On the FDA Voice blog, Daniel McChesney, Ph.D. explains that the proposed new regulations would "require facility owners to have a food safety plan and to have controls in place to minimize any potential hazards."
This makes sense to me. Remember, our own store engages in food packaging, and we have already undergone USDA organic certification, FDA inspections and county-level health department inspections. I am not opposed to any of these because if we are going to have a relatively safe supply of foods in this country, we do need some fundamental standards to be enforced among those who manufacture and package foods.
However, the FDA has a huge problem in that it really doesn't understand what "safe" food is. In the FDA's view, the only safe food is a dead food which is why the agency supports so much fumigation and irradiation of food products. What the FDA doesn't understand is that there are certain types of food -- such as raw milk -- where living bacteria actually benefit consumers by providing diverse probiotics. The FDA doesn't understand this. According to the FDA, all microbiology is assumed to be bad by default.
