ABA’s petition efforts on warehouse exemption successful
The American Bakers Association (ABA), Washington, D.C., has won a major victory on behalf of the wholesale baking industry with the inclusion of an exemption from preventative control provisions for ambient temperature depots and warehouses in the Food & Drug Administration’s (FDA) recent proposal, “Preventive Controls for Human Food: Current Good Manufacturing Practice and Hazard Analysis and Risk-Based Preventive Controls for Human Foods.”
In July 2012, ABA led a food industry petition urging FDA to exempt storage facilities from its preventative controls provisions. FDA’s proposal, released last week, contains several exemptions, including one for nonrefrigerated distribution warehouses such as those used by the baking industry. This petition was allowed under language in the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) that was included at ABA’s recommendation.