"The swine flu is not caught from eating pig meat products, but several countries imposed import bans on pork from the United States." (http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSTRE53N22820090427)
The United States exports nearly 20 percent of its pork and more bans on U.S. pork could harm U.S. hog and pork prices. Mexico is the No. 2 export market for U.S. pork. Russia banned all meat not thermally treated from Texas, California, and Kansas, as well as from Mexico, and raw pork from all other U.S. states. China also banned hogs and pork from U.S. states that have had mild human cases of the flu, while the Philippines banned U.S. and Mexican pork.
Comments
Dear Congressman Thompson
I am writing in regards of your co-sponsorship of H.R. 1332. My husband and I own and operate a small diversified farm in Sonoma County, we milk twenty four goats by hand and make cheeses we sell at local farmers markets in Sonoma, Marin and Alameda. We have a few chickens and also sell the eggs at the markets. In the next few years we hope to take to the markets the fruits and nuts from the orchards we planted.
As a farmer and food producer I am dealing daily with our very fragmented food safety system. It is mind boggling that the agency who issue my dairy license and inspect me quarterly (C.D.F.A. Dairy Division) has no authority to tests my cheeses for pathogens. Only the FDA can do that. My cheese plant is registered with the FDA under the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act of 2002 and I file yearly with the FDA a Small Business Nutrition Labeling Exemption Notice. In the five years I have been operating I have never been inspected by the FDA. I was recently informed that my dairy inspector will no longer inspect the milk production side of our operation, this will be taken over by the county dairy inspector.
I am glad to see that food safety issues are now being seriously addressed, but I am afraid that the way it is being handled may well force me and many other very small scale food producing operators to cease production.
H.R. 1332 call for a full HACCP plan for every single producer. I have twenty two years experience in research and development and in technical operations, at a managerial level, in the pharmaceutical and personal care products industry. I therefore know very well the resources needed to create and maintain a full HACCP plan. Creating a plan would take me about 100 hours and maintaining it would take 2 hours per day of production. Based on quotes I obtained in 2006 for laboratory testing, and on the price of the lab equipments and supplies, I estimate that I would need to budget $15,000/year. People who do not have any experience with ISO 9000 and have never managed or worked in a food testing laboratory will need to hire a consultant to analyze what are the critical control points in their manufacturing process and draft an appropriate HACCP plan, they also will have to employ a food quality control technician at an average hourly wage of $14 to $17 to maintain the plan.
Food safety is primordial But the one size fit all approach is wrong. The cost of an HACCP plan is not linked to the size of production. At the most I produce three fifty pounds batches of cheese a week and a third party laboratory testing will cost me the same as someone producing six thousand pounds a day.
It will add $3.00/lb to to my production cost.
H.R. 1332 is not the only food safety bill being proposed, there are three other bills currently on the table, H.R. 875, H.R. 814 and H.R. 759. Some of those bills also threaten small scale producers by introducing registration fee with the FDA and making the National Animal Identification System mandatory.
Please make sure that any new legislation on food safety is scale appropriate and do not put small producers out of business.
Sincerely,
Pascal Destandau
Pugs Leap Farm