Small businesses fret over food-safety rules

When Congress revamped food-safety laws last year, small farmers and food producers won a victory when they were excluded from many of the new rules.

Now, as the Food and Drug Administration implements the new Food Safety Modernization Act, the small businesses are hoping they aren't snagged by the new rules anyway.

The legislation, which updates 100-year-old food-safety regulations, does not apply to meat, eggs or dairy products, which are regulated by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Despite the exemption, it's still unclear how small food producers will be affected, said Robert Guenther, senior vice president of public policy for the United Fresh Produce Association.

The law exempts very small businesses from many of the new regulations, including developing hazard analyses and implementing preventive measures like a food allergen control program, a recall plan and a pathogen monitoring program. The exemption is designed to apply to small businesses selling less than $500,000 in the same state within 275 miles of the food production.

But the exact details of the exemption will be determined by the FDA. Farms that are considered processing facilities—which could mean anything from bundling lettuce to full scale production—would be required to follow the new regulations. All farms, no matter the size, will be affected by new produce production regulations.

Mary Lou Surgi runs Blue Ridge Food Ventures, a non-profit industrial kitchen for small businesses in North Carolina, and she's concerned about the final details. Hiring a consultant to produce a hazard analysis could cost each business thousands of dollars, she said, and for microbiological testing, the only lab they've found to do it charges $250 a test. About 60 businesses a year rent time in her industrial kitchen to create and sell products from jams to hot sauces to nut butter.

"They want you to do that every time you're in production," she said. "It's insurmountable for a lot of folks. We'd like those realities to be understood."

The amount of profit on $500,000 in sales can vary greatly for small businesses, Ms. Surgi said. In addition, the distance restrictions close off viable markets.

"If you're a rural farmer in Virginia, you need markets, you need people to buy your products," which for many are going to be out-of-state, she said.

It's not that the businesses don't want to meet the goals of the act, Ms. Surgi said. Small businesses "want to be able to meet the goals within the reality that they work within," she said.

Consumer advocates, like the Center for Science in the Public Interest, see a different reality.

Small food producers are just as susceptible to microbial outbreaks, said David Plunkett, CSPI senior staff attorney. "There's no rationale where you can say the size of someone's business makes a difference," he said.

Small businesses do provide a smaller portion of the food supply, Mr. Plunkett said, but "that's small comfort to the people who suffer from food-borne illness."

While there are costs associated with implementing safety controls, it's just part of the cost of doing business, he said.

"If you're running a bakery you've got to buy an oven," he said. "Food safety is part of your product."

(Published by WSJ - April 22, 2011)