Biting the Hands that Feed Us

How Fewer, Smarter Laws Would Make Our Food System More Sustainable

Baylen J. Linnekin

• Publisher: Island Press
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781610916769
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Política

Food waste, hunger, inhumane livestock conditions, disappearing fish stocks—these are exactly the kind of issues we expect food regulations to combat. Yet, today in the United States, laws exist at all levels of government that actually make these problems worse. Baylen Linnekin argues that, too often, government rules handcuff America's most sustainable farmers, producers, sellers, and consumers, while rewarding those whose practices are anything but sustainable. Biting the Hands that Feed Us introduces readers to the perverse consequences of many food rules. Some of these rules constrain the sale of "ugly" fruits and vegetables, relegating bushels of tasty but misshapen carrots and strawberries to food waste. Other rules have threatened to treat manure—the lifeblood of organic fertilization—as a toxin. Still other rules prevent sharing food with the homeless and others in need. There are even rules that prohibit people from growing fruits and vegetables in their own yards.Linnekin also explores what makes for a good food law—often, he explains, these emphasize good outcomes rather than rigid processes. But he urges readers to be wary of efforts to regulate our way to a greener food system, calling instead for empowerment of those working to feed us—and themselves—sustainably.

chapter 1

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Unsafe at Any Feed

In 2013, California’s state assembly adopted a new law requiring chefs, bartenders, and virtually anyone in the state who prepares ready-to-eat food for customers to wear disposable latex gloves when handling that food.¹ The law was intended to improve food safety in restaurants, which—thanks largely to poor hand washing by some food preparers—is the source of many foodborne illnesses. At first, the bill was uncontroversial. In fact, it won unanimous approval in the legislature. More than forty other states have similar laws on the books.²

Its quiet passage might have been the last anyone heard of the glove law. But something extraordinary happened soon after the law took effect in January 2014. Many sushi chefs, who often use bare hands to prepare dishes, particularly ones made with rice that would stick to gloves and make sushi preparation impossible, revolted against the law.³ They were joined by other chefs and bartenders—who found they would have to don a pair of disposable gloves to do something as simple as placing a sprig of parsley on a plate or squeezing a lime into a customer’s mixed drink—across the state. Thousands signed petitions to repeal the law.⁴

What had spurred this loud and sudden outcry against a new law that had drawn the unanimous support of state legislators and is similar to one on the books in dozens of other states? First, most restaurateurs in California were completely unaware of the law until after it passed. Second, it turns out the food-safety justifications on which the glove law rested were deeply flawed. What’s more, the negative unintended consequences of the law were just too much for chefs, foodies, and even—as it turned out—for legislators.⁵

Shortly after the law took effect, San Francisco food entrepreneur Iso Rabins, a foraging expert who you’ll read about in greater detail in chapter 4 of this book, told me he was outraged by the law for several reasons. The law would create countless tons of unnecessary waste, thanks to the mandatory use of disposable gloves. What’s more—astonishingly so, as Rabins told me—“studies show glove use actually increases overall bacteria, which makes more people sick.”⁶

How could that be? “People who wear gloves are much less likely to change them than people are to wash their hands, and studies show that they can actually spread more bacteria when they (inevitably) rip, because of the sweat that pools beneath them during the work shift,” Rabins said. He’s right. The glove law was a food-safety law that actually made food less safe.⁷ Research has indeed shown this to be true.

And then there’s the problem of creating waste, something that goes against the very ethos of a sustainable food system. “Northern California especially is very concerned with sustainability,” said chef Todd Davies, in comments to the Marin Independent Journal. “Why would we want to create more trash in a society that creates way too much trash anyway?”⁸ Rules such as the glove law that promote waste are far too prevalent, and frequently promote wasting food itself, as you’ll learn in chapter 3. Finally, the law’s prohibition on letting chefs and bartenders prepare handmade food with their hands also skewed in favor of fast food and other institutional settings, where working with fresh food is less common. The law wouldn’t hurt fast-food companies, which is perhaps one reason they—in partnership with federal, state, and local food-safety officials—supported it in the first place.⁹ But sushi chefs, cocktail wizards, and others who handle food directly would be severely disadvantaged by the law.

The public outrage, petitions, and bad press quickly made the glove law’s demise a foregone conclusion. Even Assemblyman Richard Pan, who had sponsored the glove law, had become a leading critic.¹⁰ “Just wearing gloves alone is not necessarily going to make the food safer,” he told KQED.¹¹ Shortly afterward, the same legislature that had unanimously adopted the law did something dramatic. They unanimously repealed it.¹² Still, despite the sensible repeal in California, similar laws are still on the books in most states. Health inspectors closed one New York City sushi restaurant in 2015 because its chefs refused to wear gloves.¹³

The story of California’s glove law is troubling, but it’s hardly unique. The very premise on which the glove law rested was defective. Proper hand washing makes food safer. Wearing gloves does not. The law didn’t make food safer; it made food less safe. The glove law also created a host of undesirable results that—anticipated or not—would not have existed but for the law. It harmed sustainability efforts by promoting waste. It handcuffed food artisans. You’ll see a similar pattern repeated again and again throughout this chapter, as I discuss many food-safety rules—often targeting the most sustainable food producers—that are adopted and enforced without regard either to their efficacy or to their unintended consequences.

More Rules, Safer Food?

In early 2011, President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) into law.¹⁴ The law, which drew far more support from Democrats in Congress than from their Republican colleagues, was intended to strengthen the nation’s food-safety system and improve the overall safety of the foods Americans eat. FSMA supporters—a mix of food-safety advocates and big-business interests—hailed its passage as the most consequential update of the nation’s food-safety laws in seventy-five years.

Although portions of FSMA apply to food produced abroad and to pet food, the two most important and far-reaching provisions pertain to domestic farmers and food producers. For farmers, the law requires the FDA, the federal agency in charge of enforcing the law, to “establish science-based minimum standards for the safe production and harvesting of fruits and vegetables.” For other food producers—from makers of fresh pasta sauce to Greek yogurt—the law orders the FDA to require food manufacturers to have in place a written plan for preventing transmission of pathogens that could cause foodborne illness. FSMA—the acronym is pronounced FIZZ-muh—also contains a host of other provisions, a few no doubt long overdue. For example, the law gave the FDA, for the first time, the authority to order the mandatory recall of food found to be harboring pathogens.¹⁵

Some FSMA supporters are also longtime advocates of sustainable farming. Shortly before FSMA became law, as I noted in the introduction to this book, author Michael Pollan predicted that FSMA “promises to achieve several important food-safety objectives, greatly benefiting consumers without harming small farmers or local food producers.”¹⁶

Since the law’s passage, the FDA has been busy crafting specific rules to implement the law. FSMA, like many laws, requires that an agency (here, the FDA) first develop proposed rules and then seek out public opinion on those proposals before finalizing any rules. That process can take—and, indeed, has taken, in the case of FSMA—several years. One dramatic change that is supposed to occur under FSMA is that the law gives the FDA new powers to regulate food safety on the farm. Although the FDA has long had a role in policing food safety at egg-producing facilities, FSMA would effectively, for the first time, invite the FDA onto many of the nation’s farms.

But even after supporters of sustainable farming such as Pollan hailed FSMA’s ability to improve food safety without hurting small farms and local food producers, the reality of the law has proven to be quite different. Many FSMA rules proposed by the FDA since the law’s passage have, in fact, been anathema to sustainable farming. Among other things, the proposed rules would mandate “minimum application intervals” of up to nine months on the use of manure, which is a key ingredient in soil health and organic farming.¹⁷ They also proposed requiring costly inspection, maintenance, monitoring, testing, and treatment of irrigation water, even when such water is used to grow foods that are not eaten raw. The FDA has estimated FSMA will cost the average American small farm—which the rules defined as one with average annual food sales under $500,000—about $13,000 per year.¹⁸ Those compliance costs could put many beginning and small famers and food entrepreneurs out of business.

The threat FSMA poses to small farmers and food producers in general, and to sustainable ones specifically, crystallized as members of the public responded to the law’s requirement that the FDA seek out public opinion on its proposed FSMA rules. Farmers spoke of the existential threats the rules posed to them and their mindful, hard-earned livelihoods. Farmers market managers told of how the proposed rules could wreak havoc with their farmers and food entrepreneurs. Sustainability advocates lined up to oppose the measures. Health professionals predicted dire consequences if the proposed rules were adopted. Even everyday consumers spoke out—oftentimes in impassioned pleas—against the proposed rules.

Some of the most thoughtful and stinging criticism of FSMA came in a series of listening sessions the FDA sponsored across the country after releasing its proposed rules. At an FDA-sponsored listening session in Oregon, for example, farmer Elizabeth Fujas told FDA officials about the sustainable farm she started with her husband more than three decades ago. The Fujases have been organic farmers since 1982. In 1985, they launched Rising Sun Farms, responding to what their website notes was “a discernable lack of organic foods” and a need to “provide healthy food utilizing the highest quality clean ingredients while supporting organic and sustainable agriculture.” The couple later founded the Southern Oregon Farmers Market. Today, Rising Sun Farms sells produce, along with a variety of prepared foods, including tortas, spreads, and pestos. The company has received dozens of awards over the years—including a 1989 award as the most progressive farm in Oregon and a 2014 gold medal from the American Cheese Society—and, as Fujas noted, has been lauded by the Oregon Department of Agriculture.¹⁹

The story of Rising Sun Farms is one of humble beginnings. “We spent all of our savings on our farm . . . living in a small nomadic tent known as the yurt on our farm as we built our business,” Fujas told the FDA.²⁰ The Fujases now own a 25,000 square-foot facility and employ more than thirty workers. Not surprisingly, given such growth, Rising Sun Farms has been ranked among the top 100 fastest growing private companies in Oregon by the Portland Business Journal ²¹ and among the top twenty-five women-owned businesses in Oregon.²²

Rising Sun Farms appears to take food safety very seriously. In addition to obtaining a voluntary top-level food-safety ce...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Preface
• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Unsafe at Any Feed
• Chapter 2: “Big Food” Bigger Thanks to “Big Government”
• Chapter 3: Wasting Your Money Wasting Food
• Chapter 4: I Say “Tomato,” You Say “No”
• Chapter 5: There Are Good Food Rules
• Conclusion: More Sustainability, Fewer Food Rules
• Notes
• Index