Religion & Law

Bob Waldrop, former president of the Oklahoma Food Cooperative, blogged today on what he sees as a serious threat by the USDA to local food systems.  Here is a part of his blog post:

One essential aspect of local food systems is the local meat processor.  Without such facilities, there will be no market for local meats.  Here in Oklahoma, local processors are inspected either by the USDA or the Oklahoma Department of Agriculture.  There has never been a food illness outbreak in Oklahoma that resulted from a problem at a facility inspected by the ODA.



Comes now the federal Food Safety and Inspection Service, proposing significant changes to the regulation of small meat processors that will certainly put many, if not most, such facilities out of business.  Processors are required to develop HAACP plans, which are analyses of the risks of food contamination and their plans for handling such potential problems and keeping the food they process safe.  Processors prepare these plans and file them.  FSIS however is now proposing that these plans be validated by outside experts.  We are told that the costs of these validations could range from $5K to $50K/year, depending on the products handled by the processor.  This is a prohibitive cost for a small local processor.  It will do nothing to increase food safety, it is a response to a problem that doesn't exist in the small meat processing market, and it will destroy jobs.



There can be no doubt that the hand of major meat industry players is behind this move.  They see the handwriting on the wall in terms of the challenge the local artisanal meat producers to their industrial hegemony over the nation's meat supply.  $50K is nothing when you are doing millions of dollars of business every year.  The easiest way to destroy the growing local food systems is to destroy them with regulations.

Do we have any readers who are experts on agriculature or ag law who have a perspective on this?  Does Catholic Legal Theory shed any light on the question?