yes, I have been keeping track of this for well over a year. The bill has bee re written since it has been introduced and most small farms will be exempt from this unless they are selling interstate and doing more than 50% of their business wholesale.

I have gotten several emails in the past month all freaked out about this and they all are about the original bill before it was changed to be less onerous on the small guys.

All that said this bill still could be damaging to the small farms sell direct so now is the time to contact your senators and tell them to support Sen Testor's amendments to the bill.

Here is a link that might be useful: S 510: FDSA Food Modernization Act

Thanks bouderbelt for keeping up on this. Personally, I think the government is butting in on way too much, but that's my opinoin.

I had just seen the original bill, but after your post I Google it. And it has been rewritten.But I agree with myfamilfarm, the government is into too many things. And as I say :" What Happens on The Farm, Feeds The World".

Let me restate my previous post. The government is into too much on a small farm. I don't feel that the big commercial farmers, over 1,000 acres, are really what I classify as a farm. And I'm only talking about United States farms, all of the out-the-country farms need to have some regulations and standards.

the government is into too many things. And as I say :" What Happens on The Farm, Feeds The World"

And what happens on the farm can KILL the world ... If you are selling to others, especially if you are selling via intermediaries (wholesale) or the Internet, the people who trace epidemics want to be able to find you.

They want to be able to find the market gardener who lets the chickens roost in the veggy packing shed, the one who spreads the herbs out on the cow-barn floor to dry, the one selling dairy products from a cow with brucellosis ... keeping the food chain safe is not an easy task. It starts with being able to trace the suspect food to the source, and if the sources are anonymous, they can't be traced.

Good argument Lazy but the farms selling direct are generally not anonymous-the buyer and the seller have a face to face relationship and if the seller, due to very unhygienic practices, poisons the buyer, than the buyer will either sue the seller, tell everyone they know not to buy from the seller or perhaps a combination of the two. oh or they can contact the county Board of Health and turn them in and get them shut down (as the health dept has every right to investigate any complaints).

And the small farms are not selling to the world. they do not make 10000 pound batches of salad mix to be distributed nationwide and thus they should not be made to work under rules meant for big industrial farms and packers.

Also let us not put in meat and dairy into this. the cow with brucellosis does not happen as every dairy selling legally in the USA must test for this disease, including the raw milk herd share dairies. meat and dairy have their own sets of regulations that are very different from the produce regs.

"the small farms are not selling to the world. they do not make 10000 pound batches of salad mix to be distributed nationwide" One small farmer I know of sells her dried tomatoes to restaurants over a large area. If she screws up, she could cause a multi-state outbreak of some sort of food-borne disease.

Size has nothing to do with how good a chance you have of killing someone. Small farmers ("thus they should not be made to work under rules meant for big industrial farms and packers" Rules like following generally accepted hygiene practices? Keeping track of which distributors you sell to and what you sold, who you ship to?

That's hardly onerous, it's just ordinary business record-keeping.

I think about enforceability and budgets. Do you honestly know how much of our imported food is even inspected? When you have X amount of dollars to spend, you put it to the best use. You can legislate until the cows come home and if there's no effective follow-through it's wasted money.

The FDA actually inspects only about 1% of the food we import. We rely on third world countries to vouch their food is safe. Why? We can't afford to inspect it all as it crosses our borders. When we can accomplish guaranteeing pure foods from all sources who feed our country, then we can start nit-picking smaller producers who distribute locally.

This is a good one to get your blood boiling! Seeing how humankind has evolved since long before our government existed, and even before our government took on the job of saving the world (from what-ourselves), this is just more BS for big brother to get bigger and stronger, taking the power away from the average citizen who can't afford to buy their way into the game. That doesn't sound like a govt. of and for the people to me. Good point about the nitpicking efforts calliope. Like we should believe that the stuff we import from Thailand and China, just to name a couple, is what any of us would consider safe. I don't even think half of us would believe in the labor practices let alone the sanitation practices would be acceptable to us in those places. Lazygardens, it sounds like your leaving out some of the motivation behind your comments. Care to share you background? As far as the food borne outbreaks go, well, the world has not been killed. Anybody ever heard the saying "the world is not a perfect place?" - Well, when did it become the US govt. job to try to perfect it? The track record would show them to be the least capable of perfecting anything!!!!!

"Lazygardens, it sounds like your leaving out some of the motivation behind your comments. Care to share you background?"

Microbiologist, medical technologist.

Some good pros and cons on this discussion. I just start getting my hackles up when the name "Monsanto" comes up as it did in this report.

Do you still think it is going no where?It just passed one house a couple weeks ago.

But it takes 2 plus the president, 1 house is only 1/3 of the way.

all the more reason for the consumer to get to know the farmer and who he is buying from. People can not be protected from everything some are just too stupid