In my previous post, I skimmed the surface of the massive regulations which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed to reduce human exposure to pathogenic organisms originating from fresh fruits and vegetables. The draft Produce Safety and Preventive Controls (for handling facilities) regulations are the first steps towards implementing the Food Modernization Safety Act (FSMA) of 2010.
mark keating
Implementing the Food Modernization Safety Act: Fresh Fruit & Vegetables
The Produce Rule in the new Food Modernization Safety Act applies to fruits and vegetables that are normally consumed raw.
Implementing the Food Modernization Safety Act: A Broad Overview
After years of stalemate between public health, consumer, agricultural and food service interests on Capitol Hill, Congress approved the FSMA’s sweeping expansion of federal oversight in 2010. This post and the two to follow will provide basic background for answering key questions leading into a discussion of the merits of our increasingly centralized and standardized food production and handling systems.
Protecting the Viability of Organics from the Purists
This post delves deeper into how one false impression in particular is fueling the sense of loss behind organic’s mid-life crisis. Specifically, we’ll examine how the exclusion of synthetic materials, which some within the organic community would elevate to a cardinal principle, actually threatens to drive farmers out of certification, if not out of business entirely.
Organic Certification Standards for Poultry: An Insider’s Look
Part 10: Beyond the intricacies of the production standards themselves, the story of organic poultry certification also includes one of the more fascinating sagas in the relationship between the organic community, the agribusiness establishment and the federal government.
Organic Agriculture and Organic Certification: Not So Ying and Yang
Part 9: This installment in our history of organic agriculture will explore the challenges and contradictions of setting livestock standards using the scandalous abuse of the requirements for pasture to illustrate the very real limitations of organic certification.
A loosening of the Organic Standards: Synthetic Substances
Part 8: We must travel back to the 1980s to appreciate why and how the anti-synthetic and anti-agribusiness provisions were written into the USDA organic certification standards.
From USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack: A Failure to Communicate
Four years into the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, some Americans are losing confidence that the conventional wisdom at our disposal, whether liberal or conservative, is capable of restoring the financial security and opportunity we once enjoyed.
Has ‘Organic’ Been Oversized: Avoiding Tragedy On Maple Street
The screenwriter Rod Serling was a master at portraying the acutely self-conscious angst that drove Americans of the Cold War era to embrace orthodoxy and conformity at the expense of individuality and liberty.
The Waste Land: Organic Agriculture during the Bush Years
Part 7: The NOP itself was responsible the next time the organic community got sand kicked in its face, though once again a grassroots campaign snatched, if not victory, at least the status quo from the jaws of defeat. In the absence of any interest in the organic regulations from the political appointees, the NOP bureaucrats decided to start making and implementing policy pronouncements themselves.
