Will current or proposed food safety regulations affect a producer’s ability to sell directly to food retailers or wholesalers such as supermarkets?
Nothing in the current collection of FDA Food Safety Enhancement Acts and USDA Marketing Agreements directly limit a producer’s ability to sell directly to food retailers or wholesalers. As of now, many, if not most, retailers and wholesalers have in place food safety requirements on fresh produce vendors (see “supermetrics”, above). As a result, only products from registered food facilities have unrestricted access to all resale sectors. Producers which are exempt from federal regulation, and therefore are unregistered, are not able to access these markets (which represent the vast majority of U.S. food sales ) unless they comply with each retailer’s or wholesaler’s food safety requirements. It is currently not clear how exempt producers will protect their limited rights to sell through all resale sectors.
