USDA Issues Updates To Food Safety Modernization Act

Posted by Christina Herrick|September 19, 2014

USDA announced proposed revisions to the Food Safety Modernization Act today. The four updated proposed rules include: produce safety; preventive controls for human food; preventive controls for animal food; and the foreign supplier verification program. Changes were based on feedback received during outreach and public comment.

These include:

Revisions to water quality testing in the produce safety rule to account for natural variations in water sources and to adjust its approach to manure and compost used in crop production.
A new definition of which farms would be subject to the produce safety rule. The proposed rule would not apply to farms with $25,000 or less in produce sales.
Clarifying that human0food processors that create by-products of spent grain used as animal food and are already complying with FDA human food safety requirements — such as producers of wet spent grains — would not need to comply with the full animal food rule if they are already complying with the human-food rule.
Revisions to the foreign-supplier verification proposed rule give importers more flexibility to determine appropriate supplier verification measures based on risk and previous experience with their suppliers.

Comments on these updates will open on Sept. 29, 2014, and be open to public comment for 75 days.

Click here to read the full news release from the FDA.