A farmer thinks through food regulation
When I first started my farm business back in 2009, I was excited about serving people with good food. I wanted to give them the very best veggies, meats, and eggs possible. As I told a newspaper reporter interviewing us at the farmers market, “Our goal is to love our neighbor and glorify God through providing healthy food.”
But one of the most confusing and challenging things I had to navigate was government regulation of food. I did a lot of research and printed out the specific state and federal codes for processing and selling meat chickens, eggs, and baked goods. What I found was that, for a small family farm, most of the food safety regulations would have prevented me from ever selling the first product. The requirements are only possible with the overhead of a corporate food processor. So I relied on the exemptions and provisions written for small producers. In Alabama, for example, you don’t have to meet the washing and grading regulations for eggs if they come from your own chickens and are sold directly to the consumer. Selling an animal live and then processing it for the buyer is another provision many small farms depend on.
But my heart as a Christian is not to skirt the rules. I want to wholeheartedly honor God and submit to every authority He has established. Exemptions are a blessing, but I am not trying to get away with sloppily grown food. I want the highest standards. God’s reputation is on the line if I bear His name.
At the same time, I am convinced that following government regulations to a tee is not how we represent God best — even if it were possible. There was a season when I caught myself evaluating too many of my decisions as a farmer by whether a government regulator would be pleased with what I was doing. That was taking mental and creative bandwidth away from actually being a good farmer. I wasn’t thinking about how to provide the healthiest food possible for our customers. I was thinking about how to defend my production and post-harvest handling to an inspector. Was that living in the fear of God, or the fear of man? I think the answer is self-evident.
When we look at God’s design in Scripture, the role of civil government is to commend those who do good and punish those who do evil. Where God’s law does address safety — the command to build a parapet around your roof, for instance — it puts the duty on the owner, not on a permitting office. That was liability law that promoted personal responsibility, not a building code enforced before you could occupy your house.
When I get to heaven, I don’t believe God is going to ask whether I followed the food safety licenses and protocols set forth by the state. Licensing in particular cuts against the biblical principle of individual responsibility. It takes the authority over my actions and hands it to the civil government, while leaving me — rightly — responsible before God for what I produce. Authority and responsibility are meant to travel together.
My responsibility before the Lord goes far beyond what is legal. I am responsible not only for doing my best, but for doing it from a proper heart — one that wants the best for others, is willing to sacrifice to do the right thing, and cares what God thinks more than what other people think.
We live in a fallen world. We function in a society that has much to offer, despite how far it is from what God calls us to. As long as we are called to serve within Caesar’s system, we have to be willing to understand the rules we are submitting ourselves to. Jesus’ words to be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves are a help here.
I want to be as innocent as a dove as a farmer — doing my best to do the right thing, in integrity, from the heart. Not because an inspector is looking over my shoulder, but because God is watching from heaven and I care about the people I serve.
But I also need to be wise as a serpent. I need to know God’s ways and promote them when it comes to the proper role of civil government. And I need to be shrewd in understanding the law, my legal standing, the most strategic ways to promote freedom, and when it is the right time to take a stand for what is right, no matter the cost.
Part of the challenge today is that the government and I don’t always define “good” the same way. A few years ago I went to a Food Safety Modernization Act training. The philosophy the whole thing was built on was that biology is dangerous, sterility is safe, and animal production and crop production should be completely segregated. The training was all about the dangers of compost and manure, with nothing said about the dangers of the chemicals used in the required “kill steps” for certain vegetables.
My philosophy of food safety is very different. Sanitation and cleanliness are great, but sterility achieved through chemical killers is fragile — it leaves a vacancy for pathogens to fill. I fully agree that manure and food should be kept apart. But treating compost and manure as the enemy and chemicals as the savior produces a set of regulations that are not only hard to live with in practice, but that work against what I believe are the best farming methods for producing the best food.
We have been on a break from market farming for the last few years to focus on training others and homesteading. But I hope to start the business back in the future with my sons. And that changes the way I look at all of this. I am not just trying to figure out what I am going to do. I am deciding what to pass on to my sons. I want them to be excellent farmers, know the legal and regulatory codes, promote freedom, and be creative in getting good food to our customers — but do it with a heart to please the Lord and serve others. I want our daily focus to be on producing the very best food we possibly can, and if, despite our best efforts to live shrewdly within the system, we get in trouble for that — so be it.
One thing I do believe: there may come a day when the only choice of integrity left to Christians is to make the sacrifice of opting out of the convenience of our economic system entirely. If the prophecy in Revelation about not being able to buy or sell without denying Jesus is fulfilled in the time leading up to His return, that will certainly be a time when we cannot comply with the regulations of commerce. There may be earlier moments when we are called to do something like that as a foreshadowing. But in the meantime, we must steward the times and places we live in — whether that turns out to be more of a Jerusalem or more of a Babylon.
