The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Agricultural Marketing Service (AMS) invites comments on draft instructions to support compliance by regulated entities subject to the National Bioengineered Food Disclosure Standard (the Standard). The draft document provides instructions that regulated entities can use to ensure their validation processes and recordkeeping comply with the Standard by the mandatory compliance date of January 1, 2022. A notice announcing the availability of the draft instructions was published today in the Federal Register.
In the final rule establishing the Standard, published December 21, 2018, AMS indicated it would provide industry stakeholders further instructions on how to validate a refining process. The regulations implementing the Standard identify the requirements for a validated refining process at 7 CFR 66.9(b)-(c). A validated refining process is included in the regulations because the definition of bioengineered food excludes foods in which the modified genetic material is not detectable. A validated refining process is one way a regulated entity can demonstrate that modified genetic material is undetectable.
The draft instructions are available on the AMS website at https://www.ams.usda.gov/rules-regulations/be/validation-process. AMS invites public comments on the draft instructions by January 16, 2020. Comments should be submitted online at www.regulations.gov.
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