Jordan Motzkin, Small Business Owner, on the Importance of Public Protections

Jordan Motzkin
New York, New York

I’m an entrepreneur and my latest start up is called Big Box Farms. We’re focusing on the food industry, and the food industry is a really excellent place to get started for new businesses, especially for young entrepreneurs like myself. I think food consumers feel they have the freedom to choose different options on the shelf without worrying about any health issues that might affect them, and this is because of the strong safeguards we have in place. That’s very different if you go to other parts in the world.

American consumers feel free to choose any product they find in their grocery stores today. But we see even with those regulations, sometimes it’s still not enough with the recent examples of the Listeria outbreak that killed almost 30 people in the case of cantaloupes coming from Colorado or numerous E. Coli outbreaks that have existed in the California valley’s lettuce production.

It’s very important that we continue these regulations, and in some cases improve upon them, so that producers, like myself, and others in the industry have really good guidelines to know how food is produced and so the products can then go on to the consumer safely.

For example, with the organics industry, providing that framework allows consumers to see that and know that it’s trusted by some sort of quality certification. And that’s why we’ve seen double digit growth in the organics sector versus the conventional sector, which is basically stagnated. And it’s not just small start-ups that are taking advantage of these opportunities, it’s everything from the largest companies in the marketplace such as Wal-Mart, which has recently announced they are going to be procuring more organic food as well as locally based food. This is a consumer trend that absolutely can be helped to continue to grow by government regulations and efforts.

One of the important things that regulations do is keep the marketplace free and accessible for everyone to participate in. If I had to check my suppliers by myself, as a sole company, we would have to spend enormous amounts of money and resources going in just to make sure that simple things were in order – certain things like labor standards, environmental standards and things that really ensure the quality control of their products. Quite frankly, that would put me out of business if I had to spend all that money to devote on things that really aren’t the core purposes of my business – getting customers, getting jobs, growing the economy – the things I really want to do as an entrepreneur.

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Thanks to the American Sustainable Business Council for connecting us with Jordan.