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RI farmers push back on new federal food-safety rules

Herald News - 7/5/2017

PROVIDENCE - Farmers could be fined for failing to quarantine a field after a deer has walked across and left a little manure, or for failing to keep records for three years about the How to Wash Your Hands training that each farm worker has received.

Federal regulations signed in 2011 by then-President Barack Obama are beginning to roll out this year, applying first to farms grossing more than $500,000.

In addressing water quality, for example, the rules say that farms using water from ponds must have each pond's water tested for E. coli bacteria five times in the harvest season. "If the levels aren't correct, you can't harvest for three days," said Vincent Confreda, of Confreda Greenhouses and Farms in Cranston.

"After three days," however, said Henry B. Wright, "the Green Giant doesn't want it." Wright, as president of the Rhode Island Farm Bureau, will meet with other Farm Bureau presidents in Washington, D.C., in July to oppose what is known as the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act of 2011.

Sandie Barden, 50, of Barden Family Orchard in North Scituate and Glocester, said irrigation ponds have to be tested even if the water never touches the fruit. "Pick-your-own" farms such as her family's, she said, must also provide, by the 2018 harvest, restrooms and hand-washing facilities for customers. The farm must also install signs telling customers they can't eat in the orchard or field, must wash their hands after using the bathroom and can't pick produce if they have a cold.

Farmers are required to enforce these rules themselves or risk being fined. Jay Dame, 63, of Dame Farm & Orchards, in Johnston, said last week that it's only a matter of time before a farmer gets sued for not allowing someone with the sniffles to pick strawberries.

The purpose of the regulations is to prevent contamination in the food supply before outbreaks occur. Farmers say the rules will result in higher costs and require them to keep tedious records. The cost of compliance, estimated at 3 percent, could swallow the narrow profit margin for farmers in a state with the most expensive farmland in the country. "It could just about eliminate agriculture in Rhode Island," Wright said.

The rules are unnecessary because "we're already diligent," Barden said, referring to the voluntary food-safety program known as GAP, for Good Agricultural Practices. To make sure she would be in compliance, however, she paid $60 to attend a two-day class at the University of Rhode Island to start learning the new rules. She earned a Grower Training Certificate and a binder with the first 100 pages of rules.

The regulations are up to 600 pages now, said Tyler Young, of the 300-acre Young Family Farm, in Little Compton, who has helped lead farmer opposition to the federal act.

Barden carpooled to the State House with Jay and Justin Dame on June 14 to watch the Senate Committee on Environment & Agriculture discuss a bill designating the Division of Agriculture as enforcer of the new federal regulations. The bill, S-0720 Substitute A2, sponsored by state Sen. V. Susan Sosnowski, herself a farmer and chairman of the committee, says the R.I. Department of Environmental Management, which already works with farmers through its agriculture division, should monitor farms, not the R.I. Department of Health. The bill is scheduled for a Senate vote on Tuesday.

Farmers prefer to continue working with agriculture officials, Wright said, and they fear that health inspectors would apply hospital standards to their barns and fields.

Passage was unanimous in the committee, even at the risk of losing a grant that the Health Department obtained to hire four people.

The committee also passed a resolution (S-0919 Substitute A2) asking the R.I. delegation in Washington, D.C., to work on exempting small farms, having compliance enforced by the U.S. Department of Agriculture rather than the Food and Drug Administration, or getting the act delayed or dismantled. The resolution was passed by the full state Senate on June 21.