Maze of Food Regulations--Need for a Regulation Indexing System

Complex regulations covering all aspects of the food industry sometimes lead to confusion. Fourteen federal agencies and commissions have issued 1,300 regulations for the transport of food, covering 9,752 sections of the Code of Federal Regulations. These regulations require some 30,000 separate actions to comply with the written law. The difficulty of dealing with this large body of regulatory law is compounded by the lack of an adequate index to determine which regulations apply in a particular situation. GAO efforts relating to the scope of federal food transportation-related regulation, the agencies responsible, and the parties affected were summarized.