bake - May 2013 - 16

labor front

Regulations on the Horizon
The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) was created with

Some retail bakers are concerned with how their businesses

the intention of developing a preventative focus on food safety,

will adapt to the new requirements. “We’ve been in business

as opposed to reactive measures.

91 years and I want to stay in business. We offer a mail-order
business and we would like to continue to do that and create

“FSMA has already started to inﬂuence how bakers conduct

employment opportunities around the holidays,” says Norm

their business. There will be additional procedures including

Dinkel, president of Dinkel’s Bakery in Chicago. “Because of

testing, traceability and recordkeeping requirements,” says Lee

these federal regulations I think our mail-order business will go

Sanders, senior vice president for government relations and

out of business.”

public affairs of the American Bakers Association (ABA). “FDA
is moving from an inspection model that measures a snippet in

Dinkel says the number of new requirements is more appro-

time to one where they look to see if policies and procedures

priate for the infrastructure of a large company. According to

are in place all of the time.”

Dinkel, providing traceability for all of the bakery’s products
and ingredients is too demanding of a requirement for his
small business.

REQUIREMENTS
According to Sanders, the FDA is requesting feedback on how

Bakers will need to be able to track back to where they
received their ingredients for their products and track
forward to what customers they sold to.

the new regulations related to the FSMA implementation will
impact small business. Sanders also encourages small retail
bakers to communicate how the new requirements will inﬂuence their businesses.

These customers would be the stores, food service
facilities, institutions and schools. Bakeries are not
responsible for having the names of the individual
people or customers they sold to.

With more than 50 new regulations and guidance going into
effect, the ABA plans to review each proposal to determine
how it will inﬂuence the industry.

You should be able to provide this trace back and trace
forward information to the FDA in a timely manner —
less than 24 hours.

“ABA was able to have language included in the preventive

COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN BAKERS ASSOCIATION

ﬁed requirements for refrigerated products. ABA estimates that

control proposal that would exempt ambient temperature
warehouses that store ﬁnished product. Also there were modithe per-facility cost savings for this one exemption would be
$10,000 - $20,000 per facility,” Sanders says.

The FDA proposed that food manufacturers be in compliance
with the new preventive controls rules one year after the ﬁnal
rules are published in the Federal Register. According to
www.fda.gov, small and very small businesses will be given
additional time. Sanders says that the FDA does not currently
have the resources or staff to meet the current requirements,
not to mention the requirements planned in the near future. In
fact, the President’s new budget proposal for FY 2014 acknowledges that appropriated ﬁnds will not cover the additional
needs and proposed user fees to make up that gap.

16 < MAY 2013 | bakemag.com

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