FDA easing food safety law

The Food and Drug Administration said Friday that it would revise a landmark food safety law because of widespread complaints from farmers that some provisions were too burdensome.

The agency is proposing relaxing some oversight on irrigation water, allowing easier application of raw manure and exempting small farms from produce safety rules. It’s also eliminating a proposal that would have made it more difficult for brewers and distillers to give their spent grains to farmers for animal feed.

“Based on valuable input from farmers, consumers, the food industry and academic experts, the FDA is proposing to update these four proposed rules to ensure a more flexible and targeted means to ensure food safety,” said Michael R. Taylor, the FDA’s deputy commissioner for foods and veterinary medicine.

The revisions are the latest change to a national food safety overhaul that was first signed into law in 2011.

The Food Safety Modernization Act was aimed at shoring up the country’s food system with preventative measures on farms. It came in response to growing concerns about food-borne illnesses after outbreaks tied to spinach, cantaloupes and eggs sickened thousands nationwide.

Some of the biggest critics of the law were organic farmers who thought the rules overly sanitized the farm environment. Growers complained that the rules would penalize them for having wildlife on their land and for using raw manure and compost instead of chemical fertilizers.