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FDA issues new food transportation rule

[/title][fusion_text]Wednesday, April 6th 2016

Vehicle design and maintenance, temperature controls, training, and recordkeeping are key aspects of a new rule from the Food and Drug Administration addressing food transportation. Some firms will have to comply with parts of the new rule within a year; others will have more time. For instance, small businesses will get two years after publication to comply with training requirements for carriers, while all other businesses will have one year. One major change from the proposed to the final rule is the removal by FDA of “prescriptive requirements for temperature monitoring devices and continuous monitoring of temperature during transport.” The agency decided instead to adopt “a more flexible approach that allows the shipper and carrier to agree to a temperature monitoring mechanism for shipments of food that require temperature control for safety.” FDA also removed a provision from its proposal that would have required the carrier to demonstrate temperature control to the receiver for every shipment that requires it. Instead, the carrier would only have to do that “if the shipper or receiver requests it, which is consistent with industry best practices and would likely only be done in situations in which it is suspected that there has been a material failure of temperature control.” The agency rejected suggestions that it exempt food transportation within the same company from the rule’s requirements. “The fact that shippers, loaders, carriers, and/or receivers may be operating within a unified corporate/legal entity or sanitary food transportation system does not necessarily ensure that all of the involved parties are operating in compliance,” FDA said in the rule. The rule stuck with proposed language to exclude the transport of live animals from the definition of “transportation operations” and thus, from the rule’s requirements. 

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