THE COMING BATTLE OVER FOOD SAFETY

by Tracy Frisch

Issue 48 (December 09-February 10)

[Copyright © 2009, The Valley Table]

At a sparsely attended U.S. Department of Agriculture hearing in a Syracuse hotel conference room on October 20, 2009, a battle for control of the nation's food system unfolded. It's a fight being waged by big agribusiness against those perpetual underdogs--small, independent family farms, especially organic ones. The terrain being fought over is food safety--what it is and how to achieve it. From the start though, pesticide residues and other chemical pollutants--like the rocket fuel discovered in California lettuce--have been totally off the table.

The focus is on the National Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement (NLGMA), a not-yet determined set of regulations that's supposed to prevent microbial contamination of certain produce from field to plate. As written, the proposal would give "handlers" such as supermarket chains the lead role in determining what steps should be required of farmers to prevent food-borne illnesses in "leafy greens," a catch-all food category that includes salad greens and other leafy edibles. As with California's LGMA and the recent federal organic certification standards, opponents fear over-representation and influence of large food corporations and mega farms will result in regulations that favor industrial agriculture or threaten the future of small-farm and organic operations.

Endorsing the LGMA requires a leap of faith, because the actual standards, or "metrics" as they are called, haven't been drawn up yet. Instead, the proposed rule published in the Federal Register--the subject of the USDA's listening sessions--only outlines the mechanics for establishing them. It outlines, for instance, which sectors get how many seats of the rule-making body and how they're appointed. Growers are in the distinct minority, and scientists are reserved no seats at all. Supporting the LGMA without knowing what it will require farmers to do is like "buying a pig in a poke," says Steve Gilman, policy coordinator for the Northeast Organic Farming Association's Interstate Council.

Those opposed to the agreement raise many other objections to using it as a means to ensure safe produce, noting its bias toward industrial agriculture and against diversified farms and ecological practices. They advocate for strong government controls targeting the riskiest products and practices, instead of a so-called "voluntary" approach under industry domination.

Small farm advocates point out that co-mingling produce from multiple farms for washing and packing, and then shipping it far distances with various intermediaries amplifies the risk of food-borne illnesses. Yet the California salad industry that supplies the nation has organized production in this manner. Critics of the proposed NLGMA also single out ready-to-eat, cut salad greens packaged in plastic with a long expiration date as potential incubators for pathogens. In fact, most of the E. coli illness incidents from salad greens have been linked to such products.

The day-long proceeding in Syracuse was one of seven "listening sessions" held across the country. Witnesses were sworn in, read written statements and were cross-examined by several panels--officials from the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service (a section of the USDA staffed by economists and marketing specialists), supporters of the proposal, an attorney for the opponents, as well as bold audience members.

At the supporters' table in Syracuse, the Western Growers Association was joined by the Produce Marketing Association, a global trade organization headquartered in Delaware that claims to represent more than 90 percent of the fresh produce sold in the United States. Its members operate in 47 countries and encompass the entire supply chain, from growers to shippers to retail and food service.

Facing off with these heavyweights were the upstarts, led by the National Organic Coalition--small and organic farming sectors and their allies, including consumer organizations like the Cornucopia Institute, Center for Food Safety, Food and Water Watch, and Consumers Union.

Richard Bonanno, a fourth-generation Massachusetts farmer who happens also to teach growers about food safety for Massachusetts Extension, wasn't beating around the bushes when he decried the proposed marketing agreement as "a public-relations effort." He said large growers in the West were trying to rebuild their image after they "created a national scare" with contaminated spinach in 2006. Strenuously objecting to making "the rest of us pay for their mistakes and for the downfalls of their huge scales of production and processing," he bluntly accused them of trying to "derail the 'Buy Local' movement."

Whenever a major food-borne illness incident hits the news, consumers of mass-market food become squeamish about buying whatever food it's linked. As the top manager dealing with farms for Wegmans Food Markets, the Rochester-based supermarket chain, Bill Pool sadly remembers the havoc wrought on the produce business by the widespread E. coli O157:H7 outbreak in spinach three years ago. As sales plummeted following reports of death and illness, he saw spinach become a favorite object of derision in cartoons and comedy routines. "Every outbreak dilutes our message that the consumption of fruits and vegetables is good," Pool says.

Following the incident, Wegmans played an "integral" role in bringing together a coalition of food buyers that pushed the salad green industry to develop a food safety program.

Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) are the backbone of the food safety approach promoted by supermarket chains, Cornell, and both the California and National LGMA. There's also a TGAP (for Florida tomatoes), and Global GAP, previously known as Europe GAP, required of apple growers exporting to Europe.

Verifying that a grower or packer is compliant with food safety metrics involves an audit by a third party, either governmental or private. In addition to the "official" leafy greens metrics in California, LGMA farmers have to deal with a proliferation of secret, "private" metrics, developed by retail chains and food buyers in a sort of arms race for the toughest standards. Driven by a quest for consumer confidence (not science), the unspoken competition has resulted in absurd demands, like a three- or even five-year waiting period until harvest after applying manure to a field and 450-foot wide bare soil buffers surrounding crop fields in a futile attempt to keep out all wildlife!

Different types of daily record-keeping requirements and inspections come with GAP certification. At $92 an hour for USDA inspectors to make multiple visits to a farm, including their travel time, getting audited for GAP can be a pricey proposition for a small farm. Moreover, the certification isn’t geared to the diversity of many small, fresh-market farming operations. Roxbury Farm in Kinderhook, for example, grows about 50 types of produce for its 1,000-member Community Supported Agriculture. USDA inspectors told director Jody Bolluyt that they only conduct GAP audits for individual crops on a farm, not on a whole-farm basis. While they could lump together some categories of vegetables, like carrots, beets and other roots, this would still leave many other types of vegetables to be reckoned with.

When Jeff Kubecka, a Central New York mixed vegetable farmer, testified in favor of the NLGMA in Syracuse, he admitted that preparing for a GAP audit has been time-consuming. He figured that he spent "a few weeks worth of time" on GAP during the past year and a half that he has been working on it. He estimates it will take "at least five hours a week" during the growing season to maintain his GAP certification just for four acres of cabbage, his only leafy green among the 150 acres of vegetables he grows, packs and delivers. He is a supporter of the NGLMA, but hardly enthusiastic about adding yet another set of obligations that will take him away from hands-on work to his varied responsibilities.

Not surprisingly, a July 2009 California survey of Central Coast irrigated-crop growers documented that many farmers have abandoned some of their conservation practices in order to meet industry food safety requirements needed to sell their produce. They have dropped on-farm environmental measures that do things like provide wildlife habitat, attract beneficial insects, and protect streams from runoff. The survey also revealed that so-called "voluntary" food safety mandates disproportionately burden smaller growers financially due to economies of scale. Those raising under 100 acres of crops reported mean food safety costs of $93 an acre compared to $15 an acre for those producing 1,000 acres of crops.

Concerns about the potential for food-borne illness has reached the farm-market level. Community Markets' proprietor Miriam Haas wants her business's twenty or so farmers' markets, in Westchester and Rockland Counties and New York City, to be "ahead of the curve."

At the Community Markets vendor meeting two years ago, experts gave presentations on microbial food safety, including a talk by a Cornell professor that served as a wake-up call to farmers, Haas says. Since then, her vendors convened a farmer food-safety working group, and last summer market managers monitored the temperature of vendors' coolers.

Starting in 2011, producers applying to sell at any of the Community Markets will be required to have a food safety plan, though not have an audit. "If someone got sick and it were traced to our markets, we could probably trace a problem. We'd also like to be able to say that all of our farmers have a food safety plan," she explains.

Back at the hearing, the proponents of the NLGMA spoke with one voice against allowing any exemptions for small or organic growers. Kathy Means, vice president for affairs at the Produce Marketing Association, stated firmly, "When I hear it's incompatible with [small farms] being in business, I think maybe they shouldn't be in business."

Existing organic standards already contain rules that help prevent food-borne illness: Certified organic farmers cannot use raw manure on crops for human consumption without a lengthy waiting period before harvest; when composting manure and other materials, they must document that the compost has reached an optimal temperature for killing pathogens; and they must test their irrigation and washing water sources annually. Getting certified requires the farmer to keep extensive records about field practices and about the harvest, enabling product lots to be easily traced. The problem for small producers is that the rules keep changing.

Former Columbia County sprout producers Jane Jessup and Doug Mayer of Newton Hook Farm believe that an earlier food safety measure contributed to the demise of small growers to the benefit of larger firms. The couple had always used a small amount of chlorine when they started the seed. They pre-treated their potable well water with ultra violet light to kill human and plant pathogens alike. They always passed unannounced state inspections. But in September 1999, they made their 22-year-old sprout business's last delivery. The Food and Drug Administration's onerous new food safety regulations for sprouts were about to go into effect, and they "just couldn't" conform to them. New rules required sprout growers to use so much chlorine that they'd need to wear protective gear, according to Jessup Meyer. "We'd also have to test each batch [of sprouts], though we wouldn't get the results back until the product was already on the shelf," she said. Jessup Mayer called it "the last straw"--they gave away their Albany customer list to another small sprout grower who, within a year or so, also closed down.

"Sprout growers were singled out as an easy target," she confided. "It got lots of publicity for what really constituted a very small number of food related illnesses, especially compared to the beef industry which is subject to frequent recalls with far more dire consequences for the consumer."

Similarly, Tim Wersan of Windfall Farm notes, "Our business was already hurt once by seemingly innocuous, optional USDA regulations." The Montgomery (Orange County) farm, which has sold its salad greens at the Union Square Greenmarket for several decades, dropped its organic certification after the federal government got involved in determining what constitutes organic. He has watched the USDA stamp of approval give some customers more confidence in buying certified organic produce from Trader Joe's and Whole Foods, despite its probable far-flung, industrial origins, than from their nearby farm. He fears that the NGLMA will cause the public to wonder why greens in the big stores are food safety-compliant while local produce at farmers markets is not.

When Roxbury Farm's Jody Bolluyt attended a GAP certification workshop put on by Cornell Cooperative Extension last spring, she was curious about whether it would be possible for her farm to become GAP-certified.

The workshop instructors--two inspectors and a Cornell food safety specialist--helped Bolluyt write a food safety plan appropriate to Roxbury Farm. Following the plan led to improvements that make washing and packing easier and more pleasant, Bolluyt says. They installed better lighting and washable walls, fixed the concrete floor, and bought a power-washer for steam-cleaning the facility. They also built a new washing shed for their root washers to keep dirt out of the leafy greens wash station.

The process of writing the plan made Bolluyt realize, however, that GAP guidelines were not developed with sustainable farms in mind. The inspectors weren't familiar with grazing on a vegetable operation and could not provide clear guidance on it. Roxbury Farm periodically grazes its livestock on soil-restoring cover crops like clover that are grown in rotation in vegetable fields--they wait a year after the animals before harvesting vegetables. "They said they would need to be educated on sustainable practices before they could create regulations for us to follow," she wrote in an email. On the other hand, "If we could prove that what we do is 'safe,' they seemed fine with it."

Opponents to the NLGMA also contend that it would further restrict small farmers' access to the marketplace and hand big agribusinesses the market advantage they covet. This increased market concentration would occur because buyers that sign on to the marketing agreement could only buy leafy greens from producers that also comply with its terms--and have the audits to prove it. At the hearing, Amanda Gormley, of the Syracuse Real Food Co-op, warned that businesses that decide not to sign on would be at a competitive disadvantage in the marketplace.

Wegmans now requires all its leafy green suppliers to be GAP-certified, and Pool says that he could not sell unaudited produce "in good conscience." While the chain buys directly from 550 farms within its multi-state region, about ten vertically integrated firms--"the Doles, Delmontes, and Ocean Mists"--supply most of its leafy greens. (Last year two firms controlled almost 80 percent of the bagged fresh cut salad market nationwide.)

In 2004, young, first-generation farmer Nathaniel Thompson started Remembrance Farm in Trumansburg, near Ithaca. While a teenager growing up in Dutchess County, Thompson caught the farming bug and, after graduating from Cornell, he ran the Still Point Community Farm, a CSA in Amenia, with his mother. Remembrance Farm has become one of the largest producers of organic salad mix in New York. "People are desperate for it," he says. "The quality is perceived as better, and rightfully so."

Two years ago, Thompson dropped his Wegmans' account to avoid having to get GAP-certified. At the time, he was selling the Ithaca Wegmans store a tiny fraction of his salad mix production--about 30 pounds a week, though occasionally the supermarket would buy his entire surplus at a lower price if he had a lot extra.

He describes his farming system as "based on balance and life" and while they "do everything to harvest a clean crop and pack it clean," having a healthy ecological system is the backup when "some microbes inevitably squeeze through." For his own comfort, Thompson asked a friend and neighbor, who happens to be a retired health inspector, to look over his operation and make food safety recommendations.

Thompson's objections to GAP certification go beyond the need to make physical upgrades. He said, for instance, he would have had to totally enclose the area where the greens are processed--to make it more a commercial kitchen. Also they like having natural light so they leave the doors open which is not allowed under GAP. And although he and his crew clean down all surfaces before they start processing greens, Thompson believes he would have to exclude cats altogether from the processing area. (Remembrance Farm also grows grain, and uses cats as a key strategy for controlling the rodent population.)

It's not inspection per se--Thompson voluntarily undergoes the scrutiny of an annual organic inspection process to maintain his farm's certified organic status--but, he says, "Organic inspectors understand the principles and practices--and realities--of organic farming. Health inspectors never do. They have to stick to a strict script with no wiggle room. I didn't want to invite this into my life, and I didn't have to."

Creating a food safety plan you can live with is not the same as being GAP-compliant. For instance, Roxbury Farm decided not to use any antimicrobial in washing their leafy greens, even though GAP requires it. Bolluyt stated, "We could use Tsunami 100 for our final rinse water (an allowable product under organic standards) but our members said they don't want it." (This sanitizer contains peracetic acid, an acetic acid/peroxide compound, and kills microbes by oxidizing them. It can be highly corrosive and is used as a bleaching agent for making chlorine-free paper.)

Remembrance Farm has a CSA and also sells to several independent retailers, so Thompson could afford to stop doing business with Wegmans. He says he doesn't fault the chain for imposing the GAP audit requirement, chalking it down to "pressure from their lawyers and insurance companies." But they're missing the point, he says. "It's my contention that the industrial food system is the problem. When you create this industrial-scale operation, especially a sterile one, which is their whole shtick, you invite problems. There are microbes everywhere and there are always weak links in the chain."

Thompson's fear is that the large market chain stores will exert "peer pressure on independent stores" and the entire wholesale marketplace will become closed to refuseniks like him.

Critics say marketing agreements should stick to regulating quality (like the size or color of apples) as authorized by federal statute. Indeed, the current Agricultural Marketing Service administrator explicitly told Congress, "AMS is not a food safety agency."

By way of illustration, this summer, two major fresh vegetable suppliers in Salinas, California, both bound to the state's LGMA, voluntarily recalled Salmonella-tainted spinach and Romaine, sowing doubts about the effectiveness of this approach. Tanimura & Antle, Inc. recalled its lettuce three to four weeks after harvest, "well beyond the 14- to 16-day shelf life," according to a press release. It had been distributed in 29 states, Canada, and Puerto Rico. In both cases, random testing by Midwestern agriculture departments--not vigilance by the firms bound by the LGMA—discovered the contamination.

The Western Growers Association and the other titans of the industry petitioning the USDA to approve the marketing agreement, contended that the model worked in California, where the same players secured an LGMA in 2007.

A small organic farmer, who was unable to make the Syracuse hearing put the issue more generically. Willy Denner of Little Seed Gardens in Columbia County quipped, "As a small-scale producer, I have intimate contact with everything involved in the production of food. It's just very difficult for a small-scale farm to poison thousands of people in 48 states."