USDA & FDS: Food Safety will Be A Joint Effort

The heads of the USDA and the FDA acknowledge partnership will be essential towards streamlining produce safety requirements for farmers, as well as strengthening overall food safety oversight.  Such collaborators include other federal agencies and state partners in areas such as proper training of auditors and inspectors and educating producers in changes to both USDA's Harmonized Good Agricultural Practices Audit and FDA's Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

"We have a meeting June 19th with a lot of the state agricultural commissioners," said FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb.  "There's still some elements of implementation in how we're going to conduct the on-farm inspections. But, the truth of the matter is that a lot of these inspections, a vast majority of them, are going to be conducted by the states. And, we're looking to give resources to the states to take on more of the responsibility for conducting these inspections that are required under FSMA."

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