Proposed FDA Safety Rules

Proposed FDA Safety Rules. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

The FDA’s new proposed food safety rules could be a major detriment for producers here in the northwest. Chris Schlect, President of the NW Hort Council says the comment period has changed.

SCHLECT: What FDA is doing is setting out two proposed rules which they have done in the Federal Register to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act. Those rules were supposed to close for public comment on May 16th but last week the commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration told congress that they will be extending the deadline for another 120 days.

The new deadline is not until September so that gives producers plenty of time to comment. According to Schlect, the new rules could be detrimental for a lot of operations.

SCHLECT: Most growers would be concentrated on the one set of rules. There is a facilities rule that will be of interest to packing houses in our industry but the grower rule - there the main concerns revolve around things such as animal exclusion rules, rules related to employee hygiene, rules related to equipment in the field in terms of cleaning and sanitizing. For example your picking bag that the average worker would have. FDA would say that had to be sanitized.

Tomorrow we will look at the water component of the new rules.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.