God help me, I read the whole thing, all 159 pages of HR 2749 as amended by the House Rules Committee this afternoon. Someone remind me to drink bourbon before I do something like this again. As it was, I had to put on relaxing music to get through it.
This is a link to the action of the House Rules Committee on HR 2749 today –
There is a link on this page to the amended bill.
The committee’s “summary” on the page linked above is not quite entirely accurate.
The last sentence says –
“In the fresh produce section of the bill, it is clarified that the FDA should issue standards only for the riskiest types of products.”
I didn’t find anything that actually said that in the actual text. There’s some fluff about consulting with the Sec of Ag and taking into account the impact on small farmers yadda yadda yadda but I didn’t see anything that would prevent the FDA from issuing detailed regs to farmers about their vegetable production practices.
Another problem with the summary –
“For instance, the substitute amendment provides that farms, including those that process food and feed that they sell to other farms or primarily directly to consumers, do not have to register or pay. “
This is sort of true and sort of not true. If a farm sells to both individuals and into some sort of regular commercial marketplace, the value of the sales of individuals must be greater than the value of its other sales for the farm to be exempt. Also, “farm to school” sales are NOT exempt, so this will be a burden for farmers participating in farm to school programs.
I also didn’t really see anything that exempts artisan producers. Maybe some that only do direct sales, but once they branch out from that, they come under the full impact of the regulations, and the fines for non-compliance are very large, starting at $20K and going up from there, and every “day” of the violation is a separate offense. I can see people looking at that risk (plus the criminal penalties, which start at 10 years in jail) and deciding to just close up shop.
They did take out the bizarre provision of the original bill that would allow meat packers to use carbon monoxide to preserve the red color of the meat. Yes, I kid you not.
I intend to continue to oppose this bill and encourage others to do likewise. It’s obvious that this is an attempted major power grab of authority over the growing of vegetables, and the last minute exemptions the Rules Committee threw in are only a fig leaf attempt to give up the least amount possible so they can maybe get this passed.
Once the camel’s nose of regulation of vegetable production is in the tent, the rest of the animal will not be far behind. The attitude of the government towards farming for 50 years has been “get big or get out”, and I think this is the latest incarnation of that program. For some, it may be the last straw and they will just give up.