How the Bioterrorism Act Impacts Oklahoma Wineries
The FDA has included wine in the new federal Bioterrorism Act. This will directly impact the Oklahoma wine industry since most U.S. wineries must eventually comply to the new information tracking requirements.
Wineries that have 10 or fewer full-time employees have until Dec. 9, 2006 to be in compliance. Wineries with 11 to 499 full-time employees have until June 9, 2006 and wineries with more than 500 fully employed people must be in compliance by Dec. 9 of this year. For the time being, the new rules exempt wineries with fewer than 11 full-time employees, which sell more than 50 percent of their products out of their cellar door.
The new set of rules states that every ingredient, additive, and physical item that comes in contact with a wine, has to be itemized and tracked. To make matters worse, the rules appear to require that the records be maintained FOREVER! Strangely enough, wineries who are importing their wines into this country, are not required to meet the FDA's guidelines.
Vintner's that choose to ignore the new rules risk seeing their entire production being quarantined. Currently, only a few software development companies are working on solutions to help wineries track their processes.
StHelenaStar.com - How will wineries comply with Bioterrorism Act?
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