Why Your Growing Media Should Comply with Food Safety Laws

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Does your growing media comply with food safety laws that apply to the agriculture industry? The answer to that question matters even if you don’t grow food because it’s one of the easiest and most reliable ways to determine how clean your media truly is.

It’s also critical to know the answer so you can position your business for growth as the cannabis industry moves closer to alignment with food safety requirements like the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

What is the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA)?

FSMA, from the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA), is a comprehensive food safety regulatory framework that was originally signed into law in 2011 to prevent food safety issues in the U.S. food supply rather than just reacting when problems arise.

Labeled as “farm-to-fork” reform for food safety, FSMA was intended to prevent microbial contamination of food across the entire supply chain, which means growers, harvesters, processors, manufacturers, packers, distributors, and so on all have to comply with the rules. 

Why FSMA is Important

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has reported that 48 million people in the United States become ill, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die from foodborne diseases every year.

Let’s put that into perspective.

One out of every six people in the United States gets ill from contaminated food every year. That’s a really big public health problem that can be prevented. FSMA allows the FDA to do exactly that.

FSMA rules to prevent contamination address the entire supply chain and include:

  • Preventative controls for human food

  • Preventative controls for animal food

  • Produce safety standards for growing, harvesting, packing, and storing

  • Foreign supplier verification for importers

  • Third-party certification bodies and audits

  • Food defense mitigation strategy requirements against intentional adulteration

  • Sanitary transportation requirements for shippers, receivers, loaders, and carriers

FSMA applies to foods regulated by the FDA (approximately 75% of the U.S. food supply) and covers commercial farms, food processing facilities, and packing operations. The FDA can enforce FSMA through inspections, records requests, testing, and environmental swabs. Noncompliance or violations could lead to expensive food recalls and fees as well as potential consumer lawsuits and brand damage.

Why Cannabis Safety is Going in the Same Direction as Food Safety

Every company that produces something to be consumed has a responsibility to produce safe products, and that responsibility lies with each company involved in bringing a product to consumers.

More laws are added to the books at the state and federal levels all the time that are related to agriculture, food, and cannabis safety. It’s only a matter of time until cannabis growing is regulated similarly to fruits and vegetables in terms of consumption and safety requirements.

What It Means for Cannabis Growers

It’s not a leap to say soon cannabis safety regulations, like FSMA regulations, will focus on prevention rather than reaction, and prevention starts with growers. Just like in the produce industry, growers are at fault if someone gets sick using or consuming a cannabis product. That’s the way the laws are written.

Therefore, to ensure end products are safe, growers must have practices in place to ensure what they grow is safe, including all inputs, processes, and so on. Growing media is a critical component of these practices.

Your Next Steps to Grow Safe Cannabis

Most growing media providers cannot comply with FSMA, but bio365 can. In fact, bio365 also complies with the USDA’s Good Agricultural Practice (GAP). We can even provide a Certificate of Conformance, test the products we ship to you, and provide a corresponding Certificate of Analysis. But that’s not all! We’ll also work with you to provide documentation that a regulator or certifier requires. No other growing media company does that!

Although FSMA doesn’t apply to the cannabis industry, knowing that bio365 complies with FSMA gives proof that our growing media is clean, and we’re capable of manufacturing products that comply with FSMA. We’ll send for third party testing to validate what we say is true, and you can request to see the results for every batch.

Bottom-line, we manufacture to the standards of FSMA, which means you can feel confident when you buy bio365 growing media. No one wants customers to get sick, and there is tremendous liability if someone does. That’s why it’s so important for all growers to produce clean crops. The best way to do it is to start with bio365’s clean, biologically-active growing media that complies with FSMA and GAP.

Contact us to learn more about bio365’s FSMA manufacturing standards and our 42-point quality control processes that provide extra security and peace-of-mind to growers.