Pingree and others pushed FDA to modify regulations that would have hurt small, local farmers

Find text of the proposed rules and links to submitting comments on the FDA's website.

Congresswoman Chellie Pingree said new food safety regulations proposed by the Food and Drug Administration would be less of a burden on smaller farmers than the rules the agency had originally proposed last year. Pingree said she is still reviewing all the new proposed rules to see how they would affect farmers, but called the FDA's action an improvement over that original proposal.

Pingree and others had pressured the FDA to back off the strict new rules they had proposed last year that she says would have been hard on many small operations.

"We are in the process of reviewing the full rules more carefully, but from what I've seen so far, the FDA really listened to us on a number of issues, like water testing and using manure to fertilize crops," Pingree said. "And they definitely got the message on spent grains and backed away from rules that would have made it impossible for craft brewers and distillers here in Maine to give their byproducts to dairy farmers.”

In 2010 Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act and early last year the FDA proposed a set of rules regarding farming practices to comply with the law. After complaints from Pingree and farmers around the country, the FDA agreed to change some of the proposed rules. Of particular concern were regulations that would have required frequent testing of water used for irrigation and would have also made it virtually impossible to use manure as fertilizer. And, the original proposed rules included a provision that local craft beer brewers and distillers said would have made it impossible for them to give their spent grain byproducts to local farmers for use as feed.

Pingree brought hundreds of farmers and producers together for a meeting in Augusta last summer attended by the top food-safety regulator from the FDA. At that field hearing, dozens of growers expressed opposition to the rules that were being proposed by the agency. And at a hearing with the head of the FDA on Capitol Hill this spring, Pingree made the case for brewers and distillers and won a promise that regulators would revisit the rule so it made sense for farmers and brewers.

Pingree said the proposed new rules represent more of a balance than the regulations the FDA put forward last year.

"The FDA is committed to on-farm food safety, which they should be," Pingree said. "But we continue to be concerned that all rules should be applied in a way that is reasonable and practical for working farms. This set of rules is an improvement in that regard."

The new rules will be subject to a 75-day comment period. Go here for more information on submitting comments.