Without going into a detailed textual analysis, the FSMA requires all “food establishments,” which means anyone selling or storing food of any type for transmission to third parties via the act of commerce, to register with a new Food Safety Administration, to keep copious records of sales and shipment by lot and label, to subject themselves to at least annual inspections by FSA inspectors, and to provide detailed handling instructions for safe processing of food. That may work for Nabisco and the people who supply McDonald’s, but it’s probably not going to work at, for instance, the farmer’s market I visit without fail every weekend beginning in late March. The place is infested with hippies and rustic sorts who couldn’t fill out a spreadsheet and can’t afford legal advice on how to farm, but know a thing or two about growing good peppers.
Nor will the more detailed recordkeeping and lab testing requirements, and the monthly inspections, to be required of farmers’ markets which offer delicacies such as bacon or cheese, both of which I purchase at my own farmers’ market because I trust the farmers involved, and because I won’t give up absolutely fresh tomatoes even if I’m not assured they were audited by the government.
It’s also unlikely to work for importers of certain delicacy foods which aren’t made in America (the bill requires food makers overseas to adhere to bacterial testing standards equal to those mandated by the FSA) such as mortadella ham and certain cheeses. Those may no longer be imported.
As the CPSIA illustrates, the problem with “one size fits all” regulation of business activity at the federal level is that one size, in fact, doesn’t fit all. Lead paint testing requirements, which are just a cost to be passed on to millions of customers by a Mattel or GAPKids who see little increase in price per unit because they test in bulk, simply kill small, artisan toymakers or small-lot clothing producers. The mandates of the FSMA likewise will cause little trouble to Hormel, but may be onerous indeed to the smallscale family farmer in Louisburg North Carolina from whom I buy sausage on saturday mornings.
And from the left-side of the political spectrum:
All of these bills, ostensibly, are efforts to make factory-farmed food safer so we can avoid E.coli in spinach, downer cattle in school lunches, feathers in chicken patties, and other food-borne horror stories we've grown all-too used to hearing about. But if these regulations are extended to the small, family farms where the problems aren't coming from, it's more than just a legislative overextension. It's a tilting of the playing field grossly in favor of corporate agriculture. And on this point, we all should be paranoid.
"What people don't realize is that if any of these bills pass, we lose. All we will have left is industrial food," says Deborah Stockton, executive director of the National Independent Consumers and Farmers Association, which is dedicated to promoting and preserving unregulated direct farmer-to-consumer trade, and fostering the availability of locally grown or home-produced food products.
As a big fan of local food markets, family sausage stores, and imported artisanal foods, my stomach has a personal interest in this, but my political fire gets stoked since it is entirely possible for the politicians to add language that excludes small operations, yet they have failed to do so.
If a corporation is going to accept the privileges bestowed upon them, such as limited liability protection and government funding/grants/breaks, then I have no problem, in fact I think justice demands, that burdens and tolls are legislated and enforced to counteract corporations propensity to externalize costs.
As a good friend likes to remind me, drawing on Lincoln's words, our government should be "of the people, by the people, for the people" not "of the corporation, by the corporation, for the corporation."
Now, if a company is organized with unlimited liability (such as sole proprietor or general partnership), then I personally feel that organization should be free from as much government burden as possible.
Someone shouldn't need to file licenses, pay fees, build a separate commercial kitchen, and document the process for each ingredient just to sell cookies at a farmer's market.
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