Maze of Food Regulations--Need for a Regulation Indexing System

Complex regulations covering all aspects of the food industry sometimes lead to confusion. Fourteen federal agencies and commissions have issued 1,300 regulations for the transport of food, covering 9,752 sections of the Code of Federal Regulations. These regulations require some 30,000 separate actions to comply with the written law. The difficulty of dealing with this large body of regulatory law is compounded by the lack of an adequate index to determine which regulations apply in a particular situation. GAO efforts relating to the scope of federal food transportation-related regulation, the agencies responsible, and the parties affected were summarized.

The full potential for improvement in the food regulatory system is not being realized because of the Code of Federal Regulations is not organized in a readily accessible manner. Although GAO compiled a computerized database of the subject regulations, an aggregate regulations index does not exist which would facilitate identification, coordination, and review of regulations from the standpoint of the parties affected and the total impact of the many different regulation.

Recommendations

Our recommendations from this work are listed below with a Contact for more information. Status will change from "In process" to "Open," "Closed - implemented," or "Closed - not implemented" based on our follow up work.

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