Ten years on, food safety act’s holding strong

(FDA)

The 10-year old Food Safety Modernization Act is aging nicely, most industry leaders think.

The FSMA was passed by Congress in December 2010 and signed into law by President Obama on Jan. 4, 2011.

How has the law, and its subsequent regulations, changed the produce industry? 

Industry leaders gave their perspective on the question in response to a survey from The Packer.

Investments in food safety

“The industry is certainly invested significantly into traceability and modernizing food safety practices,” said Max Teplitski, chief science officer for the Produce Marketing Association. “It brought food safety into a much sharper focus.”

The FSMA focus on prevention, rather than reacting after the fact, has helped the produce industry stay ahead and in front of any potential major outbreaks, said Vince Mastromauro, director of produce operations for retailer Sunset Foods. “Again, traceability on every level is so key in identifying and preventing so outbreaks.”

“The general industry attitude towards food safety has shifted in a more positive direction, in terms of seeing food safety as risk abatement rather than just a cost,” said Rebecca Anderson, technical manager for GlobalG.A.P. 

“Certainly food safety is now a ‘profession’ and those working in food safety positions in the supply chains are getting noticed for their skills and taking leadership roles.”

“FSMA was written to improve food safety in the produce industry but it was written in a form that would be doable in an industry that had far too little food safety expertise in-house,” said Walter Ram, vice president of food safety for The Giumarra Cos., Los Angeles. 

“It has served not only as a regulatory tool to ensure that all companies raise their food safety efforts but also in conjunction with many buyer requirements, it has served as a basis for the understanding of food safety fundamentals for many companies.”


Tim York, CEO of the California Leafy Greens Marketing Agreement, said FSMA established a minimum food safety standard that all major producers must follow. 

“However, many progressive grower/shippers are working well beyond FSMA on the real problems for industry with cutting-edge research and development of best practices,” York said.

Chris Summers, vice president of food safety for Oxnard, Calif.-based Mission Produce, said FSMA has served to increase food safety training tremendously, which only improves food safety measures. 

“It has also gotten the attention of top executives/owners; they are taking FSMA classes to see what it’s all about,” Summers said.

Jeff Hall, food safety specialist for the Canadian Produce Marketing Association, said the U.S. (FSMA) and Canada (Safe Food for Canadians Act) have new food safety regulations.

“The FSMA and SFCA have provided a higher standard for food safety while allowing for flexibility to meet that standard,” Hall said. 

“This allows industry to adapt to new technologies and science at a much quicker pace than was previously possible.”

Food safety consultant Trevor Suslow said there have been substantial changes in the produce industry as a result of FSMA and the related regulations and guidance.

“The easiest aspect to highlight is the elevation of baseline food safety prevention programs and food safety systems for record-keeping and documentation of compliance,” Suslow said. 

“The integration of food safety into dedicated positions across the produce supply chain, though proportionally more significant for grower-shippers, has clearly increased.” 

Suslow said that FSMA regulations have resulted in more annual direct and indirect spend on food safety compliance. 

“Though challenging to document, it would be hard to make the case the FSMA has in fact moved the actual food safety risk profile or effectiveness of standards and practices in a broad and measurable positive direction.”

Technology

Major changes in produce safety came about in June 2007, with the introduction of the iPhone and subsequent smartphones, said Gale Prince, president of Your Food Safety Coach LLC. 

“The iPhone fostered the development of social media that provided a means for consumers to express attention to food safety that forced retailers to require produce suppliers to implement third party food safety inspections,” Prince said. 

“These programs required produce companies to implement food safety management program systems as required by the Global Food Safety Initiative.

This required firms to conduct food safety audits to evaluate food safety programs and fostered training of employees,” Prince said.

“This has certainly improved produce safety in this country,” he said. “FSMA came along later and established the legal perimeters to produce safety. Only in the past year has FDA started doing inspections of growers under FSMA.”

Prince said the biggest changes to produce safety have been driven by advancements in the past 10 years of epidemiology and the use of DNA to pinpoint the linkage between an illness and a food source.

 

 

 

 

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