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Reading Materials - With Consequences
Farmers, ranchers, and most ordinary citizens
don't sit around all day and write page upon page of rules and regulations
- but, we need to read what those who DO write them, write.
Reason being, that
what is written, if passed into law, could very well affect your access to local food, and the means for making a living bringing it to you
of many Texans.
Judith McGeary founded FARFA many years ago with the hope of
helping fellow Texas farmers and ranchers - and beyond - by using her
talents and strengths to help navigate and influence, to a degree, some of
the legislation that affects us when it comes to our livelihoods - and
your access to our products. Be it raw milk, farm fresh produce or
grass fed meats, we want to preserve our rights to access the good stuff!
She can't possibly read every word, line and page of
every document that gets churned out each legislative session - without
some help. She often turns to us, farmers and ranchers and those in the
FARFA membership that support us, to help her.
In case anyone hasn't noticed, it's spring in all of
Texas. And that means farmers and ranchers are busy - very busy -
planting, harvesting, kidding, hatching, going to markets, etc. Not the
best time to sit down after a 13 hour day and try to make sense of
regulatory language. That is hard enough to do 1st thing in the morning on
a fresh mind.
But I'm attaching a link to some very important
legislation that we need all of the eyes on we can get. I'm also attaching
a link to FARFA's website, because Judith is one of the most eloquently
spoken people I know and she can explain things far better and with more
clarity than I can. She needs us all to read over and chime in on areas of
concern we see. As a farmer, market manager, someone who attends a market,
plans or attends events at a farm, chefs and the back bone - the
consumers, we need your help and input. See a red flag? See something that
looks like it might be a bit expensive for a small farmer to implement
that probably isn't going to make much difference or outright just doesn't
make any sense? (oh, they've been known to toss a few zingers in these
documents.)
Please let Judith hear from you. Timing is of the
essence on this - and I've been meaning to send this out to you for weeks
- but you know, it's spring. :)
Thanks for your help - pour a glass of wine, or coffee to stay awake,
and turn on the highlighter in your pdf reader and go for it.
Here's the
LINK to the PDF of The Proposed Food Establishment Rules
Here's the link to Farm
and Ranch Freedom Alliance (FARFA) |
