Bill Carriere - Comment

The mere fact that this question is being asked is evidence that the neither the FDA nor the administration realize how the fees that they are imposing are collected. It makes for a nice media piece when we show fee relief to the small entrepreneur selling local produce at the local farmers market or the opposite scene where we stick it to some large no-face corporation that is cutting off massive amounts of chicken heads using a high speed automatic machine. In the end all of the fees are passed to the producer and eventually to the consumer, making our food more expensive, our businesses less profitable, and our food supply not that much safer. In America to be successful as a small or large business we need to give our customers what they want. Our customers want a safe, inexpensive, and reliable food supply. If we send them anything differently we will suffer the wrath of the consumer and the media and loose business, if not go out of business. My first choice is to let the capitalist system work and keep the government out of our lives. We are being regulated to death. FDA and the EPA are even taking away the tools we need to make our food safer, eg Sulfuryl Floride, Methyl Bromide, etc. etc. If you have to charge a fee for inspections, then you should pay for the inspections and cost of this regulation on the backs of the offenders. Make the fines higher for non-compliance, and punish those who break the rules rather than making all of us share the burden. Why make those of us who have already spent considerable amounts of money on food safety programs, pay for the few who don’t. Small business or not, we want our food safe. Small businesses shouldn’t be treated differently from large businesses. Each must spend enough resources on their own appropriate level of food safety. It isn’t fair to put the entire burden on larger businesses when they probably have more robust food safety programs already in place at considerable cost.