In September of 2015, the FDA released the final version of the Preventive Controls for Animal Feed Rule of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). The rule became effective November 16, 2015 and from that date animal feed manufacturing facilities will have 1 to 4 years to come into compliance depending on their size and activities.
The rule is intended to “build an animal food safety system for the future that makes modern science- and risk-based preventive controls the norm across all sectors of the animal food system”. This includes establishing current good manufacturing practices (CGMPs) for animal food, and adds requirements for certain types of facilities. These additional requirements include conducting a hazard analysis of processing activities and implementing risk-based preventive controls.
The printable pdf version of the full text of the rules can be found here.
The online version of the rules can be found here.
The document starts out with the comments the public submitted during the comment period and the responses from the FDA. It then moves on to references. On pg 168 of 188 of the pdf version or about 85% of the way down on the online version, the codified rules begin. The codified rules are the specific legal requirements that facilities who are covered by the rules will need to follow. The formal text and legal language can be complicated to follow, so what follows are some tips for making it simpler.
Tips for Making Sense of the Document
- Start with the codified rules.
- Next use the find in page feature to search specific topics you have questions about. For example if you are interested to learn more about the rules regulating corn silage production search on “silage” and “ensile” and “ensiling”, that will identify any place in the document that refers to silage or silage making.
