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Food safety

From a story in Sunday's paper:

There’s no need to wonder where the collard greens or tomatoes came from that are on sale at Whitaker Farms’ stall at the Piedmont Triad Farmers Market.

They came right from Richard and Faylene Whitaker’s Randolph County farm fields or greenhouse. The farm has developed such a reputation among local veggie lovers that something curious happened in 2008 when a salmonella outbreak had folks running scared from tomatoes.

“People knew where ours were coming from, so our sales went up,” Whitaker said. “It was an advantage for me because people knew my product.”

But Whitaker and other small farmers worry about a rewrite of the nation’s food safety regulations expected to be chewed over by a Senate committee this week.

In particular, small farmers say rules designed to prevent transmission of foodborne illnesses by large growers and packers will overwhelm small growers.

“It could eliminate all local leafy greens, I think,” Whitaker said.

Click here to read the whole thing, which includes thoughts from Sens. Richard Burr and Kay Hagan.

The House passed a food safety bill this summer. Most folks with North Carolina connections that I spoke with did not like that version of the bill. You can read more about it in this Wall Street Journal story (click here).

The Senate version of the bill is S 510. You can click here to read that version. The Senate's Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP) committee has already held one hearing on the bill. You can find written testimony from that hearing and watch a video of the proceedings by clicking here. Both Burr and Hagan sit on this committee.

In the story, I spoke with folks from the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association. Their website is here. You can find out more about Whitaker Farms here.

"Make Our Food Safe," a group tied up with the Pew Charitable Trusts, recently did a survey that purports to show a majority of folks support greater food safety regulation. North Carolina was one of the states surveyed and you can see those results here. Given the length of the survey and the technical details of some of the questions, I'm skeptical that the data can be used to promote one food safety approach over another.