Managers at local farmers markets say Lewis County’s health department is driving vendors away with unresponsive inspectors and new policies that blindsided some vendors this year.
A March 2021 policy requiring vendors to pay temporary food establishment fees — some up to $300 — is “ludicrous,” said Carol Berch, Toledo’s market manager and River House Bake Shop owner. It’s “unacceptable,” she told The Chronicle, that the policy was implemented after Toledo’s market season had already begun, with no input from the market community.
“All it’s doing is hurting our markets and our small agricultural producers,” Marie Shankle told county officials Tuesday. Shankle owns Old Achers Farm and helps oversee multiple local farmers markets.
The women spoke with Public Health Director JP Anderson that afternoon in what Berch called a productive conversation. But even with reworked policies and more robust communication on the horizon, Berch said the damage may already be done.
“Is that going to help our vendors that have basically given up?” she said. “I don’t know.”
The women described inspectors from the local department as nearly impossible to get ahold of, and “woefully ignorant of agriculture in Lewis County.”
According to Anderson, this year’s new policies — which also required market coordinators to fill out an application — were aimed at clamping down on events posing as farmers markets, but not actually promoting local agricultural producers. There’s a need to distinguish the two, but Anderson said he was sorry to hear that markets “weren’t having a good experience.”
“I think the overriding thing for me is I really want us to promote farmers markets, and I think they're a really important part of a healthy community,” he said. “Obviously, farmers markets businesses are very fragile. They run on very tight margins so anything that adds another layer of fees or paperwork can sometimes discourage people, and we don’t want to do that.”
More meetings to address the issue are likely to come, he noted. On Wednesday, Anderson told county commissioners that meetings with farmers markets representatives to provide more input could result in more streamlined permitting processes.
Currently, only two food inspectors are straddling the whole county. Anderson told The Chronicle that public health is “working to develop a third position, because we do see a need for additional resources here.”
Berch and Shankle pointed to several vendors who no longer attend local markets — a result, as they see it, of a difficult-to-work-with health department.
Todd and Kimberly Heintz are one example. The duo’s Sugar Bear Farm has sold raw milk at local markets since 2019, but stopped this year and dropped their state license after what they described as a frustrating experience with local inspectors.
“The state I had no problem with. But when you get into Lewis County, that’s a whole different ball game,” Todd Heintz said.
The sale of raw milk — which is unpasteurized and can pose health risks — is legal in Washington state and regulated under the state Department of Agriculture. But in Lewis County, Code Enforcement Supervisor Bill Teitzel said retail sale of raw milk was prohibited until early this year, when the issue was taken up with new county health officers.
That’s around the same time the Heintz said they started having issues with the county. Prior to that, Todd Heintz said he rarely saw a county health official at the markets.
“It came down to (a health inspector) held us up for two months, and every time we’d email her and get no response,” Todd Heintz said.
Birch said at her Toledo market, she could make a “laundry list of people pissed off” at Lewis County inspectors.
Kimberly Heintz said at one point the business was given a “verbal permit” to resume selling at local markets, but felt uncomfortable doing so.
“We’re not going to come to the market based on a verbal permit. That’s not appropriate,” she said.
The new $240 fee imposed by the county’s new policy, along with weeks of stalled business trying to get ahold of inspectors, was the straw that broke the camel’s back, Todd Heintz said.
“She basically ran them out of business,” Berch told The Chronicle. “You don’t just stomp on a small grower or producer. You don’t crush their livelihood.”
