[Pollinator] Fwd: WFA News: Working to Ensure That Food Safety Regulations Don't Prolifera...

Thu Sep 12 07:17:05 PDT 2013

IMPORTANT message from WFA.

____________________________________
 From: info at wildfarmalliance.org
To: lda at coevolution.org
Sent: 9/12/2013  6:00:40 A.M. Pacific Daylight Time
Subj: WFA News: Working to Ensure That  Food Safety Regulations Don&apos;t 
Proliferate Habitat  Destruction

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Wild Farm Alliance Newsletter
September 12,  2013
Working  to Ensure That Food Safety  Regulations 
Don't  Proliferate Habitat Destruction
We  need your help too!

On-farm  conservation practices, like this hedgerow,  could be at  risk.
The  U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is currently  proposing 
regulations that could  have a profound impact on the way wildlife habitat and  
other conservation practices on farms are managed.  Earlier this year the FDA 
released their proposed  (a.k.a. draft) set of rules for the Food Safety  
Modernization Act (FSMA)---the first major overhaul of  our nation's food 
safety  practices since 1938. When they become law, the  FSMA rules  will 
require the implementation of certain food-safety  management practices on many 
fruit and vegetable  farms. While addressing food safety on produce farms  
makes sense, if not written correctly, these  regulations could encourage the 
needless destruction  of wildlife habitat near produce  fields.  

The  FDA is seeking public comments on the proposed FSMA  rules by November 
15th of this year. Wild Farm  Alliance (WFA) has been reviewing the rules 
and  analyzing how they may impact conservation-based and  sustainable 
farming practices. During our initial  review, we found major problems in the 
proposed rules  related to issues concerning wildlife, domestic  animals and 
soil amendments. Once we have finished our  analysis, we will share our 
findings. This is when we  will need your help! We need farmers and conservation  sp
ecialists to let the FDA know how these proposed  rules may affect farm 
operations, as well as  local/regional conservation efforts. Everyone plays  
their part in ensuring safe food from farm to fork,  but the FDA needs to hear 
that the practices aimed to  reduce food-safety risks on the farm should 
avoid  impacts to water quality, wildlife and habitat. 
So,  What Does Food Safety Have to Do With Biodiversity  Conservation?  
A  Lot More Than You Might Think...      A pile of dead trees  removed from 
a farm to appease food safety  auditors. 

Everyone---from farmers, to processors, to  consumers---has a role in 
ensuring safe food from the  field to the table, but some current, misguided  
food-safety practices have encouraged the  destruction of wildlife habitat and 
conservation  plantings on farms. In 2006, an outbreak of E.  coli O157 from 
spinach was traced back to a farm  on California's Central coast, the home 
of our  nation's fresh-cut salad industry. While it was never  determined 
how the spinach became contaminated, a  finger was pointed at wildlife as a 
source of  food-borne pathogen contamination (even though  research so far has 
indicated that native wildlife  pose a low risk of carrying human 
pathogens). Wildlife  and the habitat they inhabited became suspect in the  eyes of 
the leafy-greens industry.  Buyers  purchasing leafy greens from growers 
often refused to  buy lettuce or spinach that came within a certain  distance of 
wildlife habitat. A grower might be asked  not to harvest any of the 
spinach within 30 feet of a  grassy drainage ditch, or within 50 feet of a  
windbreak of trees and shrubs. To avoid losing  production area, many growers were 
subtly pressured  into removing conservation plantings from their land.  
Chainsaws were taken to windbreaks, grassed waterways  ripped out, lakes 
plowed under, wildlife  poisoned.  

Six months after the outbreak, the Resource  Conservation District of 
Monterey County, CA conducted  a _survey of produce growers on California's  
Central Coast_ 
(http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001r2hp-hrnLISwOIi6JIP__U6CyKlLrs9wBnq6KMboxjYn8VnyZ8O1NCdiJXwub6qjelw0bPyVnzZqxWk0mD0Ir0MZjMwNSvwRWfazwGrDupzxFb
d9wt3q4A==) . Eighty-nine percent of respondents  indicated that they 
actively discouraged or eliminated  wildlife from produce fields in order to meet 
food  safety requirements. Thirty-two percent of responding  leafy-greens 
growers reported actively removing  non-crop vegetation from their land due 
to comments by  food safety auditors. _Recent research conducted by the 
Nature  Conservancy_ 
(http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001r2hp-hrnLIQgC2Bh_HE6Y1NQk4YQ4wnX1o7eoHYAFcu98hNORCNs42MCQUBUdphrMaMiLa-0Ggx783KM4Q8QJ8Cj6n8vaSuTJ48fuXy5o
Gf3_6EvNnMI4g==)  found that between 2005 and 2009  13.3 percent of the 
remaining wetlands and riverside  habitat in the Salinas Valley were eliminated 
or  degraded.  

We  Need YOU to Make Comments to the FDA  Too!

WFA  wants to make sure that this scientifically  questionable, 
food-safety-inspired destruction doesn't  spread to the rest of the country. The FSMA 
rules  should reflect the 'co-management' of food safety and  
conservation---practices aimed to reduce food safety  risks through methods which also 
minimize or avoid  impacts to water quality, wildlife and habitat. As  mentioned 
above, we found problems in the proposed  FSMA rules concerning wildlife, 
domestic animals and  soil amendments. On the flip side, we found good  
aspects of the rules that we would like to make sure  end up in the final rules 
that become law. As the  weeks progress we will provide you with more  
information on our analysis, as well as tools to help  you make your own comments 
to the  FDA.
More  Information:  
Food  Safety Modernization Act  (FSMA):

-  _FSMA  and Why It Matters_ 
(http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001r2hp-hrnLITC_yBmw3-qnb5NqRer2kIsaC14jgJQDp_4X-YXZo2sblZ7H6plqgVDF0nHS4FUN3Plrf1GDedghrmo5x
H-IILw1e9_1RbwH3tzj-8-7hTWCw==) **
- _For  Farmers: Will I be affected by FSMA?_ 
(http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001r2hp-hrnLISipgeanP9CgneeEueIb07rum82kt1jJeQ
vLlTli1H15Jb38BBiV0wmwrUQbV7j3mwSuN0o1rsbezwpErU9hqWZnuScm7CVrvPsjQEV_Pf1omiCB2nHytX3) **

Co-Management  of Food Safety and Conservation:
Learn  more about the co-management of food safety and  conservation 
through WFA's 
"_Farming with Food Safety and Conservation  in Mind_ 
(http://r20.rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001r2hp-hrnLIR3JnShUeCXG-4UbEy7CdYbVWeMAyEvhxQLweLrgDVl5t4omn5mPd5WFT
DfFux-ygX2SV7kUERGg5X7n1jG1y8h6NHjCjtTJknnl879MrR8aw==) " publication. 

**Courtesy  of the National Sustainable Agriculture  Coalition

Wild  Farm Alliance
Promoting a healthy,  viable agriculture that helps protect and restore 
wild  Nature.

PO Box  2570
Watsonville, CA 95077
(831) 761-8408
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