Maine farmers hit with new federal food safety rules

      Posted On: February 2, 2018

“One of the faults of the law is that there could potentially be a lot of infrastructure needs necessary, yet there’s no mechanism for grants for farms to get in compliance with it,” Colson said. “Eventually, this will affect every farmer. If you had an inspector who came onto the farm and saw things they didn’t like, they could shut you down right there.”

The MOFGA official believes that the government means to encourage farmers into compliance instead of forcing them into it with the threat of drastic action. Still, he said, the law’s mandates seem like a pricey and time-consuming solution to the problem of food safety. The federal regulations will treat small family farms in Maine with no history of food contamination the same as huge farms in California’s Central Valley, which grow a third of the country’s produce.