Act now to protect small local farms!

Our local farmers need your help!!!

I am sure many of you are aware of the organic bill that passed a few years back, which made so many small farms unable to get certified organic due to the prohibitive cost. Funny how that worked out to favor the large industrial farms in the end.

Now there is Senate Bill 510, the Food Safety Modernization Act, intended to strengthen federal food safety oversight and enforcement. Unfortunately, the bill’s heavy-handed approach to accomplishing this endangers the continued existence of the small and medium-sized family farms that make up our local and regional food systems.
As currently written, S. 510 would not differentiate between large factory farms that have been implicated in national foodborne illness outbreaks and small local farms that have not. This bill will turn even small farms into FDA-regulated facilities that would need to meet potentially crippling requirements and pay large fees that they could not afford.

This bill is supposed to be directed at farms that go over state lines, but as you can easily imagine in an area like ours, farmers can literally be selling in farmers markets in 3 different states and never drive more than 30 minutes.

THIS IS A BIG DEAL!! PLEASE contact your senators and tell them you do not support this bill! This link is the best I have found on the subject, and you can find the contact for your senators there. Make it a point to contact them today, and support your local farmers!