The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has pushed back the compliance date for its Food Traceability Rule by 30 months.
“The compliance date extension affords covered entities the additional time necessary to ensure complete coordination across the supply chain in order to fully implement the final rule’s requirements – ultimately providing FDA and consumers with greater transparency and food safety,” the agency said in a 20 March constituent update.
Part of the 2011 Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the Food Traceability Rule requires any company that manufactures or holds foods to maintain detailed documentation, allowing companies to quickly track products back through the supply chain in cases of foodborne illness and recalls.
“The whole purpose of this scheme was so that if you have a product and know the [traceability lot code], you can jump all the way back to the producer,” Trace Register President Heath England said at Seafood Expo Global last year. “Immediately, you know where it came from and what it was.”
“Designed to ensure better recordkeeping throughout the food supply chain, the rule will help solve outbreaks and facilitate efficient, targeted recalls,” Center for Science in the Public Interest Director of Regulatory Affairs Sarah Sorscher said. “As such, it will help reduce foodborne illness and prevent food waste, key benefits for consumers and the food industry.”
While companies were required to comply with the rule by January 2026, the FDA’s delay will push back enforcement to mid-2028. The compliance date extension will not change the substance of the rule, the FDA noted.
In announcing the extension, the FDA noted that the food industry simply wasn’t prepared for the rule to go into effect in nine months.
“Even those few entities who are well-positioned to meet the final rule’s requirements by January 2026 have expressed concern about the timeline, in part because of their reliance on receiving accurate data from their supply chain partners, who are not similarly situated,” the FDA said in a notice. “Therefore, FDA intends to allow industry additional time, across all regulated sectors, to fully implement the final rule’s requirements.”
Experts have been warning for the past year that the seafood industry was largely unprepared to comply with the Food Traceability Rule.
“I’ve spoken with a lot of producers in other countries over the past several months, and they will say things like, ‘Well, I’m just going to let my broker take care of that,’” England noted last year. “That’s not the way this works. There is information that you as a manufacturer or you as a producer must generate and keep if you wish to do business in the U.S. with items on the food traceability list, which comprise the vast majority of seafood.”
While many seafood and grocery businesses have upgraded their traceability measures to comply with the rule, the FDA said in its extension announcement that all entities covered by the rule need to ...
