The Food and Drug Administration declared on Thursday that it would delay 30 months as a requirement that food companies and the expense quickly trace the food contaminated through the supply chain and pulled it from the shelves.
Tested to “limit the disease and the death of food origin”, the rule asked for companies and individuals to keep better records to identify where they were grown, packed, elaborate or buildings. It was intended to enter into force in January 2026 as part of a reference food safety law in 2011 and was advanced during the first term of President Trump.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the secretary of health, expressed interest in chemical safety in food, moving to ban food dyes and on Thursday by debuting a public database in which people can trace toxins in food. But other actions in the first months of the Trump administration have underestimation efforts to deal with bacteria and other contaminants in the food that have ill people. The cuts of the administration included the closure of the work of a food safety key committee and the freezing of the expenditure for the credit cards of scientists by testing routine tests to detect pathogenic agents in food.
In recent years there have been several high -profile outbreaks, including the cases of the year connected to the deadly listeria in wild boar meat and E. coli in onions on the districts of McDonald’s.
Thursday the postponement launched alarms between some defense organizations.
“This decision is extremely disappointing and puts consumers at the risk of getting in the way of unsafe foods because a small segment in the sector has pushed late, despite being 15 years old to prepare,” said Brian Ronholm, director of consumer reports food policy, a defense group.
Many retailers have already taken the measures to comply with the rule. However, the commercial groups for the food industry have put pressure to delay the implementation of the rule in December, according to the Los Angeles Times.
In a letter to President Trump in December, food producers and other company commercial groups mentioned a series of regulations that said “strangling our economy”. They asked that the rule of food traceability was reduced and delayed.
“This is a huge step back for food safety,” said Sarah Sorscher, director of regulatory affairs at the Center for Science in the Public Interest, a defense group. “The surprising thing is that this was a bipartisan rule.”
Mrs. Serscher said that there was a broad support for the measure, since it would protect consumers and businesses, which could limit the damage, reputational damage and the cost of a food call with a high -tech supply chain.