The California Department of Food and Agriculture (CDFA) published new guidance for the audit trail requirements of Proposition (Prop) 12.
The North American Meat Institute (NAMI) said the guidance may provide relief, clarifying that distributors are required to ‘demonstrate through an audit trail that covered product is traceable back to a certified operation,’ which may be a certified producer or distributor.
Federally inspected facilities could register as a certified distributor, which would stop the audit trail and preclude the need to provide animal procurement information to customers. Previous Prop 12 audit trail requirements have been interpreted to require distributors to produce records going back to the certified producer.
“This interpretation resulted in packer/processors receiving numerous requests from customers for traceability records back to the producer to enable the customer to become a certified Prop 12 distributor,” NAMI said.
