The following is excerpted from the 10 May 2013 article by the Journal of Commerce.
Food importers might want to brace themselves: They need to get ready to plow through thousands of pages of new regulations, help foreign suppliers prepare facilities and operations for new rules, make sure they aren’t legally responsible for mistakes made by foreign suppliers and perhaps open their wallets for steep user fees.
Food and Drug Administration officials in April said the agency would publish regulations by the end of the year to implement the import portion of the Food Safety Modernization Act.
In the 28 months since the bill was signed into law, the FDA has managed to implement two of the requirements set forth in the law. One measure made it easier for the FDA to halt shipments of domestically produced food that may be contaminated and force recalls; the other requires importers to notify the FDA if other countries have rejected food entering the U.S…
This article is available in its entirety at: http://www.joc.com/regulation-policy/trade-compliance/us-trade-compliance/importers-feel-bite-new-food-policy_20130510.html (subscription may be required.)