And we’re not talking about the bard rock chickens.

With four generations farming and living on about 200 acres, the Richardsons say their operation is the antithesis of corporate agriculture.

Eighty acres is dedicated to growing corn for feeding chickens and pigs, but none for the cattle, Kay Richardson says, because that just ain’t natural. Cows evolved with four stomachs for digesting grass. The mobile chicken cages that move pullets around the pasture also spreads fertilizer and keeps one area from overuse.

When it’s time to slaughter, they haul the animals directly to a local, small processor foregoing the large feed lots. They sell the meat to restaurants, farmers markets and on the Internet under their own label.

But if the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2009 becomes law, Mrs. Richardson says Mom and Pop farms like this will pay the price. Going back a few years, Mrs. Richardson points out contamination problems with spinach, tomatoes and peanut butter, which have sickened thousands, is the byproduct of lax oversight at large producers, not family farms.

“Small farmers and small processors only do one chicken, one pig, one cow at a time,” Mrs. Richardson said, watching Hampshire pigs roll in mud. “You’re not going to have that possibility of cross-contamination like you do in the big areas. We don’t want the government to interfere with what we feel like is freedom to live on our farm and freedom to sell our own meats and produces.”

But a non-profit organization - Trust for America’s Health - supports the proposed legislation, calling for big changes at America’s “fragmented and antiquated” food safety system. The organization’s recent report calls for creating a separate Food Safety Administration with an official who will have full authority over all food safety functions.

“The bottom line is that too many American families are getting sick from the food they eat and that needs to change,” Liz Richardson, spokeswoman with the group, said.

“But reform can absolutely be accomplished in a way that strengthens small farms and bolsters America’s food industry as a whole,” said Richardson, who is not related to Kay and Jim Richardson.

No details on how to protect small farms were offered.

Congressman John Carter’s office, R-Round Rock, said the act is an over-reaction. Spokesman John Stone said instead of making new laws, enforce what’s on the books.

“We all agree we ought to have safer food, but why don’t we take a look at what the problems have been, where they came from, and what we could do to correct that, rather than a knee-jerk reaction for more regulation when it wasn’t a regulatory problem, it was an enforcement problem,” Stone said. “It has a real threat of basically taking away the right of the smaller farms to do what they want to do with their own property.”

Part of the resolution would require “each food production facility to have a written food safety plan that describes the likely hazards and preventive controls.”

Stone says this places undue burden on the mom-and-pop farms. The large operations already have these programs in place, Stone said, and when it comes to enforcement, the federal government simply left the barn door open.

“When we come out with very strenuous new regulations, the big national and international corporations might not like them, it might cost them some money, but they have whole compliance departments,” Stone said.

“When you get the true family farm, particularly with the growth of organic farming out there … and they come out with these excess regulations, there’s just no way they can possibly comply with it. It takes a person working almost full-time to do it.”

Two House committees are now studying the bill: Agriculture, and Energy and Commerce. Some bills die in the committee stage, but if this one continues, next it would go before the full body of the House.

Regardless of what happens in Washington, a Central Texas Farm Bureau director said Americans need to remember safe food handling practices.

“Don’t cut your chicken with a knife and then use it to cut your tomato without cleaning it up,” Richard Cortese said. “People don’t know that’s a problem. That’s something, whatever happens, that needs to be emphasized a great deal.”

HR 875 is online at: www.govtrack.us