Farmers Market Regulation and You
Farmers market vendors may well be using your products. Knowing whether you are the last legal line of defense before the product reaches the consumer is useful information
There’s a good chance that at one time or another, you have eaten food from a farmers market, whether it be a delicious homemade baked good, a piece of fresh produce or tacos from a food truck. But have you ever wondered who regulates those foods?
The Department of Agriculture (USDA) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulate foods introduced into interstate commerce. Put another way, those agencies don’t generally get involved unless the food is crossing state lines. So, the delicious keto brownie that I enjoyed just a few weeks ago at my local farmers market, which travelled within Phoenix just a few short miles from the maker’s home to me, isn’t regulated under federal law. Ditto for the tacos from the food truck. Of course, the ingredients in those products likely fell under federal jurisdiction at the time of manufacture and packaging, but the finished product did not.
So, do farmers market foods simply exist in the Wild West of food regulation? That depends on where you live, so let’s take my home state, Arizona, as an example. Let’s start with the food trucks. It turns out that these mobile purveyors of delicious treats are regulated under the Arizona Administrative Code (AAC).
Read Jennifer's full article in Quality Assurance & Food Safety magazine.
