New food-safety rules threaten small, organic farms

Tom Willey is so concerned about food safety he is willing to bet the farm on it. Literally. Willey and his wife, Densesse, own an organic farm just outside of Madera in the central San Joaquin Valley, where they grow lettuce, carrots, cabbage and nearly 50 other hand-harvested vegetables. They supply 800 local families and West Coast retailers with a year-round supply of fresh produce. But in the last three years, a dark cloud has gathered over Willey's farm. He and other organic farmers say stricter food-safety regulations, developed after a cluster of outbreaks of bacterial contamination in spinach and lettuce in 2006, threaten the principles upon which their farms are based. While Willey already adheres to the voluntary food-safety regulations deemed necessary by the organic farm community, he feels that many of the rules–which include cutting bare buffer zones around crops, using poison to kill rodents and washing produce with chlorinated water–run contrary to growing healthy and safe food. "Healthy produce cannot be grown in sterile environments," Willey said. "That's both ignorant and dangerous."