By Michael Smith (Veshengro)
If you’re worried about e. coli bacteria lurking in your spinach and other leafy greens, then you might be interested in the USDA’s Proposed National Marketing Agreement Regulating Leafy Green Vegetables – unless you're a small sustainable farmer.
But I must say that I have a hard time understanding how we are getting e-coli bacteria and similar, which are found in the intestines of animals, including humans, onto those leafy veg in the first place unless farms and packing houses.
The USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) is proposing a new agreement to improve food safety and quality when it comes to green leafy vegetables including but not limited to lettuce, spinach, and cabbage, notably minimizing the potential for microbial contamination such as e. coli.
The program, which is called National Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement (NLGMA) would be available to operations of all sizes, locations, and agricultural practices has been proposed in part to increase customer confidence in leafy green vegetables in the marketplace according to the USDA website.
But not everyone is happy with the proposed agreement. According to a press release issued by Northeastern Organic Farmers Association – New York, the Agreement would establish a governance structure under which the largest leafy green produce handlers would hold the power to establish safety rules governing the growing and handling practices for leafy green vegetables. USDA’s Agricultural Marketing Service would decide whether or not to approve the industry-written standards, after receiving public comment.
This sounds very much like the industry-driven regulations that came into force in Europe as regards to herbal remedies where the pharmaceutical companies set the standards and made the rules which, by much lobbying, was then made EU law.
NOFA-NY Executive Director Kate Mendenhall stated, “NLGMA will directly put NY small family farmers at a disadvantage in the marketplace. It is hard enough for our local sustainable farmers to thrive without this extra regulation. A single food safety metric cannot apply for the whole country. Growing conditions, length of growing season, and farm size differ greatly across the nation—even within New York state. Food safety education, standards, and/or regulations would be best defined and managed at the state level.”
USDA is encouraging all interested parties, including small, organic, and diversified operations, as well as the public to submit comments concerning USDA’s Recommended Decision to establish the NLGMA. Comments are due by July 28, 2011.
The fact is that no government intervention would be needed if common sense and proper cleanliness would be employed.
On farms this would mean no use of manure and slurry on growing leaf crops and nowhere near it either and when it comes to harvesting and packing this means that rigorous hand washing is used.
Proper “bio-security” was better in the days of old, it would seem, on old-style family farms than it is today on those huge commercial operations, whether vegetable farming or other.
In packing houses too many people are being employed who come from a background where cleanliness does not seem to be on the agenda and who also seem to have a lack of understanding the language of the country and this is the same in the USA as it is in the UK.
A total turnaround is needed and not regulation that may force small farmers out of business because of not having the money to comply with those rules in the same way as the pharmaceutical industry is trying with herbal remedies and “medicines”.
© 2011
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