FDA Releases Compliance Guide for Small Businesses under
FSMA Produce Safety Rule
Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
Constituent Update
September 5, 2017
Small Entity Compliance Guides (SECGs) are
designed to help small businesses meet federal standards. They are among the
resources that the FDA is providing to support compliance with the new FDA Food
Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) standards.
The FDA announced today the availability of
an SECG to help small businesses comply with the Produce
Safety Rule mandated by FSMA.
The SECG provides information that can help
small and very small businesses understand how the requirements of the Produce Safety Rule apply to them.
Specifically, the SECG can help farmers determine whether they are eligible for
a qualified exemption, which would modify the requirements they are subject to
under the Produce Safety Rule. The SECG can also help them understand those
modified requirements.
The SECG was prepared in accordance with
the Small Business Regulatory Enforcement and Fairness Act. The main compliance
dates for small businesses and very small businesses under the Produce Safety
Rule are January 28, 2019, and January 27, 2020, respectively, but certain
agricultural water requirements have extended compliance dates. Sprout
operations also have different compliance dates, and sprout operations that are
small businesses and very small businesses have compliance dates of January 26,
2018, and January 28, 2019, respectively. Businesses that intend to claim
a qualified exemption by their primary compliance date were required to begin
keeping documentation supporting their eligibility for a qualified exemption on
January 26, 2016.
Visit FDA.gov/FSMA for more information about
the FSMA rules and compliance dates.
| 
