Court Says FDA Failed to Comply with Food Safety Rule Deadlines

grocery store meat aisle

This week, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California concluded that the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) violated the Administrative Procedure Act (APA) by failing to comply with specific deadlines for food safety rules, which were set out in the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). For a number of major food safety regulation areas, FDA failed to meet the dates set for completion. Although some of the rules were proposed in January, many remain under review at FDA or the White House.

While the court found that the "imposition of an injunction imposing deadlines for finalization of the regulations would be consistent with the underlying purposes of the FMSA," it did not impose its own deadlines. Instead, it ordered FDA and the parties who brought the lawsuit (the Center for Food Safety and the Center for Environmental Health) to meet, confer, and prepare a joint written statement setting forth proposed deadlines by May 20, 2013. The joint statement will form the basis of the court order.

The ruling recognizes the importance of adhering to statutory deadlines for health and safety standards, but setting new implementation dates may not be enough to get meaningful rules finalized soon. A number of the rules have been significantly delayed while under review by the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA).  In addition, by the time FDA published one of its delayed proposed rules, it had been weakened by OIRA.

In passing the FSMA, Congress made clear that new steps to ensure the safety of the food supply should be implemented under a specific time frame. Indeed, the FSMA was heralded as "the most important food safety advance in 70 years." But these protections are meaningless as long as the rules remain subject to excessive delays and attempts to weaken them. 

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