FSMA Fridays: Supply Chain Controls — How Preventive Controls for Human Food And FSVP Fit Together (Part Three Of Four)

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In Part Two of FSMA Fridays: Supply Chain Controls — How Preventive Controls for Human Food And FSVP Fit Together, SafetyChain’s Jill Bender, The Acheson Group’s Dr. David Acheson and Rolando Gonzalez discussed how FSMA evolved with regard to supply chain regulatory requirements. Here, in Part Three of the series, the trio will discuss exactly what FSMA’s Foreign Supplier Verification Program (FSVP) requires.

Jill: I’m going to bring Rolando back into this. Let’s go ahead and touch on the foreign supplier verification program, the requirements.

Rolando: Sure, Jill. One thing that I wanted to recall here is that, like David was saying before, there’s been a shift in their approach here. In the case of the foreign suppliers, the FDA has pretty much moved from relying specifically, or exclusively, on inspections at the port of entry and shifting that responsibility pretty much to the importer and the receiving facilities.

Also, I wanted to point out that what they’re looking for here is foreign suppliers — to ensure that they’re producing food in a manner that provides the same level of public health protection as are companies that are manufacturing food here, in the U.S., and are subjected to either or the preventive controls rule or the food safety regulations.

In terms of requirements, they’re very similar to what David was mentioning under the preventive controls rule, with a few additional details. For example, one of the things that are required under the FSVP is that there should be a compliance status review of the food and the suppliers. That can be done by looking to see if there are any alerts, for example, against a particular supplier.