Freedom And Food Safety

Food safety sounds simple until you try to grow and sell real food as a small farmer. I’m Noah Sanders, a Christian farmer and off-grid homesteader in Alabama, and I’m wrestling out loud with a question that hits every local food producer sooner or later: do government food safety regulations actually create safer food, or do they mostly centralize power and squeeze out the very farms that are easiest to trust?

We talk through the real-life side of compliance, from eggs and cottage food laws to poultry processing exemptions and the paperwork maze that small producers have to navigate just to serve their neighbors. I share why my goal is never to lower standards, and why I want my farm to be the kind of place any customer can visit without me feeling nervous. But I also explain how “one size fits all” rules are often written for industrial agriculture, and how that can quietly favor large companies while limiting local, relationship-based accountability.

Then we dig into worldview. After FSMA-style produce safety training, I noticed how much attention goes to compost, manure, and sterilization, and how little is said about chemical exposure and the difference between sterility and a healthy microbial ecosystem. From there, we zoom out to a biblical worldview of government, Romans 13, and the idea that authority and responsibility belong together, with accountability for negligence rather than preemptive control that restricts freedom.

If you care about Christian farming, homesteading, local food systems, regenerative agriculture, or the future of small farms under modern regulation, this conversation will give you clear categories and plenty to think about. Subscribe, share this with a friend who buys local, and leave a review so more people can find the show.

Transcript

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Identity Before Farming

SPEAKER_00 0:00

All right, guys, welcome to the Redeeming the Dirt podcast. This is Noah Sanders. Glad to be with you this week. Um, I am a farmer and a homesteader here in Alabama with my family where we live off grid, raise a lot of our own food, are raising eight kids and one on the way, and are just really happy to be able to serve the Lord. And I was thinking about it um yesterday, that I really, even though I love farming, I really want my identity and my mission in life primarily to be honoring the Lord, uh, serving Jesus. And so I want to think of myself as a follower of Jesus who happens to be called to farming right now, um, and in our case, homesteading at the moment, not a farmer who happens also to be a follower of Jesus. Just that nuance of understanding that my identity and what I am doing is following Jesus and everything else should flow out of that. I hope you feel the same way. And uh I'm just excited about what God's doing in the hearts of people around the country who really do love Jesus and who really do want to follow him and who also are feeling this call back

Called Back To The Land

SPEAKER_00 1:20

to the land. I was on a coaching call earlier today with Redeeming the Dirt Academy, those monthly Zoom calls that we have for kind of time at fellowship and discussion and uh testimony sharing. But it was really great to hear some of the people on there sharing just about the journey God has had them on, where they were doing something completely not related to farming, no farming background, and yet they've have felt called to buy some land, start growing their own food and teaching and helping other people, and they know that it's God because they had no interest in that. They are very comfortable where they were, um, did not really want to do the move necessarily or go that route, but they really felt strongly that that's what God was calling them to do. And I imagine many of you listening also have a similar story, and I think there's kind of a move of God within the church of people that he's calling back to the land. And then yet what's neat about it is it's not just a uh motive because we feel like it's prudent, even though we live in times where it is definitely prudent to think about your food supply and those kind of things. And yet what's interesting about the lot of the stories I hear from people that have made this move is that they really are doing it not out of fear, not even out of necessarily uh just trying to weather things that are coming, but they feel like a call from the Lord, like they feel like this is not about themselves. It's not just about surviving, it's about being in a place to be able to bless and serve others. Um, they feel not necessarily just called to grow food for themselves, but they feel called to teach other people how to grow food, to be in a position to bless and serve other people. And so it's exciting uh to hear these stories. It would be great to get some of these testimonies put together. If you have a testimony like this, if that's if there's a God story related to your agricultural journey, I'd love for you to send me a short uh short little testimony of that. Um, and I'd love to hear from you and hear if God was involved in leading you to start farming and your family to homestead and to grow some food. And if there's a discipleship ministry element to that, uh I love hearing those stories, and I think it encourages us to all understand that this is not something that we're doing uh just because we each think it's a good idea, but we're all trying to um listen to the call that obviously God is putting on a lot of people's

Homestead Life And Fall Prep

SPEAKER_00 3:52

lives. A few things that our family has been up to lately, we are been putting up firewood for the winter. Um, some of it can kind of dry stuff that we got from some uh local uh fire department who had been selling firewood last year, but uh had some leftover unsplitted wood, so we split some of that up. My son's and I've been working on that, and then we've also been clearing for a new garden shed and splitting that wood and putting it up. You know, it definitely takes forethought on a homestead and a farm. Uh, it takes the kind of discipline of doing something today that you're not going to benefit from for many months or years to come sometimes. And uh I haven't always done a good job in the past of stocking up firewood. So we're trying to do that a little bit ahead of time this year. We've been trying to get our fall garden in and protect uh everything from these uh late summer bugs and heat that want to destroy and and eat all of our nice seedlings of broccoli and uh cabbage and cauliflower and collards and Brussels sprouts, uh, but really enjoying the fall garden. And it just once we can get past this heat a bit, everything just breathes a sigh of relief and is able to sort of uh sore throat the last uh few days. So hopefully I can get through this without uh losing my voice.

Government And Agriculture Series Setup

SPEAKER_00 5:20

The last few episodes, we've been talking kind of about the topic of the government and agriculture and kind of the biblical worldview of how we should view the government's uh interaction with and relationship with farming. And the first one we kind of talked about that basic role of government, and then we've talked about the handouts that governments give and whether that's helpful or hurtful. And this week we're gonna talk a little bit about the idea of government regulations, especially as it has to do with food safety. There are many people that are way more qualified to talk about this than myself. Joel Salatin obviously is a great resource thinking through the impact of government regulations on agriculture. But I just want to kind of muse a bit as a farmer, as a Christian farmer, on kind of you know what how I think about and wrestling through what my perspective should be as a Christian from a biblical worldview when I think about the idea of food safety, government regulations, and especially uh my responsibility and role in interacting with that as uh food producer.

Small Farm Compliance And Exemptions

SPEAKER_00 6:38

So when I first started our commercial farm that we ran for 13 years, we were so blessed with having a lot of success at our farmer's market, meat chickens that we had people pick up from our um farm. We told did sell eggs and we sold uh vegetables and also baked goods. And it was just such a blessing to have such a loyal customer base of people that wanted good food from us uh to be able to every week load up and prepare this uh high-quality food that we had produced on our farm and take it and supply it to families all over our community. And, you know, one of the things that was you know challenging to know how to navigate was this idea of food safety and food regulations and the licensing and all that that goes along with it, because as a small producer, uh you don't fit oftentimes in the regulation uh requirements that are oftentimes written for much larger producers. So I really tried to research and do my due diligence to understand what the law said related to different things, whether we were selling the eggs, understanding the exemptions that we fell under in Alabama as a producer seller, um, or understanding the federal regulation exemptions that existed that you know allows you to butcher a certain number of chickens uninspected on farm and sell them. And then we also were doing home baking and understanding the cottage food laws and the exemptions we were able to function with under those. And I think it's interesting because you know, I as a Christian, I really want to just through my farm love God and love others. I want to bring glory to Him and I want to bring help and service to the people that I'm serving as customers. So my intention should never be to try to cut corners or to um in any way uh slack on the quality or safety or health of the products that we're bringing them, especially as a food producer. Um but it was a bit uh challenging because there are things that um come into play with regulations that do make them unfortunately uh restrictive to creativity, to small producers. And one of the things that I ran into as well is the idea or the the reality that there are different worldviews at play when you deal with regulations.

Sterility Vs A Healthy Biome

SPEAKER_00 9:19

And when I went and took a Food Safety Modernization Act or FISMA training for produce safety, uh it was mostly concerned with the dangers of bacterial and um inf you know pathogens from compost and manure. So most of it was trying to help producers have good uh management that would keep animals away from their food production, from their crop production, and um any unsafe compost. But there really wasn't any talk about the dangers of the chemicals used um or the chemicals used for the kill steps to uh to try to sterilize the food crops coming off the fields. And I realized it really is that I had a difference of worldview with the people who wrote those regulations because I don't believe that sterility is actually the safest um, you know, environment for safe food or healthy food. It's kind of like the safest place for walking around is not necessarily an abandoned lot or an abandoned alleyway, but it's one that's balanced with a lot of people. Um, a busy street where there's lots of people and it's um hard for anybody to get away with doing something bad because there's so many people around. Well, that's kind of what a healthy biome, a healthy um population of uh bacteria um and in biology, not pathogenic, but just clean, uh tends to promote that kind of thing. Whereas when you're always uh doing kill solutions on everything, it just kind of leaves this vacuum. So that's the way we would operate our farm, is all our post-harvest handling everything, very much um soups and hot water and and that kind of stuff. Uh but I don't when I processed under USDA regulation one time uh built them chickens, you know, it was an amazing operation, but they also uh relied a lot more on chemicals where things were a little more dirty, the solutions were more dirty that we were using, but hey, it was bleach. Uh so you know, at least there's nothing living in there. Um I much preferred our outdoor uh clean, uh rinsed off uh sunlight sanitized, um really nicely set up processing facility uh on our own farm to what I experienced helping under USDA uh inspection. So there is obviously

Local Accountability Vs Central Control

SPEAKER_00 12:00

the question of quality and and uh you know who's the best suited to uh provide safety uh standards, which is very obviously uh has there's a lot of challenges with centralization to that rather than having local accountability and small-scale production where instead of uh people being weeded out on a local level because of their reputation, we have large companies who have all the certifications, but uh can cause widespread outbreaks. So obviously, as Christian farmers, we live in a fallen world in a government system that's never going to be perfect. So, you know, as we think about how do we function in an environment where we're trying to do a great job as unto the Lord, where he's the one looking over our shoulders and not some inspector, uh, but also make sure that we are being careful to not subject ourselves to um penalties related to not meeting certain regulatory requirements. Um I think it's important for us to take that advice Jesus gave uh to be as shrewd as a snake and innocent as a dove, where you know our innocence comes from the fact that we actually are trying to do the right thing. I'm trying to give the very best food to my customers that I can. I want this uh, you know, the meat that I'm processing to be the cleanest it possibly can be. I want the vegetables to be the healthiest that they possibly can be. So I'm I'm innocent in that I'm trying actually to do the very best that I can. I want my farm to be something any customer can come at any point in time and see anything, and I'm not gonna be ashamed of it. Um, but I also need to be shrewd, understanding the context in which I live, that there are regulations that uh there are consequences if you don't meet. And uh there is the challenge that a lot of regulations are put in place because of pressure from large companies who don't want to see small producers competing against their market share. Um, they don't want the availability of local meats and those kind of things. And that's reality. So as small producers, we do want to be shrewd to make sure that we are uh not unnecessarily making ourselves vulnerable to um penalties, but uh we do want to be engaging as well to try to have and encourage and hold the system accountable for just and helpful um laws that are fair and equitable and allow for high quality

Biblical Authority And Responsibility

SPEAKER_00 14:40

production. But that can take time. And I think as we think about the uh this as Christians, I'm always wanting to kind of go back to, well, what what would God what is God's original intent? Is the government uh being in charge of food safety, the government helping with food safety? Um is that you know part of his original design if we were to design it from scratch, if if we're trying to say what direction are we trying to head, what is God's solution for making sure that people don't get sick from food? What do we see in the scripture? And a few of the things that kind of I think I've thought about um is just this idea that who is gonna have to give an account one day? You know, we see in the scripture there's uh this idea of authority, delegated authority that God gives that always accompanies responsibility. So Adam's you know put in the garden to work and keep it, that's his he has the authority to do that, it's also his responsibility here, you know, the idea of to whom much is given, much is required is what Jesus says in Luke. So this biblical principle that God gives authority and responsibility hand in hand is is a helpful principle to think about when I s when we say, okay, so who is responsible for and who has the authority over uh making sure that the food is safe. Um and if you think about this idea of responsibility, and we then look at what God says um is a responsibility of government, it says that the government is to punish evil and to commend good in Romans 13. And the government is God's servant for justice. And so when we think about safety, the examples that we see in scripture are that God prioritizes keeping people safe in a dangerous world. We see him telling the Israelites to put a parapet around their roof to make sure that their ox doesn't gore their neighbor. But the responsibility is put on the individual and the punishment if they uh somebody gets hurt and they didn't do that is the government's responsibility. We don't see the government uh punishing people for having not put a parapet around their roof. We don't see um them punishing somebody if they didn't put a fence around their ox. It's if you didn't do that and somebody gets hurt, then you're responsible and you get punished accordingly. Uh so God's system that he set up, at least for the nation of Israel, as an example of an application of what a godly government could look like in a context, is preventative in what it commands, not regulative, not uh trying to preemptively prevent harm from happening through control. You know, we live in a society. After the harm has been done, kind of a sphere to put in place and then that causes people to be self-regulated is the way they conduct themselves because the government don't want to be able to do that. Obviously, they may punish the individual, but it should be kept from happening is through restricting uh the actions of its citizens unless they get permission. Uh and the challenge with that is it requires uh taking away the freedom from the citizens. It requires a centralization of authority. And we kind of justify that because, hey, people are sinful. People will will do the wrong thing, they'll mess up, they'll just make people sick all over the place by cutting corners. Um But the reality is that same law exists in the people that would provide those regulations. The more you centralize power into the hands of a few, uh, the more likelihood there is that it's going to be corrupted and that the standards are actually not going to be very effective.

Why Centralized Rules Favor Big Players

SPEAKER_00 19:05

As Christians, we should be super in favor of the highest quality, safest food that's like God intended. And I think the concern that we should have over government regulation is not that it's uh a standard that we want to go below, but it's a restrictive, coercive way to try to force a standard that instead of actually helping, it can hurt because it favors big production because just of the nature of politics and the way that um big companies can get their regulations passed a little bit easier, uh, and it tends to weed out and push out the small producers. You get rid of the very uh safest forms of uh food production, which is local relationship-based accountability, which is what we've had for a long time throughout history. Uh if people knew that somebody was not a good farmer, they weren't going to buy from them. And even before government regulations, we had private uh brands, private um certifications that people could trust. And so it's not that standards are not important. It's just that uh giving authority to the government to restrict people's freedom and only allow them to produce and sell food if they uh are under government inspection is fairly inefficient and has proven not to be super um effective compared to what we would have if you had the government actually doing its job not preemptively, but uh in a way to to bring punishment uh if people are showing negligence and have been causing harm. That's uh that's what's going to be doing the most to motivate people to up their standards and keep people out that are going to do it just for greed and not with uh the the best intentions for the customers. And small scale is also really important because it prevents there from being so widespread an impact. Um, if something goes wrong, we have the Bluebill ice cream factory in our local town here that we live in, and they had an outbreak of foodborne uh pathogen through their ice cream years ago, and people died, and they had a big lawsuit and all that. But they are all, you know, the inspected facility have lots of high standards and all that, but they still ended up causing an outbreak that infected quite a few people. So I think as a Christian, I I want us to when we think about food safety, not uh view ourselves as, you know, oftentimes we do have to try to operate under exemptions if we're a small producer. But it's not because we're trying to lower the standards, we're trying to hire heighten the standards, and we really want to be free to produce the best food possible for our neighbors. And I think that's God's intention. Um But we also know that God is big enough to allow us to operate well underneath um imperfect governance systems, and that he can give us the wisdom and know how to be as innocent as a dove before him in our heart and intention and motives, but also shrewd as a serpent to understand what ways we can still accomplish that, but be above reproach and not unnecessarily uh subjected to um the penalties for not complying.

Staying Innocent And Shrewd

SPEAKER_00 22:52

And there are times to take a stand and to try to push for what's right, even if it's not what's legal, um, but we have to be willing to pay at a cost if that's the case. And depending on your eschatology, there may come a day when we Christians can't participate in the economy um at all if we want to not compromise the name of Jesus. And that's where self-production, local production would be very important in that kind of situation and scenario. So relationship with God is so important, understanding the importance of wanting to reflect Him in all we do, and to get wisdom from Him on how to do that in our situation, and to understand how to uh appreciate and respect and uh promote government as a civil government, as a God-given gift, uh, but not in ways that uh go against or deviate God from God's um principles, especially here in this case with authority and responsibility and the specific role of government as one who punishes what's evil, not just prevents it uh through restricting

Freedom, Wisdom, And Closing Charge

SPEAKER_00 24:07

freedom. I hope that uh we'll be able to see some progress in this area uh in years to come. What we need as farmers is not favor from the government, but freedom, that's what I think. And I will definitely be doing my part to try to promote that and to continue to lift up God's standards higher as uh as I'm able to, and yet live in a way that pleases God and as much as possible lives at peace with men and and yet is willing to pay the price and stand up for what's right if God calls me to do that. Well, I hope this has given you some food for thought. Be glad to hear your thoughts if you want to send them to me. But until next time, encourage you to be humble, be faithful, and to keep redeeming the dirt. God bless.