Dive Brief:

• The Food and Drug Administration is going back to the drawing board. The agency is delaying the rollout of the long-awaited Food Safety Modernization Act.
• At issue are regulatory standards proposed in the Produce Rule and Preventive Controls Rule sections of the FSMA. Agricultural companies and growers, particularly small  multi-crop farms and small produce growers, had argued that the rules were unrealistic.
• Regulators have noted those complaints and say they will reopen comments on rules governing water quality, manure and compost, and mixed-use facilities.
• The FDA's move postpones the FSMA until at least the summer of 2014. 

Dive Insight:

The decision to postpone the rules won instant applause from many in the food-production industry. No doubt the folks at United Fresh and the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition --the two groups that lobbied the hardest for a more sensible regulatory framework -- are thrilled. We're pleased to see that reason seems to have prevailed and that the FDA seems willing to back away from some of its rules.

At the same time, we must note that the entire FSMA process leaves a bad taste in our mouth. Anyone who has ever run afoul of a regulatory agency knows what a nightmare it is when you don't stick to their rules and deadlines. Yet the FDA is seemingly incapable of meeting the rules and deadlines of the FSMA itself. The law just keeps getting pushed back, despite court orders that the FDA get its act together.

No doubt the FSMA is complicated. But that is the problem. The food industry has spent an extraordinary amount of time and money preparing for the rules and trying to understand them. Because when the rules finally become law, it's the industry that will have to live with them. No one at the FDA is going to be particularly reasonable if some small farmer complains that he needs another year or so to understand the rules and implement them.

It's also worth noting -- although it's incredibly cynical of us to do so -- that the smart money has been saying for the past few weeks that the FSMA would be postponed. The sense is that the Obama administration, still reeling from the mess of the Obamacare rollout, had no interest in pushing forward with another, massive, regulatory overhaul.