The 2010 Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) is the most comprehensive update to food safety requirements in the United States since the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic (FD&C) Act of 1938. The changes stipulated by FSMA have broad implications for all food manufacturers and distributors. Because the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cannot define a food safety plan for every plant, the food industry, which knows the process and products better than anyone else, must develop the plan. For all its verbiage, FSMA is actually a fairly simple and straightforward set of concepts that defines the next steps in the evolution of food safety. Food safety needs FSMA, and the food industry needs to understand FSMA in order to implement its regulations in a practical manner that adds value and improves food safety for consumers without creating an unreasonable burden on the industry. The purpose of this article is to describe how this can be accomplished, with an emphasis on artisan bread producers.