WASHINGTON — The government will rewrite sweeping new food-safety rules after farmers complained that earlier proposals could hurt business, the Food and Drug Administration said Friday.
The FDA’s new proposals would allow farmers to meet water quality standards more easily and to harvest crops sooner after using raw manure as fertilizer.
The FDA offered the revised rules Friday, and the final rules are due next fall. The FDA has been haggling over how to write them since Congress passed a food-safety law in 2010. Regulators say balancing the need for tighter food-safety standards after major outbreaks in spinach, eggs, peanuts and cantaloupe against the needs of farmers who are new to such regulations has been a challenge.
Michael Taylor, FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods, says the agency is trying to “achieve the goal of food safety in a practical way.” The rules are new terrain for the agency, he says.
The rules proposed last year would require farmers to take new precautions against contamination, making sure workers’ hands are washed, irrigation water is clean and animals stay out of fields, among other things. Food manufacturers would also have to submit food-safety plans to the government to show they are keeping their operations clean. Those changes would in many cases require new equipment, paperwork and record-keeping.
None of those priorities would change in the revised rule. But after complaints from farmers big and small who said the rules were too burdensome, the new proposal would lower some standards for the amount of bacteria that can be found in irrigation water and reduce the frequency with which it is tested, in some cases. The proposal also reduces the amount of time required between fertilizing crops with raw manure and harvest and allows farmers to hold produce in a packing house without further regulations. The smallest farms would continue to be exempted from many of the rules.
The organic industry had expressed concerns about the rules.
