Mr Salitan
1:18
What started sincerely as a food safety objective morphed into regulatory over burdensome harassment.
1:25
A small plant operator dare not object to subjective and political inspector decisions because poke and sniff allows retribution toward folks with questions entrepreneurs are enslaved and held hostage by bureaucrats who share no business risk and rule without restraint.
1:43
Meanwhile, more Americans desire a more localized stable, secure, transparent, nutrient, dense relational, trustworthy food supply than centralized industrial facilities offer.
1:55
We have eager and willing buyers.
1:57
Farmers desperate to direct market to their neighbors.
2:01
But a bureaucracy that stands in the way of voluntary consenting adults, exercising freedom of choice for their body's microbiome, fuel few human decisions speak to freedom like what we have the right to swallow.
2:18
I can butcher a beef in the field, process it and give it away.
2:21
But if I sell an ounce, I'm a criminal.
2:24
What is it about exchanging money that suddenly makes meat unsafe?
2:30
Clearly, current regulation, market regulations are not about safety.
2:34
They are about market access.
2:37
Our society recognizes scale and relationship when assessing risk.
2:41
In Virginia, we can keep three day care Children in our private home without a license and governmental oversight.
2:47
Why?
2:48
Because an entity an arrangement that small inherently offers seller buyer intimacy that vets itself equal to licenses and inspectors in Virginia, we can keep three elder care patients in our private home without licenses and government oversight.
3:05
Why?
3:06
Because such an intimate arrangement protects equal to the government expectations and trust provide context in any transaction.
3:15
People who want to disentangle from the agri industrial government crony complex don't expect their provenance to be squeezed through the regulatory process.
3:25
They trust their farmer more than a government agent.
3:29
While this group, both farmer and customer may represent a lunatic fringe of the society, we all know that's where innovation comes from and how society deals with its unorthodox element defines its march toward tyranny or freedom.
3:45
Our society desperate for food security and stability wallows in a morass of regulatory impediments to what we need and desire.
3:56
Well, what remedies exist right now.
4:00
1968 public law 90-4 92 known as the producer Grower exemption allows 20,000 head of poultry to be processed on farm without inspection.
4:11
This has enabled thousands of community scale neighbor to neighbor entrepreneurs to launch small broiler operations.
4:19
To my knowledge not a single customer has been harmed by this exemption.
4:25
Why not extend it to beef or to pork right now, custom processing designation allows me to sell pre slaughter portions of an animal usually in holes, halves and quarters.
4:37
Well, why limit my customers to large volumes?
4:40
Let them buy by the cut.
4:42
Congressman Thomas Massey's Prime Act would enable this.
4:46
Another remedy could simply be a food Emancipation Proclamation allowing farmers currently enslaved by regulatory shackles to sell meat to Neighbors.
4:57
Right now, farmers can give it away.
5:00
They just can't sell it.
5:02
Neighbors can buy and feed it to their Children.
5:05
Clearly, if uninspected meat is hazardous, the commerce prohibition should be on the buyer as well as the seller, but it's not, which clearly illustrates the prohibition's hypocrisy.
5:16
Surely if we really want freedom of food choice and food security.
5:19
We can create a remedy that refuses to criminalize neighborly meat transactions.
5:24
The only reason food freedom was not written into our bill of rights was because our nation's founders could not have imagined a time when Neighbors could not exchange a chuck roast or sausage at some point requiring professional league infrastructure and referees on a sandlot, pick up ball game is both inappropriate and malicious.
5:42
It's time to remove the heavy hand of tyranny from America's food system by allowing market access opportunity and competition for producers and consumers seeking freedom of food choice.
5:54
Thank you.
Where's the Beef? Regulatory Barriers to Entry and Competition in Meat Processing
House Judiciary GOP
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snyJCDf2_0k
Ms Bauman
0:28
I had an incident last summer after 15 years of operating USDA inspected poultry and beef plants that really, helped bring to light some of the flaws in, in the inspection system, I guess.
0:43
And it took me 90 days to get my voice heard.
0:48
and my business lost a significant amount of money.
0:50
In the meantime, in short, it's a very long story, but in short, we had a small mechanical failure that led that opened the door to a overly aggressive, F SI S supervisor who come in and placed all of my pro, 3000 chickens, on hold.
1:09
, wouldn't review basically any of my corrective actions.
1:13
It's a situation if it happened in a large plant could be resolved.
1:16
In a matter of hours, it took me 90 days to resolve this.
1:20
My business lost $80,000.
1:23
All 3000 of those birds were condemned.
1:26
My process was not complete without a personal farm visit from the head of the food safety inspection service.
1:34
The administrator there in the end, all of those 3000 birds got the wholesome stamp of inspection from the USDA and they all went back to their farmers a lot of layers in there.
1:50
But the concern and the takeaway that, that I got from that experience was I was a 15 year old plan.
Mr Trotter (ALEC)
Mr Gunthorp
1:22
I'd love to tell you that rural America has thrived with niche marketing, wholesale opportunities like I once had.
1:28
I'd love to tell you that dealing with USDA is easy rather than the major challenge it is finding keeping and affording a skilled workforce in today's deskilled industry is virtually impossible.
1:43
Market access for small local regional plants in today's wholesale, predatory and concentrated marketplace is no longer possible.
1:54
Food that tastes better, that is better for you.
1:57
Agriculture that rebuilds soils and community food system, resilience, greater biodiversity and more opportunities for all should be the goal the global food supply is in peril for too long, get bigger, get it out policies, touting false efficiencies and economies of scale have favored today's failed, top down, controlled and concentrated food system, wiping out the safer, more dependable and resilient local regional infrastructure essential for our food security.
2:32
The issue to me is like the little, the local little league committee.
2:37
We aren't here to argue balls and strikes.
2:40
We need a new game where everyone has a chance for success, including us smaller scrappy players who are willing to put the time and energy into it.
2:50
New processing plants quickly realize that attaining a grant of inspection from USDA is a difficult hill to climb.
2:59
A only after we climb the USDA inspection hill.
3:03
Do we see the mountain fair market access?
3:06
Today's insurmountable challenge fixing USDA inspection issues is the first step in rebuilding local regional food systems.
3:16
I've spent several decades of my own time and resources doing advocacy work for the independent Family Farm and Small Processor.
3:24
If we want successful local and regional food systems, we need subsidy reform, antitrust enforcement, truth, and labeling and inspection reform and we must support the infrastructure with government purchasing.
3:42
Here are my suggestions on inspection reform and antitrust enforcement.
3:46
First and foremost, we need to create an ombudsman to deal with USDA dysfunction concerning existing and prospective small and very small establishments, small plants have more issues with the process than they do with the regulations.
4:02
It's 1st 4th and 14 amendment issues.
4:06
I e the ability to challenge and criticize without retribution, the differences in opinions when plants have facility product and or equipment retained and the ability to have realistic due process during unprofessional inspection behavior and or differences in opinion.
4:26
There are way too many nightmare stories we could go on all day talking about those.
4:31
We need to redefine plant size so that overtime fees, grant funds, procurement funds and implementation of regulations are actually appropriate.
4:44
And you guys need to look at the National Advisory Committee for meat and poultry inspection I served on that and we don't actually even get to present topics for the committee.
4:57
I have some ensure that rulemaking processes are complete before USDA enforces rules salmonella performance standards.
5:07
Excellent example.
5:08
And we need to do everything we can to expand the town Akins a cooperative state inspection.
5:16
Most of the little plants in this country are actually in those because they can deal with the politics and bureaucracy of state programs easier.
5:25
Please restore truth in labeling every viable niche we've come up with has been stole by big ag without any meaningful change.
5:34
USDA procurement program should prioritize some of its purchasing from local and regional suppliers.
5:41
fix the agency revolving door and ethics issues and restore strict antitrust enforcement, oligopolies and monopolies harm both producers and consumers.
5:52
It's clear that cheap food isn't cheap today.
5:56
The essentially un regulated big food cartel continues to extract the wealth and resources of rural America.
6:03
While local independent businesses claim to be the backbone of America fail under abusive regulatory pressure and lack of market access.
6:13
The people who best stewarded our land and livestock and who grow and process our nature.
6:20
Nation's agricultural production are being left to die under the boot of monopoly power, unprotected and unrepresented at all levels of government.
6:30
It's time for change.
6:31
Thank you.
Mr Jordan
0:07
I mean, someone once said when the government, someone from the government shows up at your front door, your first response is not usually, oh, joy.
0:13
One of my public servants is here to help me today.
0:16
That is the fundamental issue.
0:17
And I appreciate what the chairman is doing and everyone's testimony.
0:20
It is amazing.
0:21
We got four witnesses.
0:21
I, I don't know which one came from the Democrats, but they all understand we got to change this system.
0:26
So God bless you all for what you do.
0:27
I'm gonna yield to the good man who knows a little bit about agriculture from Wisconsin.
0:31
Mr Tiffany.
0:39
There, there is, as I mentioned, the word extortion, I mean, the, the problem is that if you dare question a judgment because of the subjective nature of inspection, it's not empirical at all.
1:01
They can retribute pretty easily.
1:04
And so every owner of a plant like us has been down this, this road where well, I mean, I can tell you the example for us that happened in, in the last five years, we've had two new inspectors at our, at our plant.
1:18
because we're a small plant, it's a training ground for new you know, new ones.
1:22
And, so, because we sell grass, finished beef, not grain, finished many times.
1:29
Our liver has just a bit of a, of a green patina around the edge because it's not feed lot.
1:36
So two years in the last five, we've had new inspectors that condemned all of our livers.
1:43
That's $30,000 a year.
1:46
Times two is $60,000 a year.
1:48
We take them 50 miles up to another plant with a, with another inspector, all of our livers come back.
1:56
Same animals, same farm, same day, same rules one.
2:00
We lose several 1001.
2:02
We gain several 1000 this but, but, but if you say if you dare question or say anything, then, well, you know, we can find a fly here, we can find a post wrong here.
2:13
This, this room has to be blue instead of pink, you know, and, and, and so you, you just, you just are under this extortion all the time.
0:27
But I, I think the problem is the interpretation and is the dysfunction that we see with the inspection.
0:35
And as I mentioned, I think it's our First amendment rights because I think it's our ability to challenge and criticize the inspectors and we can't do that because of, as Mr Sala said, you know, retaliation.
0:48
I think it's the we can't question or even have them have a proper probable cause or suspicion when they either withhold our ability to use our facility, our equipment or hold our product.
1:04
And then we don't have real legitimate due process in this if I actually wanted to over an issue with the USDA.
1:11
I'd have to go completely through the appeal process of starting at the inspector that, wrote us up for non-compliance.
1:18
I'd have to go through the whole way through the chain of command, before I could get an administrative court hearing.
1:24
So I'd have two years that we wouldn't be open without even being able to get due process.
1:29
That's not due process.
1:30
Thank you very much for that.
1:31
I just got a brief time, Mr Gunp, you sound like you could be interchangeable with our ALEC representative here.
1:37
I really appreciate the Democrats bringing you forward to the ranking member.
1:41
You hope they have a heart.
1:43
You hope these regulators have a heart, but sometimes that is not how it works and you force some of these plants to close.
1:49
We've seen it in our district where we have a plant closing and they were subject to those mask mandates and it really did great harm to their business and I know it caused them to reconsider whether they should do an expansion.