The Food and Drug Administration has released a Food Safety Dashboard to help track Food Safety and Modernization Act rules and measure their progress.
The agency on Sept. 30 announced the availability of metrics that track outcomes for three of the seven “foundational rules” of the FSMA:
- Current Good Manufacturing Practice Measures;
- Risk-Based Preventive Controls; and
- Imported food safety, including data relevant to the Foreign Supplier Verification Program rule.
“We recognize that the prevention-oriented system that FSMA created is not failproof,” according to an FDA news release. “With this in mind, we are also tracking the speed of response to problems when they do arise. One of the metrics we are beginning to track on the dashboard is how quickly a firm issues public notification for a Class 1 recall – the most urgent type of recall – for human and animal food.”
Factors will influence the interpretation of the data, according to the FDA, especially in the FSMA’s early stages of adoption. The FDA gave some examples:
- The FDA does not inspect the same companies on a quarterly or annual business, so results don’t represent a consistent cohort of companies;
- The FDA has a policy of “educate before and while we regulate,” helping firms comply, focusing on education and help bring firms into compliance; and
- The preventive controls and Foreign Supplier Verification Program have staggered compliance dates based on business size.
- The FDA will add to the dashboard with additional data over time, according to the release.
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