The long-running discussion over food safety as it applies to different types and sizes of farms continued this week during a Senate Agriculture Committee hearing on nutrition and local food. During the hearing, Senator Pat Roberts asked Walmart’s Senior Director of Local Sourcing & Sustainable Agriculture, Ron McCormick, – why is it more difficult for a grower with 50 acres to implement food safety standards and undergo food safety audits? McCormick told the panel, – it’s time and money.
McCormick said – I think it’s not necessarily harder, I think it’s a matter of the obstacles being greater for a small farmer who doesn’t have a lot of capital, and who doesn’t have a lot of time to invest in it. A piece of it is simply the cost of the audit itself. The average cost of an audit is 15-hundred dollars.  McCormick says, for the small farmer, that’s a – large capital outlay for them.

According to Walmart’s McCormick, – one of the great values is a routine audit.  It’s not just about what the auditor prevents from happening. The repeated visits from an audit, help a farmer get better, whether he’s small or he’s large. It helps them develop a system that prevents the threats to food safety from occurring.

Courtesy: NAFB News