More On FSMA Impact

Charles Breen, retired FDA official spent some time recently discussing how the Food Safety Modernization Act could potentially affect the tree fruit industry and one of the big topics was regarding water.

BREEN: The language of the preamble pretty much said it's not that the agency thinks this was a good criterium to use, it's just the least "bad" criterium. Well they heard a lot of comments after the original and came up with a modification to that rule. Again, further for the original: "Untreated surface water tested every seven days during the growing season." That was one thing that was really going to hurt in the Northwest - "and to take immediate action if the E coli standard was exceeded." Since the water normally exceeds the standard here, that was going to be a problem.

There is a new version that is currently open for comment.

BREEN: It's not mathematically challenging but it is - it's heavy duty arithmetic and there are a number of ways to work with statistical threshold values. Now the question that's reasonable to ask: Why does there have to be a water standard at all? And the answer is because of the history of illnesses due to bad water. Primarily imported produce.

He says FDA is working with a software company to develop an app to help calculate these values but adds that while it's not a bad idea, it's how to make it work that's going to be the challenge for the agency.

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