food safety

New York Will Start Labeling Food That’s Grown in State

So much safe, local food! Photo: Don Pollard/Office of Governor Andrew Cuomo

New York is about to get its very own label for healthy produce grown in state. A new, first-of-its-kind program in America called “New York State Grown & Certified” — hyped Thursday by Governor Cuomo while standing in a sea of gourds and fruit — boasts that it will make New York’s farm products “the safest food on the globe to eat.” According to the state, farmers interested in participating will have their facilities inspected by health and agriculture officials, and anyone who meets the standards for food safety and enviro-sustainability will get to label fruits and vegetables with a special stamp.

Safety has surely become the food industry’s problem du jour, and the Cuomo administration would like to go down on the right side of that historically. Plus, this stamp makes New York pretty cool, if you ask the governor, who knows that “If you’re not shopping at greenmarkets … You’re an old timer.” Burn.

Cuomo says another upshot of the labeling program is that New Yorkers won’t get tricked into eating other countries’ scary “organic” produce anymore. “You don’t really know how these products were grown,” he explained from his event at the Hunts Point Cooperative Market in the Bronx. “The FDA inspects one percent of products that come in and, when you walk down the aisle of a grocery store, it is like the United Nations. This from China. This from Turkey. This from Argentina. What does it mean and what are you eating?”

New York Creates Label for Healthy Food Grown in State