The Food & Drug Administration’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which was signed into law by President Obama in 2011, was hailed as the “most sweeping overhaul of America’s food safety system since 1938.”
The legislation gave the FDA authority to impose new rules to prevent contamination by requiring producers to assess the ways their products could become contaminated. “The result will be a fundamental shift in the FDA’s approach to food safety from reacting to foodborne illness outbreaks to preventing contamination in the first place,” CNN reported at the time.
More than six years in, the law continues to be lauded for preventing bad food from going public. Periodic food recalls, observers note, prevent contaminations which could have gone unchecked before the law went into effect.
Reacting to a veggie recall in the United States and Canada reported earlier in October, one industry watcher said that in cases like that, bad news can be good news. “The recall is proof that the modern food-safety system is working,” noted Quartz. “In catching a problem before an illness is reported, lives may have been saved that might have otherwise been jeopardized.”
Food Safety Rules: More Documentation and Enhanced Confidence
Though FSMA passed in 2011, new compliance rules continue to go into effect. New rules for 2018 include worker training for health and hygiene, customer assurances, and testing and addressing water quality issues, and they cover all aspects of food production and delivery. “Food facilities will need to think upfront about what could be harmful to consumers, and then put controls in place to minimize or prevent those hazards,” the FDA said.
Food recalls have become common news, analysts note, and sickness remains relatively rare. The bottom line is that transparency leads to better safety for consumers and those producing foods.
“As food companies are required by the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) to provide documentation and corrective actions should any issues arise, tools that help track steps in the supply chain are not just an asset but a necessary investment,” reported Food Engineering. “It makes the supply chain safer, more efficient and simpler to manage. Additionally, with provenance as relevant as it is now, customers take greater interest in brands that are transparent about the origins and authenticity of the food products they provide.”
The documentation rules enhance the ability to trace foods as they move from fields to tables, the journal noted, which is a boon to all parties.
“Retail giant Walmart for example, has attempted to provide greater visibility by experimenting with blockchain, a distributed database,” Food Engineering added. “The technology gives manufacturers a detailed analysis by having growers, distributors and retailers record transactions securely as products move downstream. Compared to what retailers currently have access to, blockchain provides a lot more information.”
Are More Recalls On the Horizon?
Recalls are costly, inconvenient and reputation-damaging, but FSMA was not designed to specifically impact recalls, explained industry watcher Food Dive.
“FSMA is about prevention,” a former FDA director told the site. “The whole idea is that companies will have stronger controls in their facilities. So that number one, you shouldn’t have as much contamination, but when you do, companies will find it even before it gets to the food, or before that food gets out to the market.”
And of course the rule is only good if it is enforced. In September, the Washington Post noted that government regulators took action on only about 80 percent of the food safety violations uncovered. One possible culprit? A lack of funding.
“It is clear that the FDA needs more resources to efficiently and effectively inspect food facilities and enforce infractions to keep our food supply safe,” Rep. Rosa L. DeLauro (D-Conn.) said in a statement which was published in the paper. “It is the responsibility of the FDA to ensure that American consumers can trust the safety of food they consume.”
Make Your Food Chain Data Work for You
As part of the new regulations the FDA requires validation of your company’s preventive control plan. This means that you and your suppliers must prove that you can control hazards or are working to control hazards. While it may be tempting to view this requirement as an expensive, manpower-consuming exercise, if you know how to use the data you’ll spend so much time and money collecting, you could gain valuable insights about how to cut costs and improve business processes.
Analytics is one important part of the process of converting raw data to useful management information. There are some relatively easy, quick-to-implement analytic approaches that farms, processors, supply chains, distributors and packers can implement to help them manage more efficiently, such as dashboards that make data visible and allow key stakeholders to focus on the issues that will matter under the new FSMA rules.
Harness the FSMA
Food safety and quality personnel, food operations managers and supervisors, supply chain operators and anyone working on developing, implementing or auditing food safety plans will want to listen to ProfEdOnDemand’s live webinar, “Using Your Food Safety Data to Drive Cost Reductions and Process Improvements.” Led by industry pro Dr. John M. Ryan, the session will help you comply with the new rules going into effect and make it a profitable exercise. He covers farm sampling data, supply chain process cost analysis, solution tracking sheets, how to collect reliable data, and turning data into an analytic decision-making tool.
