FSMA Implementation: Coping with FDA’s Food Safety Activities for 2014

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The goal of the food safety professional should be to create a food safety culture, not a food safety program - Frank Yiannas

Durham, NC (PRWEB) August 21, 2014

Each year roughly 1 in 6 Americans (or 48 million people) get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized, and 3,000 die of food borne diseases. Food safety is an important public health priority, and food borne illness is a costly health problem. In 2011, President Obama signed the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) with the aim of ensuring the safety of U.S food supply by focusing on preventing the contamination instead of responding to it. The idea of prevention is nothing new in food industry as organizations like FDA and the U.S. Department of Agriculture already have prevention-oriented standards. In food industry many have already established the “best practices” for prevention. Remarkably, FSMA has brought into light the significance of food safety, and the awareness to protect the health of millions of Americans.

Even though the act is still in the proposal stage, the FDA has recently released a set of new rules under the FSMA that many in the food industry are finding hard to cope with. As per the new rules, the food industry need to get certified to Global Food Safety Initiative (GFSI) scheme options so as to prepare them for the FSMA’s final rules. The GFSI certification is significant in driving food safety initiatives toward FSMA compliance, however there are certain differences between GFSI and FSMA. Being GFSI certified does not mean that you have fulfilled all the rules of FSMA as no two GFSI schemes or their requirements are exactly alike, even though they all are based on GFSI Standards. To be in compliance with the new rule its imperative to know the difference between the FSMA and the GFSI scheme. The major variation between the two is that FSMA is largely focused on Hazard Analysis of Risk-based Preventive Controls (HARPC), where as GFSI is on HACCP. This is chiefly applicable in the proposed Preventive Controls rule, which forms the foundation of much of FSMA. The food industry needs to get acquainted with the terminology used by FDA and how it compares to those in popular GFSI benchmarked schemes. There are certain questions one must ask; does certification to a GFSI benchmarked scheme (such as SQF or BRC) makes one automatically compliant with FDA’s proposed regulations? What are the key differences between FDA’s proposed preventive controls and the GFSI requirements?

Dr. Jennifer McEntire, the Vice President and Chief Science Officer at The Acheson Group, would be answering these questions in an informative audio conference – Deeper Dive: Comparing FSMA Requirements with GFSI Audits - Part II on Tuesday, August 26 on behalf of AudioEducator.com, country's top training provider of business-enhancing information for professionals. Jennifer would be talking about the requirements based on additional information released from FDA in the summer 2014 about whether the GFSI scheme makes one compliant with FDA’s proposed regulations. The session will discuss the key requirements proposed by FDA, particularly the preventive controls rule and compare them to several GFSI schemes.

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Source: - *http://www.fda.gov/Food/GuidanceRegulation/FSMA/ucm389696.htm

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