Fifteen produce organizations from across the country sent a letter this week to the U.S. Senate expressing their opposition to exemptions in the pending food safety legislation that is currently before the Senate. While the current bill does not include any exemptions, there are reports that the Senate may be considering these types of carve-outs when it reaches the Senate floor.

"I think we wanted to make it clear that any decision on who should or should not have to comply with food safety requirements needs to be risk and science based standard, not based on scale of your operation or proximity to your customers," said Robert Guenther, senior vice president for public policy at United Fresh.

The letter comes on the heels of this week's report from the Institute of Medicine recommending that a risk-based standard should be implemented to our federal government’s food safety regulatory scheme.

"This letter serves as an important message to Congress that we need to ensure that consumer confidence is regained in our federal government's food safety system," said Guenther.  "If Congress goes down the route of carve-outs, it risks losing support from both produce groups as well as consumer advocates."

For a full transcript of the letter, please click here.