EDITORIAL: Food rules could choke businesses
There’s good news and bad news as the federal Food Safety Modernization Act begins taking effect next month.
The good news is that the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s new rules aim to make our food supply safer at every level. It’s the most sweeping reform of food-safety laws in more than 70 years.
The bad news is that the mandate extends to even the smallest ma-and-pa food processors who toil in their commercial kitchens to make everything from jam or jerky to baked goods and pasta.
America’s biggest food processors will be required to comply with the new federal law in September. That will be followed by a compliance schedule that will require the smallest processors to get up to speed over the next two years. Each food processor will be required to develop a complicated hazard analysis plan and have a “Preventive Controls Qualified Individual” on staff. Compliance will be a challenge for many small businesses.
Thankfully the Montana Manufacturing Extension Center is taking the lead in getting the word out to food processors. The center has a dedicated food and process specialist who already is working with local businesses such as Montana Coffee Traders. The coffee roasting business has been working on the requirements of the new law for three years already.
The Extension Center will be offering a three-day course for the preventive controls training, so small processors would be well-advised to get in touch with the center and find out what opportunities exist for getting help.
NW Montana loses out on gubernatorial debate
There won’t be a gubernatorial debate in Northwest Montana this year, and that’s a shame.
On Aug. 12, the Daily Inter Lake, along with NBC Montana, proposed a debate to be held at Flathead Valley Community College in October. The campaign for Republican candidate Greg Gianforte accepted the very next day, but nearly two weeks later, we had still not heard from Democratic Gov. Steve Bullock’s campaign.
Finally, on Aug. 25, in response to a followup phone call and email, Bullock’s campaign spokesman, Jason Pitt, let us know that the governor would only be participating in the four debates previously scheduled.
We will leave it up to our readers to decide how many debates should be held for the state’s highest office. Four may well be enough, but we do wish that the candidates had ventured to Kalispell or Columbia Falls for one of them.
Regional issues such as the shutdown of the Weyerhaeuser mills in Columbia Falls, forest policy, refugee resettlement and high unemployment might well have given a debate here a different tone than one held in Bozeman or Helena.
The next debate is scheduled in Billings on Sept. 19. We’ll be watching.