But the proposed safety standards, which have been described as a "corporate-backed marketing ploy, may give agribusinesses using the new food safety seal a boost and lead many consumers to assume that vegetables from industrial-scale monoculture farms, primarily in California, are safer than the leafy greens available from local growers around the country. And that has some farmers worried.
"I am concerned that organic, and small and medium sized local growers like myself, will become marketplace ˜second-class citizens' in the eyes of some consumers, by implying that my produce is less safe " when the very opposite is likely to be true, said Tom Willey, a certified organic vegetable grower from Madera, CA.
In fact, the produce most likely to be implicated in foodborne illness outbreaks are the bags of leafy greens on supermarket shelves rather than organic produce bought directly from a farmer or when distributed to a local co-op or specialty retailer.
In addition, farmers who want to sell to handlers using the new food safety seal will likely have to implement costly record-keeping and testing protocols on their acreage. This is economically unfeasible for many small growers.
Some farmers may even have to undo decades of conservation and habitat-based improvements " such as water and shoreland stream buffers " in the attempt to isolate their crops from wildlife, that have never been proven to be the source of past contamination problems. "Isolating wildlife is a smokescreen deflecting concern away from factory farm livestock production which is demonstrated to create water, air and soil contamination," Fantle added.
The September 18th edition of the New York Times ran a disturbing cover story about widespread contamination of well water in states with high concentrations of industrial-scale livestock facilities. Contaminated water in rural areas, used for irrigation or for washing vegetables, has been implicated in past contamination incidents involving fresh vegetables.
"The Cornucopia Institute agrees that the safety of our food supply is a vitally important issue, said Fantle. "This is precisely why we believe that the USDA should not allow corporate handlers to mix serious food safety concerns with their self-serving marketing interests.
MORE:
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
