gross incomes in the billions of dollars.
After discussing all of these factors, WAPF recommended in its comments to FDA that fees should be completely waived for facilities grossing under half a million dollars annually (adjusted for inflation) and significantly reduced, on a tiered basis, for facilities grossing up to twenty-five million dollars annually. WAPF also urged measures such as capping total fees, waiving fees for travel time, and providing additional reductions or exemptions for facilities that sell directly to consumers.
THE FIGHT AGAINST GENETICALLY MODIFIED FOODS ENTERS A NEW PHASE
While FDA spends significant resources regulating small producers selling to willing consumers, it continues to shelter the real offenders against food safety: companies selling genetically modified (GM) foods to consumers who don’t even realize what they’re eating. In the 1990s, at the urging of the companies who stood to make a fortune from their patented products, the FDA found that GM crops were “substantially equivalent” to non-GM crops, allowing them to be introduced into the food chain without labeling and leaving consumers in the dark about what they are eating. This finding of substantial equivalence is absurd. If there truly were no significant differences, then the companies could not have gotten patents. Moreover, research in the years since has thoroughly disproven this fiction. Study after study shows allergic responses and worse from eating GM crops (to read just a few, go to www.farmandranchfreedom.org/gmofarmandranchfreedom.org/gmo). The Center for Food Safety has filed a formal petition with FDA to require labeling of foods made with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as ingredients. Over three hundred organizations are supporting the effort, and, as of the time this article went to press, over three hundred fifty thousand comments had been submitted to FDA in support of the petition.
TAKE ACTION: Tell FDA that you want them to require labeling! You can submit comments multiple ways:
ONLINE: www.regulations.gov/#!submitComment;D=FDA-2011-P-0723-0001 FAX: 301-827-6870
MAIL: Division of Dockets Management, Food and Drug Administration, 5630 Fishers Lane, Room 1061, HFA-305, Rockville, MD 20852
You must include the docket number at the top of your comments: FDA-2011-P-0723
The other major news on the fight against GMOs comes from California. In November, a ballot initiative that would require the labeling of all genetically modified foods sold in California was submitted to the Attorney General’s office. If enough petition signatures are collected, the California Right to Know Genetically Engineered Food Act will be on the California ballot in November 2012. The Wise Traditions conference this year included the most up-to-date information on GMOs and their health effects, presented by Howard Vlieger. A recording is available at http://www.fleetwoodonsite.com/index.php?cPath=40_307. As the fight against GMOs gain traction, it is vital to spread this information to as many people as possible.
Animal ID
Having dropped the plans for the National Animal Identification System (NAIS), USDA is back again for Round Two. In August 2011, the agency proposed a rule that imposes costs and paperwork burdens on farmers, ranchers, backyard poultry owners, sale barns, vets, and state agencies in order to track animals that cross state lines. Though less sweeping than the NAIS, the proposed animal traceability rule is still burdensome. In particular, the proposed rule would require individual tagging of poultry that cross state lines, except for the birds that belong to factory farms. This will cause problems for people who order day-old chicks from out-of-state hatcheries, go to live bird markets, or use a slaughterhouse across state lines. The proposed rule also requires that all cows crossing state lines be identified and accompanied by a certificate of veterinary inspection. Moreover, vets and sale barns will have to keep records on all the cows for five years, long after most of the animals will have gone to slaughter.
Fundamentally, like NAIS, the proposed rule is a solution in search of a problem. The USDA has again failed to identify the specific problem or disease of concern, and the real focus of the program is helping the export market for the benefit of a handful of large corporations.
Along with other organizations, WAPF sent out an alert urging people to submit comments. Thanks to the hundreds of WAPF members who responded! The public comment period ended on December 9, and now we await USDA’s response.
This article appeared in Wise Traditions in Food, Farming and the Healing Arts, the quarterly journal of the Weston A. Price Foundation, Winter 2011.
About the Author
[authorbio:mcgeary-judith]
fault/files/Size_Standards_Table.pdf, Subsector 311.) In order to pay that many employees’ wages in addition to the facility and input costs, these businesses presumably have a gross income of several tens of millions of dollars. While this amount may not seem small, it is understandable in the context of the food industry, in which the dominant companies have gross incomes in the billions of dollars. After discussing all of these factors, WAPF recommended in its comments to FDA that fees should be completely waived for facilities grossing under half a million dollars annually (adjusted for inflation) and significantly reduced, on a tiered basis, for facilities grossing up to twenty-five million dollars annually. WAPF also urged measures such as capping total fees, waiving fees for travel time, and providing additional reductions or exemptions for facilities that sell directly to consumers. The Fight Against Genetically Modified Foods Enters a New Phase While FDA spends significant resources regulating small producers selling to willing consumers, it continues to shelter the real offenders against food safety: companies selling genetically modified (GM) foods to consumers who don’t even realize what they’re eating. In the 1990s, at the urging of the companies who stood to make a fortune from their patented products, the FDA found that GM crops were “substantially equivalent” to non-GM crops, allowing them to be introduced into the food chain without labeling and leaving consumers in the dark about what they are eating. This finding of substantial equivalence is absurd. If there truly were no significant differences, then the companies could not have gotten patents. Moreover, research in the years since has thoroughly disproven this fiction. Study after study shows allergic responses and worse from eating GM crops (to read just a few, go to www. farmandranchfreedom.org/gmo). The Center for Food Safety has filed a formal petition with FDA to require labeling of foods made with genetically modified organisms (GMOs) as ingredients. Over three hundred organizations are supporting the effort, and, as of the time this article went to press, over three hundred fifty thousand comments had been submitted to
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