Passing the Buck.

With farmers and ranchers numbering less than two percent of the population, we are easy targets for more regulation.  The liability “buck” is being passed down to the bottom of the food chain.  The middle men are lobbying policy makers to force total traceability on everything we eat, from peppers to steaks.  It won’t matter what happens to our products once it leaves the farm gates, and whether every other food handler washes his or her hands after using the bathroom before touching the food.  The blame will be pointed to the management practices on the farm.

Like doctors who have been forced to purchase expensive insurance policies to perform defensive medicine, farmers will need to protect themselves from false accusations.  We will be spending more time proving ourselves innocent.  It’s a cost in time and money that neither farmers nor doctors should have to spend.  Both occupations are necessary for sustaining life.

People benefit every day from this system that brings safe food to their stores and tables.  They forget about the millions of meals they have eaten with no stomach upset or ill side effects, and dwell on a handful of people who make the news.

Some of the retailers understand that it does them no good to drive producers out of business.  Without growers, there will be no food supply.  The alternative would be buying all of our food off shore.  That is certainly not a viable solution since safe standards for agronomic practices could not be controlled in foreign countries by the United States.  We also would not want to depend on other countries for our food supply.  Oil prices should have taught us a lesson on that sort of dependency.  And, our national defense relies on our ability to feed ourselves.

Perhaps we have done ourselves a disservice by trying to bring more convenience to consumers.  People have forgotten how to clean and cook their food.  They smear germs around with sanitizing gels and sprays rather than stopping at the sink to lather up with old-fashioned soap and rinsing with hot water.  They want to unzip a bag and pop food in their mouths without stopping to wash up, whether in the grocery story or the drive-through fast food restaurant.  Who gets blamed for unclean hands? 

Consumer advocates and the media have injected a health-panic mindset into the American public.  They headline every food scare, needlessly bankrupting companies that recall products.  Rather than putting responsibility on end-product users to wash their hands, wash the food, and cook it properly, the blame is passed back down the food chain to those who produce it.  Have Americans lost sight of the fact that our nation has the safest food supply in the world? It is a fact that most of the advocates and media choose to ignore.

Unfortunately, the mindset of most farmers and some of the organizations that represent them is to acquiesce.  “It’s inevitable that we will have to comply with more regulations,” is the lament we hear from one meeting to the next.  “If we want to sell our product, we will be forced to make changes.”

I suppose I have never been one to not put up a fight if I felt strongly about an issue.  I may not have won every war, but the other side knew who was in the battle.  I remember vividly a former member of the House Transportation Committee telling me in my freshman year in the legislature that it was “inevitable” that all drivers in Pennsylvania would have to go to a centralized emissions testing station because that’s what the federal government was telling us to do.  I teamed up with another Berks County freshman legislator and we had the audacity to ask the question: “Why?”  That began a lengthy debate and months of legislative wrangling, but we got the wrong-headed policy push from Washington stopped with the help of the majority of our colleagues in the state capitol who finally had the courage to join us in saying “no” to the nonsense.

Sticking our collective necks out when issues are threatening our livelihood should not be such difficult decisions for the farm community.  And yet, when given the opportunity to speak up and speak out for our industry, few farmers personally attend public meetings to voice their concerns about proposed policies or to support the present-day agricultural system that allows farmers to feed more people than ever before in the history of the world.  We are obviously doing something right.  It’s time we all start sharing that message, every chance we get, that American farmers and our food industry are delivering the best food on the planet, for the smallest investment of consumer dollars.

It’s time for regulators to quit passing the buck on safe foods back to farmers, driving markets to other countries.  If that happens, consumers will be spending more of their hard earned pay for food from foreign soils where “good agronomic practices” has yet to be translated.  Additionally, the cost to ship in food will send prices soaring.  Consumers will ultimately shift their complaints to cry about safe and sufficient food supplies, but it may be too late for the American farmers.

The farm community in the United States is a minority.  We can shrink away from the controversies , cave in and disappear, complaining that there was no choice.  Or, we can use our small numbers to our advantage since we control the food supply.  While it may seem like David and Goliath, farmers can win the battle if we aim high, letting policy makers from Harrisburg to Washington know where we stand on onerous regulations that will only force more farmers to call it quits.

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