Food Safety Modernization Act slowing moving forward
With the Final Produce Safety Rule completed and compliance dates in place, President Donald Trump’s freeze on new regulations raised questions about what impacts it might have on the FSMA rollout. The freeze noted that pending federal regulations must now get a second look and be approved before enforcement.
In part, the memo read: “A regulatory freeze upon a change in administration is not uncommon; President Obama issued a nearly identical memorandum in 2009. While this is one step toward the Trump Administration managing new and pending federal regulation, the regulatory freeze is limited in scope. Specifically, it does not direct federal agencies to stop working on new regulations — it does not impact comment periods for dockets that are currently open, nor does it prevent agencies from considering comments already submitted. It also does not impact regulations that have already taken effect.
“From a food regulatory perspective, this means that the regulatory freeze will not impact the regulations FDA issued under the Food Safety Modernization Act in 2015 and 2016, nor will it impact the Nutrition Facts Label final rule, as the effective date for all of those regulations has already passed. The regulatory freeze will only impact any regulations that FDA or USDA plan to send to the Office of the Federal Register in the next few months (including any currently under review at the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs), as well as any regulations that were recently published but not yet effective, unless those regulations are subject to statutory or judicial deadlines.”
With this, it appears Trump’s public announcements on freezing regulations could have no real impact on FSMA’s Produce Safety Rule, but may in fact affect rules still unpublished.
source: growingproduce.com
