So let me get this straight. If you are a small farmer, you can sell unsafe food. But if you are a large operator, you have to sell safe food. Got it. Buy only from the large operators.

FDA may have less expensive rules and regulations set to small farm but it is still guaranteed the safety of their products.

Prevention is better than cure.

Small farms would be exempt

The tainted food isn't coming from the small farmer, and it never has. It is coming from the behemoth corporate farms that cannot keep up with the safety of their product because it is too massive. It is time we dismantled these large entities in favor of what has always been the USA's mainstay, the SMALL American farmer. LEARN IT!!!

here, here, hearmytruth!!

the behemoths raise their animals in unhealthy conditions and feed them feed them food they are not designed to eat, eg, corn to cows, hence the animals are sick, hence antibiotics and on and on. i won't eat anything that doesn't come from a small local farmer or my own backyard.

Bravo. The small farmers need this desparately. Small farmers sell safer products and are being forced to shut down by government over regulation.

The recent headlines about food safety are as bogus as the big flu scares have been. Food has never been safer. This is a created crisis so that the Monsantos of the world can increase their grip, and the Government can create more beureucratic inspector jobs and generate fees. If you like your local farmers market you better write your Senator or Congressman and have him vote for this amendment, because this bill will kill off the small farmer if left intact.

susan, what the hell are you think about corn to cows, what do you think they eat, tofu? You want more healthy food, end the damn CRP government run program. Millions of acres that used to support thousand of samll farmers and ranch that land has laid idle for over 3 decades. It pay land owners billions a year, and have do nothing to get paid for by taxpayers money, basically a giant free welfare program for landowners. Also these mega food food companies like Tyspn, are a vertical chicken producer, any vertical producer control the organism wjeather livestock or grain, from start to plate. Chichen got controlled in the 70-80's, first taking over the laying houses, next the contract brooder house and growers, and last the slaughtering plants. Now with Wal- Mart contracting to only pay after they sell the product. This was a long range plan that has been in the process since FDR's first Sec. of Ag was appointed, who was a great proponent of socialized food production. His first comment was government should control food production, as well as it should be communal sty;ed. It is still being slowly being enacted. Pork production is vertical intergration. Now it is being done to beef. Do you any family local producers selling ,no because of "food safety". The only way I can sell any livestock is by selling a live anmal. So if you city or small town dwellers don't like the mega farming or production, kick you socialist government agency s and elected oficials in their a$$es. Choke off the government meddling starting in the beltway slugs.

Wrong, John Carter. Small farms are no more permitted to sell tainted food than are the large corporate agribusinesses. The rules and regulations are being adapted to smaller farming operations, not eliminated. The smaller, local farmer usually has far more vested in his or her operation on a personal level than your typical factory farm. If a major outbreak occurs on his or her watch (which is 24/7, 365 days a year on most family farms), his livelihood and reputation could be ruined. Whereas a large factory farm can usually absorb the media and lawsuit fallout of an outbreak of food borne illness, and, after the dust settles, continue to sell its products. Those products, such as eggs or beef, are usually sold under a variety of region-specific brand names. Your average consumer does not usually associate these regional brand names on a long term basis to the parent company named in outbreaks of food borne illness, so the reputations of supposedly "local" brands of items such as eggs are not forever damaged. Buy local when you can; buy corporate when you must.

 Cows were built to eat grass.  Refuse beef that is not grassfed throughout the animal's life. Get rid of farm subsidies.  Buy locally.  Visit the folks who grow your food.  Follow these suggestions and our food supply will become amazingly clean.

If we had inspectors in the same ratio to facilities that need inspections as we had in the past we would not have to have a new plan.
The government keeps layering on new programs instead of hiring enough workers to do the work in the way it needs to be done to protect the citizens.

smoa. no you are the pavement pounding idoit. go to any feed lot you morn and see what the hell beef is feed. dairy cows live on corn sialage every day. in the winter you feed corn to cows for energy, background calves you feed ground corn for a least 130 days. cows are wintered on corn stalks. my granddad, mt dad and i all have raised livbestock on corn. my granddad i know aised over 10,000 hds of mother cows, my dad over 14,000 and i at least 8,000 fd, but back grounded at least 17,000 hd of calves. so i would liketo know what airy fairy book you got that out of. barely is another grain that can be substuted or milo. barely is 92% as effeicent, milo only 85% as corn for feed effeincy.