Food Safety Bill Threatens Local Food Producers

Local Food is about to become crippled by a bill that is before congress right now.  It is the Food Safety bill (S.510) and the U.S. Senate is likely to vote on it when it reconvenes after the election.   Local Farmers and Farmers Market Vendors stand to experience a paperwork blizzard as the way the bill is currently written, their businesses and facilities will be needlessly included under a proposed INDUSTRIAL regulatory standard.  This is a very real threat to our Local Food Producers, and could actually put many of them right out of business.  We can’t let this happen.  With the growing Local Food movement, we need to help the food producers, not burden them with such bureaucratic red tape!  The bill is a good thing for the large INDUSTRIAL food chain, since nearly every single case of ‘bad food’ has come from them, not from the locals.

THERE IS A WAY YOU CAN HELP!  Call or write your Virginia Senators and tell them to support the Tester-Hagan Amendment (Senator Jon Tester (MT), with Senator Kay Hagan (NC), created an amendment to the bill that  will exempt small, direct-marketing farms and facilities.) The Tester-Hagan Amendment is critical in protecting our Local Food systems and giving us the choice to buy fresh local products! 

Don’t allow this Food Safety bill, which is really designed to regulate and prevent the food safety abuses of Big Agribusiness, to wipe out our Farmers and Local Food businesses as an "unintended consequence." Please call or write your Senators to urge them to vote for the Tester-Hagan amendment.  You can contact them online: warner.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=Contact and webb.senate.gov/contact.cfm

OR write or call:  Mark Warner, 459A Russell Senate Office Building WASHINGTON DC 20510 (202) 224-2023; Jim Webb 248 Russell Senate Office Building WASHINGTON DC 20510 (202) 224-4024

PLEASE keep our Local Food Producers free of this unnecessary burden!  Do not vote for the Food Safety Bill (S.510) without the Tester-Hagan Amendment! – make sure the Tester Hagan Amendment is part of the bill!  You can read more about the bill itself right here: http://farmandranchfreedom.org/food_safety_bills_09

Signed,
Jeanne Barnett

Fancy Gap, VA