Today, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) will issue guidance on what type of documentation is necessary for a product label to claim that an animal was raised “without antibiotics”, “organic”, “grassfed”, “free-range” or “without the use of hormones”.

In general, what will be required of meat producers is to provide FSIS with a written explanation of the controls that were used for confirming that the raising claim is valid from birth to harvest. And additional requirement will be a signed and dated document that describes how the animals are raised.

The new guidance issued by FSIS, which will be open to public comments for 60 days, will appear in today’s edition of the Federal Register.

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