Health Impact News Editor Comments:
As the new Farm Bill may be coming up for a vote any day now, it is important to understand that our current agricultural laws and farm subsidies favor Big Ag, and not small farms. As direct from the farm to consumer sales, such as Farmer Markets, continue to grow in the U.S., expect to see more stories like this, where Big Ag wields its influence in government to stifle or eliminate the competition.
A Bumper Crop of Bureaucracy
Tom Perez’s Labor enforcers go after the family farm.
Excerpts:
Since the 1970s, annual federal appropriations bills have explicitly prohibited the federal workplace overseer from descending on small family farms. Specifically, OSHA does not have jurisdiction over “farming operations” with 10 or fewer employees.
But OSHA officials have found a novel way to circumvent this statutory restraint. The regulators have simply claimed the authority to rewrite the definition of farming. A remarkable 2011 memo from OSHA’s enforcement chief to regional administrators at first acknowledges that the law prevents the agency from regulating small farms engaged in growing and harvesting crops and any “related activities.” But then the memo proceeds to instruct employees on how to re-categorize small farms as commercial grain handlers. So OSHA inspectors have recently begun to descend on family farms, claiming the authority to regulate their grain storage bins.
This has inspired the normally mild-mannered Sen. Mike Johanns (R., Neb.) to take to the Senate floor recently to condemn OSHA’s “absolutely incredible” and “absurd” position, which he called “a blatant overreach in violation of the law.”
Mr. Johanns grew up on a farm and pointed out that “every farm has grain storage.” That’s because it’s not practical and at times nearly impossible to sell all of a crop the moment it is harvested. Without grain storage, farmers would be forced to immediately unload everything they grow and therefore have to accept lower prices.
Mr. Johanns said that a small Nebraska farm with only one non-family employee was recently visited by OSHA inspectors and fined more than $130,000 even though “OSHA made no claim that anyone had been hurt.”
Read the Full Article Here.
See Also:
YOU the Taxpayer are Funding the Agri Business Takeover of our Food Supply