USDA Proposal for Leafy Greens Would Harm Sustainable Farmers/Environment

CORNUCOPIA, Wis., Nov. 26 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — In response to the E. coli 0157 outbreak last year in bagged spinach, the USDA is considering federal rules potentially requiring growers of all leafy green vegetables to follow uniform guidelines in the fields and during postharvest handling. Farm advocates are concerned that small and medium-sized growers will be competitively disadvantaged.


The USDA has released an Advance Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (ANPR). Members of the public have until December 3 to comment on the controversial proposal.


“Such one-size-fits-all requirements, while unproven in terms of their impact on food safety, would be disastrous for wildlife, biodiversity, and for the family-scale farmers who are producing some of the nation’s highest-quality produce,” says Charlotte Vallaeys, Farm and Food Policy Analyst at The Cornucopia Institute, a Wisconsin-based farm policy group. “If regulations dictate uniform growing practices and food safety measures, which might be appropriate for large-scale ‘factory-farms’ but onerous and unnecessary for diverse family farms, we risk losing the very farms that grow leafy greens in a healthy and environmentally sustainable way.”


The rules would likely mirror those already in place in California, where farmers have been asked to take extreme measures with little scientific justification. Some large produce buyers, such as processors, supermarkets and fast food chains, are using those rules to issue their own standards.


For example, farmers have been told to destroy hedgerows and other non-crop vegetation around farms that provide important habitat for beneficial wildlife, and to erect fences around their fields, which negatively impacts wildlife corridors. Such measures have not been shown to be effective deterrents to E. coli contamination.


California’s rules also discourage the development of microbial life in the soil. In fact, sustainable farming methods, which promote healthy microbial life in soil, have been shown to reduce E. coli 0157 because the organism has to compete with other microbes making it less likely to thrive.


“The alarming prevalence of the virulent E. coli 0157 in our food system is due to an animal industry allowed to raise cattle in stressful environments on unnatural diets. Allowing such practices to continue while burdening produce growers with the impossible task of sterilizing their farms is folly beyond belief,” says Tom Willey of T & D Willey Farms in Madera, CA, an organic vegetable producer who distributes produce regionally.


For more, visit www.cornucopia.org.


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Source: The Cornucopia Institute