When resolving and correcting a problem, the following principles must be applied:
A. Assessment of the problem must ALWAYS be risk-based.
B. No solution can be determined UNLESS the root cause is identified.
C. Methods of control must ALWAYS address the root cause.
Any solution applied outside those principles produces NO ACTUAL BENEFIT and ADDS INEFFECTIVE REGULATIONS and USELESS BURDENSOME COSTS.
This policy proposal provides solutions to these 3 probems:
- Crushing Regulation of Small Food Producers
- Violation of Personal Sovereignty over Food Choices
- Restriction of Access to Locally Grown Raw and Natural Foods
To correctly address these issues, it’s necesary to understand this:
—>Food safety is far less of an issue in small operations than large ones.<—
- Commercial farming and food handling at the massive scale has greater opportunity for mishandling, unsafe practices, and errors.
- Commercial farming/processing food errors have far greater impact on public health because of the much larger number of peope who consume a single batch, lot or animal.
- Commercially produced products are distributed over much greater areas and larger markets, and have exponentially larger potential impact when an unsafe condition occurs.
- On-farm and market garden/farmer’s market sales provide greater opportunity for the buyer to choose trustworthy sources, quality products, and to inspect facilities and handling for themselves.
- On-farm and market garden/farmer’s market sales distribute to local areas with smaller distribution and have orders of magnitude smaller impacts.
Availability of Natural, Raw, Farm-Raised Products
- Foods such as raw milk and dairy products, home-preserved goods, and other low-processing items should be available for sale both on-farm and at farmer’s market type settings, as well as in grocery stores.
- Right-to-Sell and Right-to-Buy should be protected at the federal level so no state can compromise their citizens’ right to choose the food their families will eat.
Accessibility of Sales and Distribution
- One problem with limiting sales to on-farm settings is that this prevents access by many city dwellers - farm settings may simply be too far away to be a practical daily / weekly source. For this reason, local in-store sales should be permitted and encouraged.
Safety and Traceability of Products
- For foods that may be a source of food-borne illness, it would be useful to provide non-mandatory guidance on “source” information to be provided at the time of sale. This might take the form of business cards or labels to accompany the product that state 1) the producer’s name/business, 2) contact information (phone or email), 3) county/state where the product is produced (NOT the facility address for privacy and biosecurity reasons), and 4) method of production (free-range, grass fed, organic, natural, etc.)
- Labeling of this sort would allow products to be traced back in the unlikely event of a CONFIRMED (not assumed or implicated) food safety issue.
- IF a food-borne illness is CONFIRMED, support should be provided for identification and correction of root cause, in conjunction with the producer’s veterinary professionals. This should NOT require extermination of herds/flocks and the resulting economic destruction of the producer, but should focus on additional testing, management strategies, preservation of valuable genetics, and development of preventative methods.
—>It is essential that people’s sovereignty over their own bodies and health be restored and protected.<—
Choice of what to eat, and what food to provide to their families, is inseparable from basic right to self-determination.
Availability of, and support for, locally grown and processed raw and natural products supports consumers’ health, and provides economic value for producers.
Right-to-Sell and Right-to-Buy must be protected at the federal level.
United-States-Department-of-Agriculture Food-and-Drug-Administration #Food-Safety #Food-Access