The following is a brief summary of the House version of comprehensive food safety bill that passed in July. If you are involved in grain or livestock at farm level, direct marketing to farmers market, restaurants or grocery stores, you might want to follow what is in the House version and what is being proposed for the Senate version. A comprehensive food safety bill that gives the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) additional new authorities to take preventative steps to stop foodborne illnesses passed the U.S.

Hi all, Brandon here,

We are looking for contacts, agencies and reguations that oversee the processing, milling, storage and sales of staple seed crops like flour, beans, oil seed, oil, etc. If anyone can point us to the right people so we can start accumlating data and regs (i.e. weights and measures, state dept of ag, etc), please post a reply here.

Michelle & Brandon

Greetings. In the adventure of introducing and supporting alternative grain agriculture in Southeastern Ohio, I am now in the
processing infrastructure research phase, and I keep hearing that both
buckwheat and spelt require a special de-hulling process that is
somehow more complicated than other grains and pseudo-cereals.

Kellogg funded this on-line course about how to frame the work of promoting local food systems. It's a commitment to sit through, but there are some key findings in the research that can inform how we talk/write/communicate about the benefits of local systems and the consequences of the mega systems that dominate our food sources.  Check it out at---http://www.hollyworks.com/frameworks/course/