Food Safety Response: Standards
In an effort to do something about repeated outbreaks of E. Coli coming from bagged salad, large produce buyers started demanding significant changes in farming practices.
Unfortunately, many of these demands—such as requirements that farmers keep out animals and children, use rodent poison in fields, and remove hedges and other vegetation—run counter to both natural farming methods and environmental science.
Farmers note that large buyers often send out auditors trained in indoor processing plants, who do not recognize the role of ecology in farming techniques, many of which rely on biodiversity and ecosystem services like wetlands and predators to control pathogens and pests.
Farmers report being asked to destroy crops in fields if a deer walks through, and to remove trees and other vegetative buffers that offer wind and sun protection, and harbor beneficial insects.
An environmental scientist with the California Department of Fish and Game said “It’s all based on panic and fear, and the science is not there.”
In July 2009 testimony before the House Agriculture Committee, a national farmers’ group asked the FDA to avoid adopting food safety measures that value sterility over ecosystem services.
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Sources
Lochhead, C. 2009. Crops, Ponds destroyed in quest for food safety. San Francisco Chronicla. July 13.
Peppler, K. 2009.Testimony before the House Agriculture Committee (pdf). July 16.
