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Vernon Hershberger addresses attendees at a fundraising dinner in his honor in Milwaukee on Tuesday evening. What is the real cause of the government crackdown on small farms producing good food? 

 

I have written and spoken about the fear of competition by our corporate food producers, as consumers gradually come to realize how they are being sickened by corporate factory food and transition to more healthy options. As the corporations see their market shares erode, they call on the regulators to more aggressively go after small food producers making good food, using “protection” and “safety” as the war cries. 

 

Joel Salatin offered a different, and contrary, view on Tuesday evening at the fund-raising event for Wisconsin farmer Vernon Hershberger in Milwaukee (which, by the way, drew about 200 people and apparently did what it was supposed to do in raising funds for the farmer trying to re-build parts of his farm after a fire in 2013). 

 

Salatin, who was the keynote speaker at the event, took special issue with the view by many in the food rights movement that government and corporate food producers “just want to put us farmers out of business.” Quite the contrary, he said. “I don’t think anyone wants to put small farmers out of business.” 

 

Why have the regulators pushed enforcement measures so hard against small farms in places like Maine, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, and California?

 

Salatin argued that it’s the result of pressure from consumer protection organizations like those under the Ralph Nader umbrella, about food safety. These organizations have convinced politicians, who have leaned on regulators, to be super obsessive about safety. “They sincerely believe that people will be killed” if small sustainable farms are allowed an ever-expanding role in supplying food. 

 

“The only approach they (consumer protection organizations) see is government intervention.”


Salatin said he has met regulators who have taken the consumer cause to heart. He cited one who seemed to Salatin to be so concerned about people getting sick from bad food that he sometimes slept badly. 

 

Salatin raised this question to back up his argument: Why would big business push for more regulation, like the Food Safety Modernization Act, which adversely affects the corporations as well? The corporations come to accept the uber-regulation because, as he put it,  “big business knows it will be able to carve out special places and exemptions” from the brunt of enforcement.

 

Pushing the notion that government and Big Ag want to obliterate small producers is counterproductive, Salatin argued. For people to say “I want my rights comes across as greedy.” 

 

I think Salatin has some important points. The consumer movement has been an important factor in some of this. It pushed for the ban on interstate raw milk sales back in the 1980s, and eventually a Nader group prevailed in a federal court suit. And it certainly pushed for the Food Safety Modernization Act in 2011. 

 

But I think the actual dynamic is more nuanced. I would argue that Big Ag has latched onto the fear components around food safety to help the politicians and regulators justify the bullying of small producers. Thus, Big Dairy frequently argues that it pushes regulators to go after raw milk producers out of a desire to prevent illnesses, to protect people. That becomes a convenient cover for the dairy processor cartel’s clear desire to rid the market of competitors who are helping sap sales from pasteurized milk. 

 

Similarly the chicken industry in Maine and elsewhere could say it was only concerned about safety in pushing for regulations that require small producers to have the same expensive facilities as large producers, and so force many of the small guys out of business. In Michigan, the pork producers can say they want to protect farmers and the environment from the ravages of wild pigs in promoting genetic requirements that ban all specialty breeds the small guys were producing….when, bottom line, they wanted to rid themselves of competition. 

 

The politicians? They are long-time masters of saying one thing and doing another. It certainly makes their job easier when consumer groups are agitating for legislation that seems to regulate business on “protection,” but actually gives corporations a competitive leg up. 

 

A number of politicians have come to be supportive of small farms. But the ones that count—the committee chairpeople at the state and federal level who make the decisions about which legislation goes forward—are often taken care of via campaign contributions, cushy jobs when they retire, and other less-than-obvious favors from Big Ag. 


Trying to figure out where responsibility lies for the ongoing campaign against small producers is  definitely a good discussion to have. One thing we can all agree on is that the corporations, politicians, and regulators have done a masterful job of blurring the underlying motivations. When the discussion on responsibility and motivations expands, so does the overall education process that gradually sways markets away from the factory producers.