As our readers may know, the FSMA final Produce Safety Rule was published on November 27, 2015 (80 FR 74353) and establishes science-based minimum standards for the safe growing, harvesting, packing, and holding of produce. Our detailed summary of the rule is available here.

The compliance dates for the Produce Safety Rule depend on the size of the farm and can be found here. While compliance was set to begin on January 26, 2018 for large farms, other than sprouts operations, FDA announced its decision to postpone routine inspections until the spring of 2019. Routine inspections of small farms, other than sprouts operations, are set to begin in spring 2020. Through FDA funding, several states have developed produce safety programs, which include inspection and enforcement programs; for those states, the respective state agriculture departments will conduct compliance inspections.

As reported here, both states’ departments of agriculture and FDA have already started or are planning to begin visits soon to produce farms to conduct inspections for compliance with the Produce Safety Rule.