FDA Publishes Final Rule on Sanitary Transportation of Human and Animal Food

Yesterday, FDA published in the Federal Register its final rule establishing sanitary transportation requirements for both human and animal food. The rule is intended to ensure that food transportation practices do not create food safety risks. FDA provides a flexible, risk-based approach that largely aims to allow the transportation industry to continue to use industry best practices that are likely already in place concerning cleaning, inspection, maintenance, loading and unloading of, and operation of vehicles and transportation equipment to satisfy the requirements in the final rule. These requirements also align in part with the hazard analysis and risk-based preventive controls requirements for food facilities that were established in FDA’s preventive control final rules for human food and animal food released earlier this year.