New Bill Fully Covers Food Safety Audit Costs for Small Farmers Earning Under $350K

The Cutting COSTS Act of 2025 aims to tackle a common pain point for small-scale agriculture: the high cost of getting certified for food safety. This bill sets up a program under the Department of Agriculture (USDA) that will fully reimburse eligible farmers and ranchers for the expense of obtaining a Good Agricultural Practices (GAP) audit (Sec. 2).

The Check is in the Mail for Small Producers

Think of this as a direct subsidy to help small farms compete for shelf space. A GAP audit is essentially a third-party verification that a farm is following recognized food safety standards. Many major grocery chains and institutional buyers require this audit before they will purchase produce. For a small producer, the audit fee—which can run into the thousands of dollars—is a significant barrier to entry.

This bill targets two main groups for help: farmers and ranchers with an average adjusted gross income of less than $350,000 per year, or those defined as a beginning farmer or rancher (Sec. 2, Key Definitions). If you fit that description and pay for a GAP audit, the USDA will cut you a check for the full amount. The goal here is simple: increase market access for these smaller operations by removing the financial hurdle of certification, specifically helping them sell to retail food stores that demand it.

The Fine Print: Who Pays and Who Decides?

To fund this new reimbursement program, the bill directs the Secretary of Agriculture to use money from the Commodity Credit Corporation (CCC) (Sec. 2, Funding Source). The CCC is generally used for price support, disaster relief, and other agricultural programs, so this marks a specific redirection of those federal funds toward food safety certification costs for small producers. This means the money isn't coming from a new tax, but it is being pulled from the existing pool of resources the USDA uses to manage commodities.

There is one section that gives the USDA a fair amount of wiggle room: the definition of a "Covered producer" allows the Secretary to add "any other requirements the Secretary determines appropriate" (Sec. 2, Key Definitions). While this could be used to fine-tune the program based on practical needs, it also gives the Secretary broad, undefined power to narrow or expand who actually qualifies for the reimbursement, which is something to watch during the rule-making process.

A Five-Year Trial Run

This isn't a permanent program; the authority to run it ends five years after the bill is enacted (Sec. 2, Program End Date). During that five-year window, the Secretary is required to report annually to Congress on how the program is performing. These reports must detail the number of farmers who received payments and, crucially, the extent to which the payments actually increased those producers' market access to retail food stores (Sec. 2, Reporting Requirements). This built-in reporting requirement means the program will be directly measured on whether it achieves its core mission: getting small farm produce onto more grocery store shelves.