Does One Size Fit All?: Small Farms and U.S. Meat Regulations

Nationwide, the demand for locally produced food is growing dramatically. The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) estimates the number of active farmers’ markets to have more than doubled since 1994, to almost 4,700. Community-supported farms, where customers sign up for a weekly allotment of meat, dairy, and produce through the season, have grown to nearly 1,500 nationwide. More than 2,000 school districts in 40 states work with local farms to obtain produce for student lunches, according to the National Farm to School Program based at Occidental College in Los Angeles. Amy Lanou, an assistant professor of health and wellness at the University of North Carolina at Asheville, says meat producers in her area can’t keep up with demand even though their product costs $1 more per pound than meat in the supermarket. Much of the popularity of local farm products lies in their perceived benefits to consumer and environmental health. For meat products, reduced transport time between farm, slaughterhouse, and market means less opportunity for spoilage and hence less need for preservatives. Many small producers state a commitment to use fewer agricultural chemicals and antibiotics; this is possible because lower housing densities for pastured animals (compared with confined livestock) and a mixed-grass diet (compared with a high-grain diet) tend to reduce animal diseases. Benefits to the environment can include more sustainable long-term land management and less fossil fuel consumption getting products from farm to consumer—practices supported by the 2008 Farm Bill with the creation of the Conservation Stewardship Program. Yet some small farm owners and advocates insist that the U.S. system for food inspection and safety—particularly in meat and poultry production—exacerbates an increasing centralization of American farming, squeezing small farms economically and hampering the local food movement. Moreover, they claim, the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point (or HACCP) plans required by the USDA of meat producers are skewed against small farms. Instead of the current mode of federal inspection and risk management, small-scale farmers and farm advocates believe rules should be based on independently measurable standards of sanitation and quality, with sensitivity to scale of the operation being assessed.