We field a version of the same question on our advocacy line almost every month: "I heard small producers are exempt from the food-safety rules — is that true?" The short answer is no, and the longer answer is the reason our Membership & Outreach Committee keeps a standing FAQ on it, because the actual exemption is narrower and more paperwork-dependent than the rumor.
Facilities that average under roughly $1.33 million in annual food sales over a trailing three-year period can qualify as what the federal rule calls a "qualified facility." That status exempts a producer from the preventive-controls requirements specifically — not from every food-safety obligation on the books, and not automatically. A qualified facility still has to submit an attestation confirming it meets the sales threshold and either has identified its hazards and is monitoring controls for them, or is complying with applicable non-federal food-safety law. Skip the attestation and the exemption doesn't apply, threshold or no threshold. The attestation itself is a specific form — one version for facilities under the human-food preventive-controls rule, a separate one for facilities under the animal-food rule — filed with the federal food-safety regulator, not a letter you draft yourself or a box you check during registration renewal.
Where members get tripped up
The mix-up we hear most is producers assuming the dollar threshold does the work by itself. It doesn't. The attestation is a filing requirement, not a formality, and a facility that genuinely qualifies but never submits the paperwork is, on paper, not exempt at all. If you've been operating under the assumption that your sales volume alone protects you, this is worth confirming with your own hazard analysis before an inspector confirms it for you.
The other wrinkle worth flagging: dairy products carry their own risk profile regardless of a facility's size. Being under the sales threshold changes which federal preventive-controls paperwork applies to you; it doesn't change the underlying pathogen risk that makes soft and semi-soft cheeses a category regulators watch closely. Several state agriculture departments layer their own requirements on top of the federal exemption specifically because of that, so "federally exempt" and "no state paperwork" are two different claims, and members in states with active raw-milk or soft-cheese oversight programs should check both.
What we're asking for, and what you can do
The federation's position, filed in comments over the past two cycles, has been consistent: keep the qualified-facility pathway available for genuinely small operations, but make the attestation process itself simpler to find and complete, since the current friction falls hardest on exactly the small producers the exemption is meant to help. That's a modest ask, and it hasn't required us to take a position on the underlying safety standards themselves — only on whether small operations can actually navigate the paperwork meant to serve them.
If you're not sure whether your facility qualifies, or you qualify but haven't filed the attestation, the Food Safety Committee can walk through your specific numbers with you before you file anything. And if you've already been through the qualified-facility process and have advice for members considering it, we'd like to hear it — member experience is most of what shapes our comments in the next filing window.
None of this is a substitute for your own hazard analysis or a state inspector's read on your specific operation, and we're not in a position to tell any individual member whether they qualify — that determination rests on your actual sales figures and your own facility's risk profile, not on anything we can assess from the federation's side. What we can do is keep pushing for a process that a small producer can navigate without hiring a consultant just to find the right form, and keep collecting the specific snags members hit along the way so the next round of comments reflects what's actually happening on the ground rather than what the rule assumes is happening.
The International Cheese Federation (ICF) and More Cheese are entirely fictional. This post is demonstration content created for MemberJunction. All people, organizations, events, courses, certifications, figures, and quotations in it are invented, and nothing here represents a real association, a real business, a real person, or real professional advice.