Federal preventive-controls rules for food facilities have been in effect for several years now, and one piece keeps generating letters to our advocacy team: how the rules apply, or don't, to the smallest creameries. There's a size-based exemption built into the framework, but where exactly that line sits, and what a small producer has to document to prove they qualify, is a question we hear at nearly every regional meeting.
The rule itself isn't unreasonable on its face. A facility that processes food is expected to have a written food-safety plan and to control identified hazards, and that expectation scales down for the smallest operations rather than disappearing. The trouble members describe isn't the exemption's existence — it's the paperwork required to claim it, which can feel just as heavy as the plan it's supposed to replace for a two-person creamery running one vat a day.
What members are actually reporting
Over the summer, our members submitted a round of written comments and a smaller coalition meeting was held to compare notes on how the exemption is being interpreted regionally. The consistent theme: a producer qualifying for the exemption on paper still often ends up building something close to a full food-safety plan anyway, because they can't get a straight answer from an inspector about what the lighter documentation actually needs to contain. Members have told us they'd rather have a clear, if strict, standard than an exemption that requires guessing.
We've also heard from a smaller group of members who worry the conversation focuses too much on the smallest producers and not enough on the mid-size creameries who don't qualify for the exemption at all but don't have compliance staff either. That's a fair point, and it's part of why our advocacy work on this keeps circling back rather than closing out.
Where this goes next
Our position, which we've put in writing to the relevant regulators, is straightforward: keep the size-based exemption, but pair it with a short, plain-language checklist that tells a small producer exactly what qualifies them and what they need to keep on file. That's a modest ask, and it's the kind of thing that tends to move slowly, but it's the piece our members have told us would actually change their day-to-day paperwork rather than just the letter of the rule.
If you've been asked by an inspector to produce documentation you didn't expect, or if you've found a way to satisfy the requirement that didn't feel like busywork, that's exactly the kind of detail that strengthens our next round of comments. Reach out to the Food Safety Committee, and if you haven't signed on to our current letter campaign on this topic, you can still add your name before we submit the next round.
Part of the confusion members describe traces back to how the exemption was written in the first place. It's tied to a facility's size and sales volume, which sounds like a clean bright line until you're a seasonal creamery whose volume swings enough during the year to sit on different sides of that line depending on when an inspector happens to ask. A producer who qualifies for the lighter documentation in the spring may not in a heavy fall production month, and nobody we've talked to has a satisfying answer for what happens in between.
That ambiguity is exactly why our advocacy work keeps this issue open rather than treating it as resolved once the exemption exists on paper. A rule that's technically generous but practically unclear ends up costing small producers time either way — time spent documenting more than the rule requires, or time spent worrying they've documented too little. Neither outcome serves the food-safety goal the rule is actually built around, and that's the argument we keep making in every round of comments we submit.
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.