WASHINGTON — The Food and Drug Administration is seeking comments about a range of proposed steps for food companies to evaluate food safety hazards at manufacturing plants. The rules have been created as part of the F.D.A. Food safety Modernization Act, signed into law in January. Under the law, preventive control plans must be created with information about evaluating hazards that could affect food safety and specifying preventive step to minimize or prevent the hazards. “The preventive control plans must also specify how the facility will monitor these controls to ensure they are working, how it will maintain routine records of the monitoring and what actions the facility will take to correct problems that arise,” the F.D.A. said. Comments may be submitted electronically or in writing until Aug. 22. The proposed rule on preventive controls for food facilities is expected to be published this fall. “The preventive controls requirement of F.S.M.A. is one of the most important aspects of this historic law on food safety,” said Michael R. Taylor, deputy F.D.A. commissioner for foods. “It’s imperative that we get information, data and feedback from industry and other shareholders.”