The grain chain will have to comply with a new food safety law in September 2016. The new law is called the Food Safety Modernization Act or FMSA. This law will help the Food and Drug Administration?s stop food safety problems before they occur rather than after.
Erin Bowers is with Iowa State University?s department of Agriculture and Biosystems Engineering. She said there are certain facilities who have to comply to the FSMA act.
?Covered entities are going to be processors. Other facilities that produce food, feed, or their ingredients so that would include Ethanol plants that produce DDGs. Exempt facilities are farms, elevators that only store or hold grain and also vertically integrated operations. Those that have the farm and the processing facilities all in one ownership,? Bowers said.
Even those who exempt aren?t exempt from all the rules.
?One of the primary being having to have a preventative control plan for food safety. It?s going to be something new for the grain industry to deal with,? Bowers said.
Bowers said it will push more attention on Mycotoxins.
?Mycotoxins are chemical compounds produced by some fungi. They are not completely avoidable but tend to originate on the farm. So having exempt farms supplying regulated entities is going to create a need for a new monitoring system throughout the grain chain,? Bowers said.
The Food Safety Modernization Act was signed into law by President Obama in 2011.
