The Food Safety Modernisation Act required FDA to establish minimum standards for minimising the risk of serious adverse health consequences or death for producing and harvesting raw agricultural food products.
The FDA’s proposed regulatory standards only require minimising the risk of biological contamination (such as Salmonella, E coli, and Listeria), they do not require minimising the risk of chemical, physical, or radiological contamination.
They do not apply to all produce. Exempted, for example, are asparagus, cranberries, potatoes, sweet corn, winter squash and other produce that is rarely consumed, FDA Imports report.
Although FDA is new at regulating farms, it will make finalising and implementing these requirements a high priority, because a significant number of major food outbreaks in the past have involved raw produce that was contaminated at the farms.
Source: FDA Imports
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