A Moving Target:The Food Transportation Rule:Is it necessary Will it succeed Here's what you need to know

摘要

Last month the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a proposed rule regarding sanitary transportation of food. The last of seven major proposed rules mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the sanitary transportation rule is a realstraggler in more ways than one; it drags us back nine years, to a time when President Bush signed a highway bill that shifted the bulk of responsibility for transportation sanitation from the Department of Transportation to the FDA. Longsince exposed as failing to observe Congressional directives to enact regulations, the Bush bill's requirement to enact regulations to require shippers, motor and rail carriers and receivers to use sanitary transportation practices to ensure that food isnot adulterated was never obeyed by the FDA. The new rule, now mandated by FSM A, is an effort by the FDA to "catch up," and then some, with the regulation of food transportation. The fact that the FDA has waited nine years to act is hardly newsworthy.What is noteworthy is that the agency admits itis proposing 32 pages of regulations to deal with "isolated incidents of insanitary transportation practices" for food. (79 Federal Register 7006, Feb. 5, 2014)