United Fresh White Paper on Food Safety Policy

Amy Philpott of United Fresh passes on this link to the United Fresh white paper on food safety policy. Approved by United's board in late January, the 12 page policy paper outlines the association's positions on food safety legislation, third party certification programs, mandatory recall authority FDA funding and more. This policy paper should get quite a workout in the 111th Congress. I'll get into the specifics of the paper in future posts, but here is the introduction:


In September 2008, the United Fresh Government Relations Council proposed, and the Board of Directors subsequently approved, a resolution calling for United Fresh to provide leadership in developing consensus policy positions on food safety legislative principles across the produce industry. This led to the formation of an ad hoc Food Safety Working Group consisting of members of the United Fresh Government Relations Council and the Food Safety and Technology Council. The goal of this working group was to build upon the United Fresh Board principles that were approved in 2007, and identify key policy positions for food safety legislation that could be agreed to across the industry. The working group developed this set of policy positions to be used with Congress and the new Administration. After multiple iterations, the working group approved this final document, which was also subsequently reviewed by the United Fresh Government Relations Council and Food Safety & Technology Council before final Board of Directors approval.