Comments Due Today (Sep. 23, 2013)
The FDA is yet again putting burdens on farmers who use healthy, sustainable practices, and justifying them with fear-based assumptions rather than data. The agency’s latest move is a draft guidance document that will make it all but impossible for farmers with 3,000 or more laying hens to keep the birds on pasture.
Federal News
FSMA: Will “Food Safety” Undermine Food Security?
Although purported to address food safety problems in the industrial food system, implementation of the FSMA poses a threat to the ‘local food movement’ and true food security—-the ability of a country region or locality to produce enough food to meet its own needs.
The most wonderful aspect of going local with your diet, is the opportunity to meet pioneers of organic, sustainable agriculture. There is
Tell FDA to Treat Small Farmers Fairly Action Alert
FDA is aiming to undermine the Tester-Hagan amendment which exempts small-scale, direct-marketing farms from the most burdensome aspects of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). This exemption is essential to the continued vitality of the local foods movement.
FDA is proposing rules that would make it very easy for the agency to force even small-scale farmers to comply with the extensive, burdensome
Raw Milk Nation – New Chart & Map Update
Raw milk laws are a hodgepodge in this country; due mainly to the federal ban on raw milk for human consumption in interstate commerce, the laws are different state to state. The Raw Milk Nation Chart goes into more detail than the Raw Milk Nation Map© by
Farm Family Threatened with $700,000 Fine for Raising Pigs
Farm advocates to gather for a court hearing in support of the Bakers
Falls Church, Virginia–(July 8, 2013)–The Michigan Department of Natural Resources (DNR), through the Michigan Attorney General, is asking the judge hearing Mark Baker’s case to fine him $700,000. DNR believes Mark has 70 “illegal pigs” being raised in violation of an