USDA and FDA Team Up to Make Food Safety Inspections Easier for Farmers
304 views · Published 22 June 2018 · 2:57 · Indexed 21 September 2026
Channel: RFD-TV · 2018 · Entertainment
Farmers across the country work with both USDA and the FDA to ensure the safety of america’s food supply. now… the leaders of those organizations will make it easier to do so. RFD-TV’s Sarah Mock has the story. The USDA and FDA chiefs want to reduce the amount of time farmers spend ensuring compliance with federal regulations. . “If you’ve ever seen a good agricultural practice notebook, it’s about this thick even for small producers. There’s a lot of work going into that, they do a lot of work, they didn’t want to be subjected to two separate audits or audit criteria.” Good agricultural practice, or GAP audits, are voluntary inspections carried out by the USDA. The audits verify good handling and food safety practices are in place for fruit and vegetable producers. Now this procedure will better match FDA’s required produce safety rule inspections. You could leave this if you want I’ll let you decide “farmers who conduct the gap audits are effectively going to go through a very similar process as what they would go through with FDA. So that’ll both streamline what we have to do and prepare them for that process.” Secretary Perdue says he plans to expand this even further. “One of my goals at USDA is to take some of these third party audits that some of these retailers are doing and find out what they would like to have in these standards that we don’t have in this harmonized standard, and make one standard. It’s good practices for our producers so that they can become compliant and contribute to the food and health and safety of our nation.” Gottlieb hopes this will allow the FDA to redirect inspectors to taking on more overseas inspections. “And that would be welcome by the producer environment because the fear is that those international exporters are not dealing with the same regulations that we have, so is FDA assuring them that those people who export food to the US that we import that they’re subject to the same regulation as our producers, that’ll give them a lot more confidence and help in knowing they can compete.” Gottlieb and perdue agree this harmonization is one more step in a historic new relationship between FDA and USDA which they say will make life easier for farmers and food safer for american consumers. For RFD-TB, I’m Sarah Mock in Washington. Gottlieb also noted the food safety modernization act—the law that requires FDA to carry out produce safety rule inspections—has improved the FDA’s ability to track and trace outbreaks, including in the recent romaine lettuce outbreak, the source of which is still under investigation. Sonny Perdue, U.S. Secretary Of Agriculture Dr. Scott Gottlieb, Food And Drug Administration Administrator Sarah Mock Washington Bureau Chief, RFD-TV @Sarah_K_Mock
