You’ve probably noticed that most of the food safety/illness outbreaks over the past several years have been related to produce, and not so much to meat. Why is that? Well, partly because the produce industry does not have government (as in FDA or USDA) regulations and oversight.
Does the produce industry want regulations? Amazingly, yes. They welcome government oversight, and in fact, are working with the House and Senate to develop some food safety, good-agricultural-practices (GAP) guidelines in the form of a bill for the President to sign. And what do they hope these guidelines will accomplish? For one, they’d like to see a standard that would apply to all growers, including small/local growers. Because, what if the big producers follow the guidelines (with the additional expenses that will likely come about as a result), and the small growers don’t? They may soon find out, because the way the House and Senate are leaning is to exempt small growers. The discussion was had in a workshop session at the National Restaurant Association convention a couple weeks ago. I covered it for QSR magazine. Read the article here: http://www.qsrmagazine.com/articles/news/story.phtml?id=10981
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