December 15, 2003

 

FDA: Most food facilities not registered as bioterror rules take effect

The following article is excerpted from the 12 December edition of “The Journal of Commerce”.

Just over a quarter of some 400,000 food facilities worldwide that do business in the U.S. have registered with the Food and Drug Administration as new rules under the Bioterrorism Act of 2002 take effect today.

The rules call for all facilities that process, store or transport food for human or animal consumption to register with the FDA. Rules requiring food importers to give the agency advance notice on shipments also took effect.

According to Sebastian Cianci, spokesman for the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, through Thursday some 141,000 facilities had registered.

However, FDA and the Bureau of Customs and Border Protection will focus on education rather than enforcement for the next eight months to ensure the widest compliance with the new rules. …

FDA and Customs also have published compliance policy guidelines that are available online at http://www.cfsan.fda.gov/~pn/cpgpn.html.