Its intent is to improve the quality of food and make it safer for consumers, but not everyone believes a bill going before the United States Senate is a good idea. Our North Country Bureau Reporter Matt Hunter has more on why local farmers believe it could be bad for business.

  To view our videos, you need to
enable JavaScript. Learn how.
install Adobe Flash 9 or above. Install now.

Then come back here and refresh the page.

EASTON, N.Y. -- Borden Orchards has been providing the area with locally grown products since before the Civil War. Owner Tom Borden is part of the sixth generation to run the family farm.

"I'm a local farmer, I'm marketing locally,” Borden said. “Everybody is concerned about traceability, my name is on the bag, it comes back here, that's where it started."

While the southern Washington County farm has had its ups and downs, it's been mostly prosperous, but Borden fears new legislation being considered in the U.S. Senate could change that.

"Everybody likes to have local, small farmers, yet, we keep regulating them out anyway," Borden said.

In light of recent outbreaks of food borne illnesses, Senate Bill 510 was introduced last year to improve U.S. Food supplier safety standards. If passed, it would take the responsibility of inspections away from the Department of Agriculture and give it to the Food and Drug Administration. It would also require farmers of all sizes to keep detailed records of their operations.

"That regulation is completely onerous for that farm,” said Sandy Buxton, an association resource educator with the Cornell Cooperative Extension Washington County office. “It would be very challenging and very expensive for them to maintain the paperwork in order to be able to sell that way."

Staff at the Cornell Co-op believe the impact would be too burdensome on small farmers and could potentially put farmers like Borden out of business.

"Most of the food safety and food borne illness problems that have occurred in the United States, have occurred to products that have been produced by large corporations, large farms that function at a completely different level than any of the farms in our areas,” Buxton said.

“I don't think the consumer is going to gain anything except added cost and make it more difficult for small, local farmers to compete in the wholesale market,” Borden said.