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Cornucopia Institute, June 29th, 2011
http://www.cornucopia.org/2011/06/action-alert-big-agusda-could-run-organic-leafy-green-growers-out-of-business/
National Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement Comments: Due July 28
Action Alert
Corporate agribusiness wants to tell the rest of us how to farm, and shut anyone out of the market who does not follow their one-size-fits-all “food safety” standards for leafy green vegetables. The USDA is supporting their plan, which, if accepted, will allow a committee of industry representatives, lobbyists and other officials to write a set of so-called food safety standards for the entire leafy green farming community—this could competitively injure smaller, local and organic producers.
If passed, leafy green handlers/marketers who sign on to this agreement will require every grower they buy from to follow a uniform set of standards, which will be written with large-scale, monoculture, chemical-intensive farming methods in mind. Farmers do not sign on to the agreement – their buyers (brokers, distributors and supermarket chains) do. Sustainable organic and local growers who take different approaches to food safety will likely be shut out of the market when buyers refuse their buy their crops.
With the recent passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act, this proposal by industrial-scale, monoculture interests for industry self-regulation is simply unnecessary and counterproductive.
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