Consumer Reports and the Safe Food Coalition are urging members of Congress to turn away efforts to soften the Food and Drug Administration’s traceability rule.
The groups sent a letter asking lawmakers to reject industry efforts that would greatly undermine the FDA’s ability to protect the public from foodborne illness outbreaks. The bills would delay implementation and weaken the FDA’s traceability rule, which aims to improve the agency’s response to foodborne illness outbreaks and facilitate faster and more effective recalls of contaminated food, according to a news release.
Congress required the FDA to enact the traceability rule as part of the Food Safety Modernization Act, which was passed with broad bipartisan support in 2010. The rule is currently set to become effective Jan. 20, 2026.
“Recent efforts to undermine and delay the implementation of the traceability rule would leave consumers at risk when unsafe food enters the marketplace,” Brian Ronholm, director of food safety at Consumer Reports, said in the release. “Significant progress is already being made on food traceability, with some retailers announcing they expect their suppliers to comply with the rule’s requirements in advance of the implementation date.”
FSMA directed FDA to propose record-keeping requirements for certain “high-risk” foods no later than January 2013. When FDA failed to propose the record-keeping requirements, the Center for Food Safety sued the agency, leading to a federal court order mandating that it propose requirements by September 2020 and finalize the rulemaking process by November 2022, the release said.
The FDA complied with that order, announcing a final rule that requires manufacturers, processors, packers and retailers to maintain records containing certain key data elements, including lot codes, associated with specific critical tracking events for designated foods, the release said.
Parties subject to the final rule must be able to report the required information to FDA within 24 hours to help facilitate more effective foodborne illness outbreak investigations and recalls.
The rule aligns with best industry practices, according to the release.
Though companies have made significant progress in tracking and recording data for food traceability purposes, the release said some industry groups are pushing for legislation in the House that would exempt lot code information from the traceability rule.
In the letter, the groups said the traceability rule needs lot code information.
“Without lot codes, the outbreak investigation process would continue to falter, with consumers exposed to contaminated foods for too long,” the letter said. “In addition, when outbreaks are unsolved, FDA must issue overly broad consumer advisories, such as the advisory not to consume any romaine lettuce following a deadly outbreak in 2018, instead of restricting its advisory to affected lots. Such notices harm food producers whose products would otherwise remain unaffected, create food waste, and depress consumer confidence in otherwise healthy and nutritious foods.”
H.R. 7563 would “effectively gut” FDA’s rule by allowing retailers to discard critical lot code information that has been carefully developed and maintained by companies subject to the rule, the release said. Such lot codes lie at the core of FDA’s ability to trace and solve outbreaks, the groups said.
In addition, a provision in the Fiscal Year 2025 Agriculture appropriations bill would put the FDA 2026 implementation date on hold by demanding that the agency conduct additional traceability pilots, including a pilot that will require the agency to “successfully” solve outbreaks without using lot code information. The bill provides no new funding for such pilots and effectively cuts funding the agency at FY 2024 levels.
The groups said the apparent intent of the appropriation provision is to indefinitely delay the traceability rule by exempting lot code information, the rule’s core element.
