A new U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report for a handful of congressional leaders takes up less than five pages, but appear to include a smoking gun for produce regulations that have become too burdensome.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), the government unit that wrote Standards for the
Continue Reading FDA takes 22 days to respond to produce rule questions from the field
Small-scale and/or organic farmers are being alerted to the impending deadline of Monday, Dec. 15, for submitting comments on the Food and Drug Administration’s revisions to the proposed food-safety rules in the Food Safety Modernization Act. Signed into law on Jan. 4, 2011, FSMA focuses on preventing foodborne illnesses
Continue Reading Small-Scale and Organic Farmers Facing FSMA Comment Deadline
(This article by Scott Horsfall was published Sept. 19, 2014, by the LGMA, the California Leafy Green Products Handler Marketing Agreement, and is reposted here with permission.) We have just finished reviewing the revised Produce Safety Rule issued last week by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as
Continue Reading Revised Produce Safety Rule: A Closer Look at a Daunting Task
The deadline for comments on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Produce Safety Rule is Nov. 15, 2013. This was probably supposed to be the easiest and most straightforward of the rules to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). It may be that FDA fell into the trap of
Continue Reading FDA's Proposed Produce Rule: A War on Farmers
Violating the explicit language of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FMSA), the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Proposed Produce Rule gives a complete pass to imported vegetables grown with sewage sludge, contaminated to various degrees with heavy metals, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, volatiles, flame retardants, pharmaceuticals, steroids, hormones (1,2) radiologicals (3) 
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Proposed Produce Rule is a substantively defective product. It’s not a question of the difficulty and costs of compliance and enforcement or of farm size or a commodity’s inherent safety – although these are important issues. The case I want to present is that
Continue Reading FDA's Proposed Produce Rule is 'Food-Safety Theater'
