Food Safety Audits Could Hamper Hawaii’s Efforts Toward More Food Production … As the pandemic eases, the Food and Drug Administration is resuming its audits of farms nationwide. Hawaii is unprepared, experts say.
Hawaii’s farmers could face a reckoning as the Food and Drug Administration resumes food safety audits after a two-year reprieve due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Food Safety Modernization Act, signed in 2011, empowered the FDA to regulate food growth, harvesting and processing nationwide in response to a spate of food-borne illnesses, such as E. coli or salmonella.
But even after more than a decade, agriculture experts say a general lack of action on food safety by the state and Hawaii farmers could seriously hamper efforts to increase local food production and reduce the state’s reliance on imports.
