The New Era of Smarter Food Safety represents a new approach to food safety, leveraging technology and other tools to create a safer and more digital, traceable food system.
-New Era for Food Safety: Blueprint for the Future, FDA, 2021
The Food Safety Modernization Act is not new. Congress passed the law in 2011 to give the FDA the ability to initiate mandatory recalls and a host of other powers over the food industry. In 2020 the FDA issued a major proposed update to the rules: “The New Era of Smarter Food Safety.” Although the final rules will not be published until 2022, the outlines are clear.
The rule builds on four core elements: Tech-Enabled Traceability, Smarter Tools, Food Safety Culture, and New Business Models. Lots of words and implications. You can read more on the FDA website, but here is our take on what this means for the seafood industry.
The key update is Section 204 designed in the words of the FDA to “harmonize the Key Data Elements and Critical Tracking Events for enhanced traceability.” The goal is to have end-to-end traceability that can enable tracebacks in seconds--instead of the current system that often fails and generally takes weeks. Here are some of the implications for seafood companies:
As the diagram below describes, the expectation is that Key Data Elements are passed from one step to the next--so there can be a rapid traceback if there is a problem.
Although the goal of safer food is a good one and the specific rules are under final revision, the impact on the seafood industry could be far reaching. Here are some of the biggest challenges we see for adoption:
Anyone who has spent time on a fishing vessel or seafood processing plant, knows that most companies still use a lot of paper and don’t have the systems needed to meet the FDA’s vision of, “food traced to its source in seconds.” Not to mention, “alerting consumers in real time before contaminated or misbranded foods are consumed.”
There is a lot more to come about this rule, but now is a good time to start thinking about your digital strategy. How do you collect, store and transfer key information about your product?
There are solutions out there (including BlueTrace) and you should look at a few.