Passed on four months ago, provisions of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) are already being implemented by the Food & Drug Administration. "FDA is going to do everything humanly possible to meet these deadlines," commented John Bode, partner at OFW Law, at a webinar on implementing the FSMA that was sponsored by The Food Institute.

"There has been a fair amount of trade press that the appropriations are not going to be there, and therefore, the FSMA is going to be delayed because Congress won't appropriate the money that the act needs for implementation. I think that's rubbish. The FSMA has expansive new enforcement authorities, it has major new self-funded programs and it has an ambitious program for expansion of agency inspections. Only the third one, the FDA inspections, is highly dependent upon dramatic increases in agency funding. It doesn't really take much money to write regulations," Bode added  in response to a question about possible delays in the regulatory process.

In the inaugural event of the of The Food Institute's 12-part webinar series, it was noted that there are numerous deadlines for FSMA implementation following the Jan. 4, 2011 enactment of the legislation and these will discussed in future webinar segments. The Food Institute will hold the 12 one-hour webinars throughout the course of the next year.

These webinars will be offering information on topics including FDA rulemaking activity, proposed rules and extensions of comment periods, guidance document developments and FDA public meetings, speeches and other outreach activities. All sessions will be recorded for future access. For additional information, please visit http://www.foodinstitute.com/FSMAwebinar.cfm