What is FSMA?

Penn State Extension is helping produce growers, food processors, and feed manufacturers prepare for new regulatory standards required under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) of 2011.

What is FSMA?

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was signed into law in 2011. This law enables the United States Food and Drug Administration to focus on the prevention of food safety issues, rather than relying primarily on reacting to problems after they occur.

There are seven major rules in FSMA:

• The Produce Safety Rule is the first-ever mandatory federal standard for growing, harvesting, packing, and holding of fresh produce.
• Current Good Manufacturing Practices, Hazard Analysis, and Risk‐Based Preventive Controls for Human Food is known as the Preventive Controls For Human Food Rule. This rule requires food facilities to have a food safety plan in place that includes a hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls to minimize or prevent the identified hazards.
• The Preventive Controls For Animal Food Rule establishes the Good Manufacturing Practices and Hazard Analysis and Risk-Based Preventive Controls for the production of food for animals.
• The Foreign Supplier Verification Programs Rule For Importers Of Food For Humans And Animals requires that importers perform certain risk-based activities to verify that food imported into the United States has been produced in a manner that meets applicable U.S. safety standards.
• The Rule On Accredited Third-Party Certification establishes a voluntary program for the accreditation of third-party certification bodies, also known as third-party auditors, to conduct food safety audits and issue certifications of foreign entities and the foods for humans and animals they produce.
• The Sanitary Transportation Of Human And Animal Food Rule. This rule places efforts to protect foods from farm to table by keeping them safe from contamination during transportation.
• The Rule For Mitigation Strategies To Protect Food Against Intentional Adulteration is aimed at preventing intentional adulteration from acts intended to cause wide-scale harm to public health, including acts of terrorism targeting the food supply.

FSMA applies to many domestic and foreign firms producing food for consumption in the United States; compliance dates for the different rules vary depending the size of the business.

For more information, please visit the Penn State Extension FSMA section.

This program was developed by Food Safety CTS, LLC, for the USDA Food Safety and Agricultural Sustainability Training program and Penn State Extension.