Food & Product Traceability Systems
Food Safety Act Compliance Requires Traceability Management
News flash! The FDA has just been granted sweeping new food recall authority. The Food Safety Act, passed final approval by the U.S. House of Representatives on December 21, 2010. The President is expected to sign it, so the first major food safety legislation in many years is about to become law of the land. What can food producers do to prepare? The most important single aspect of the food safety bill is a requirement for comprehensive and detailed food traceablity record keeping. Food Safety Act compliance will be hugely important for every food manufacturer, transport, warehouse and sales facility. Contact our trained staff to learn more.
Food Safety Act Compliance information
Yesterday's Traceability - Inadequate For Today's Needs
Over 99% of all food manufacturers failed to meet current Homeland Security and customer traceability requirements, let alone the new FDA food recall management requirements. Meanwhile commercial and legal risks, including incarcerations for managers, have increased significantly.
Surprisingly, over 95% of food & beverage manufacturers who claimed food recall traceability compliance failed even basic requirements tests. These companies typically relied on the fairly limited traceability provided by their business / ERP system.
Paper product traceability systems did no better. Even in the cases where the correct data was being collected, the sheer number of documents required and the need to cross reference the data, made timely retrieval impossible.
These solutions do allow some level of traceability. However, the need for a robust recall information management and traceability solution has expanded dramatically from simply knowing what items you sent to whom to knowing the items, logistics path, lot details, manufacturing genealogy, etc. for every product and ingredient anywhere in your supply chain, past or present.
