Cider makers are feeling the press
Editorial,
Bennington Banner
Friday, November 11
The state of New York can't leave well enough alone. Now it's going after farmers who produce apple cider, because 200 people got sick from "Macintosh's Revenge" in Peru, N.Y., last October. After the outbreak, the state stepped in with a new law that outlaws the sale of raw cider. The law goes into effect Jan. 8.
Farmers like James Perry of White Creek, N.Y., are now looking at a $13,500 to $15,000 expense for a UV machine or $20,000 to $90,000 pasteurization machine, just to make sure there's no cryptosporidium in their homemade, fresh cider.
Cryptosporidium is a bacteria that gets into food and water supplies from animal activity in a watershed area or through the introduction of sewage into a water supply.
It can happen anywhere and at any time. And to financially punish all farmers, especially small farmers like James Perry, is just plain absurd.
A better move by the state of New York should have been careful inspections and fines for the offending farm in Peru. But no. Now all farms in the Empire State are penalized.
Just exactly how is a small cider producer supposed to come up with $90,000 for a pasteurizer?
According to Cornell University Food Microbiology Professor Randy Worobo and Peter Gregg, spokesman for the New York Apple Association, small cider producers will just have to learn to share equipment costs as a means of survival.
Worobo also said, "The industry has to sort of compromise for this change. Where there's a will, there's a way. This is not necessarily the demise of small producers."
It sounds to us like Worobo and Gregg have been spending too much time in the lab and the office, and not enough time out in the field, to get a grip on what small time farmers are experiencing these days in terms of financial strife.
We feel the FDA - at least in this case - had a grip on the situation, when in 1998 it began requiring that producers carry a label that states if cider is "raw." The label warns potential customers that the cider is not pasteurized or otherwise treated for the possible presence of harmful bacteria and could be especially harmful for children or otherwise immune-system challenged adults.
Raw milk producers are doing it, and so it should be for cider producers. After all, apples don't spend all day walking around in their own dung, while cows do, and people are still buying raw milk without serious issue.
Perry is pushing to have the law exempt farmers who want to sell raw cider directly to consumers.
We hope the state has the sense - and the fairness - to treat the producers of raw cider just like it does the producers of raw milk.
Pressing small businessmen, in this case farmers, out of the cider business should be no business of the state at all.
