State News

Farmers Markets Escape Potential for Overregulation

Farmers markets in Pennsylvania are subject to new statewide regulations that help erase previous regulatory difficulties for farmers.

By Melissa Daniels | PA Independent HARRISBURG — Statewide food safety regulations for farmers markets are working. But that wasn’t the case initially. The new rules, which seemingly called for expensive fixes and equipment buys, worried farmers and market managers. But those burdens aren’t true to the law, says a new Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic report that examined the 2010 regulations, referred to as Chapter 57 of Act 106. Advocacy group Keep Food Legal commissioned the report, which concluded Pennsylvania’s laws offer a favorable model for ensuring market products are safe. Food law instructor Emily Broad Leib, one author of the study, said some local health inspectors were “overzealous” when the law was first applied. Horror …

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