The proposed rules represent a sea change in the way the agency polices food, a process that currently involves swinging into action after food contamination has been identified.
“These new rules really set the basic framework for a modern, science-based approach to food safety and shifts us from a strategy of reacting to problems to a strategy for preventing problems,” Michael R. Taylor, deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine at the FDA, said in an interview.
The FDA is responsible for the safety of about 80 percent of the food that the nation consumes. The remainder of the burden falls to the Department of Agriculture, which is responsible for meat, poultry and some eggs. One in 6 Americans becomes ill from eating contaminated food each year, the government estimates. Of those, roughly 130,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die.
Congress passed the groundbreaking Food Safety Modernization Act in 2010 after a wave of incidents. But it took the Obama administration two years to move the rules through the FDA.
“Anything that is important and complicated will always take longer than you would like,” Taylor said.
The first rule would require manufacturers of processed foods sold in the United States to identify, adopt and carry out measures to reduce the risk of contamination. Food companies also would be required to have a plan for correcting any problems that might arise and for keeping records that FDA inspectors could use for audit purposes.
The second rule would apply to the harvesting and production of fruits and vegetables to combat the bacterial contamination that has arisen over the past decade. It would address the “four W’s” — water, waste, workers and wildlife.
Farmers would establish different standards for ensuring the purity of water that touches, say, lettuce leaves and the water used to saturate soil. They also would need to make sure workers’ hands are washed and animals stay out of fields.
Many food companies and farmers already take these precautions. But officials say the requirements could have saved lives and prevented illnesses in several of the large-scale outbreaks in recent years. In a 2011 outbreak of listeria in cantaloupe that claimed 33 lives, for example, FDA inspectors found pools of dirty water on the floor and old, dirty processing equipment at Jensen Farms in Colorado. To stave off protests from farmers, the farm rules are tailored to apply only to certain fruits and vegetables that pose the greatest risk, such as berries, melons, leafy greens and other foods that are usually eaten raw.
Such flexibility, along with the growing realization that outbreaks are bad for business, has brought the food industry on board.
In a statement yesterday, Pamela Bailey, president of the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which represents the country’s biggest food companies, said the food-safety law “can serve as a role model for what can be achieved when the private and public sectors work together to achieve a common goal.”
But the food industry also said it would be poring over the proposal and making comments as necessary in the four-month comment period. Taylor said it could take the agency another year to craft the rules after that, and farms would have at least two years to comply.
By Stephanie Strom