The US Food and Drug Administration is proposing changes to four rules put forward last year to implement the FDA Food Safety and Modernization Act.
The FDA has set out new ways to make the original proposals “more flexible, practical and targeted”, it said.
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President Obama signed the FSMA into law in January 2011, becoming the first comprehensive reform of US food safety laws for 70 years.
Since FSMA was signed into law, the FDA has proposed seven rules to implement the FSMA. The four updated proposed rules include: produce safety; preventive controls for human food; preventive controls for animal food; and the foreign supplier verification programme.
Five of the seven rules need to be made final next year and the other two in 2016, after which the food industry must comply with the FSMA.
The proposed changes to the produce safety rules would, for example, set more flexible criteria for determining the safety of agricultural water for certain uses and a tiered approach to water testing.
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By GlobalDataUnder the foreign supplier verification programme, the FDA has put forward a “more comprehensive analysis of potential risks associated with foods and foreign suppliers”, as well as “more flexibility for importers in determining appropriate supplier verification measures based on their evaluation of those risks”.
The FDA will accept comments on the revised provisions for 75 days after publication in the federal register, while continuing to review comments already received on the original proposed rules. No additional comments will be accepted on the original proposals. The FDA will consider both sets of comments – on the original proposed rules and on the revisions -before issuing final rules next year.
