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Politics : American Presidential Politics and foreign affairs -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Farmboy who wrote (60924)	1/8/2013 12:23:24 AM
From: Hope Praytochange	2 Recommendations Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71588

fruit growers see proposed rules as burden Chris Schlect, president of the Horticultural Council , said that while the industry supports a safe food supply, the rules will create a major burden for individual growers, imposing an annual cost for implementation of between $12,000 to $30,000, depending on a farm's size. The rules cover worker training; health and hygiene; irrigation water applied to crops; organic soil amendments; treatment of the presence of domesticated or wild animals in a field; recordkeeping; and equipment, tools and buildings. Schlect said growers will have a difficult time wading through the 500 pages of proposed rules. "Once these are implemented down the line, it will make it more difficult for a family farmer to stay in business," said Schlect, whose organization represents fruit growers on trade and regulatory issues. "The biggest growers in the United States can afford it, but it has a perverse policy outcome. Everyone wants the family farmer to survive, but this is an instance of government making it more difficult for them to survive." Schlect said he would expect the fruit warehouses to be better equipped to deal with the regulations because they already have adopted food-safety programs at the insistence of retailers. Industry groups across the country are still trying to digest the rules. The requirements on dealing with irrigation water, however, may be the most problematic. They direct that irrigation water that touches produce "be of safe and sanitary quality." Most water applied on farms comes from canals fed from rivers. Under the new rules, water that touches produce in the field must be treated if, for any reason, the water may not be safe. Irrigation water often touches fruit because it is applied from overtree sprinklers that also are designed to help cool the fruit. "There are a lot of technical issues involving water at the farm that FDA is concerned about," Schlect said. "They are focused on ground crops, but chose not to separate out high- and low-risk commodities and exempt things like apples. We are caught up in having to deal with it."