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FDA moves forward on Food Safety Modernization Act

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has announced new food safety standards for produce farms and imported foods.

The new rules are mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act. The produce safety rule establishes science-based standards for growing, harvesting, packing, and holding produce. The foreign supplier verification rule requires food importers to verify that foreign suppliers are meeting U.S. safety standards.

Earlier this year, the FDA finalized new safety rules on preventive controls in human food and animal feed. Randy Gordon, president of the National Grain and Feed Association, tells Brownfield those rules will indirectly impact grain farmers.

“This doesn’t directly affect farmers from the standpoint of FDA coming to regulate on the farm,” Gordon says, “but it certainly does, through the supply chain, trickle down to the farm level at some point in terms of purchase specifications and contract limits that might be put in place going forward.”

Gordon says the new rules will “tighten up” some of the purchase specifications that elevators have with producers.

“They’re going to be increasingly conscious, as they are now, about mycotoxins and other contaminants that might enter the grain supply—because their customers are going to be demanding that they comply with these standards as well, going forward,” he says.

The Food Safety Modernization law is intended to reduce foodborne illnesses that sicken an estimated 48 million Americans each year, and kill several thousand, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

AUDIO: Randy Gordon