The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was signed into law by President Obama on January 4th, 2011. It aims to ensure the U.S. food supply is safe by shifting the focus of federal regulators from responding to contamination to preventing it. The Secretary of Health and Human Services also deals with the FSMA.

Scope

The HHS will require registration and payment of a fee by any "person (excluding farms and restaurants) who manufactures, processes, packs, distributes, receives, holds, or imports an article of food." Individuals who partake in food handling without official registration are subject to a maximum 10 year prison sentence. Registration requires each facility which produces or handles food to maintain records relating to food safety.

The law contains potential exceptions for food grown and consumed at private residences. Likewise, smaller farms that sell directly to consumers can be exempt. For example, food sold at local farmers' market

Farmers' market

A farmers' market consists of individual vendors—mostly farmers—who set up booths, tables or stands, outdoors or indoors, to sell produce, meat products, fruits and sometimes prepared foods and beverages...

s would not necessarily be subject to the certification requirements.

Specific provisions in the law governing small-farm and farmer's markets provide for FDA authority

• to exempt farms engaged in low or no risk processing or from co-mingling activities from new regulatory requirements or to modify particular regulatory requirements for such farming operations;
• to minimize the number of different regulatory standards that apply to separate foods;
• to make requirements scale appropriate, and to prohibit FDA from requiring farms and other food facilities to hire outside consultants to write food safety plans;
• to provide for a USDA-delivered competitive grant program for food safety training for farmers, small processors and wholesalers, with emphasis placed upon on small and mid-scale farms;
• to prohibit wildlife-threatening enforcement against “animal encroachment” of farms and to require the application of sound science to any requirements that might impact wildlife and wildlife habitat;
• to exempt farmers from extensive and expensive traceability and record-keeping requirements if they sell food directly to consumers or to grocery stores;
• to provide that labeling preserving the identity of the original farm through intervening processors to the consumer can satisfy traceability requirements
• in most cases, to limit farm record-keeping to the first point of sale when the product leaves the farm.

The new law also places more extensive requirements on importers via the Foreign Supplier Verification Program (FSVP) and the Voluntary Qualified Importer Program (VQIP). Both programs place importers in the front line of defense against bringing unsafe foods into the United States.

Reaction

According to maplight.org, large trade organizations have joined public health advocates in supporting the bill, while groups aligned with individuals and small farms have generally opposed it. However, after Senate

United States Senate

The United States Senate is the upper house of the bicameral legislature of the United States, and together with the United States House of Representatives comprises the United States Congress. The composition and powers of the Senate are established in Article One of the U.S. Constitution. Each...

 adoption of the Tester

Jon Tester

Jon Tester is the junior U.S. Senator for Montana, serving since 2007. He is a member of the Democratic Party. He previously served as President of the Montana Senate.-Early life, education, and farming career:...

amendment, which allows for the possible exemption of producers that sell less than $500,000 a year, many large food companies objected, arguing that the exemption puts consumers at risk.