FSMA Fridays: Traceability Requirements And Best Practices (Part Four Of Four)

On the last Friday of every month, Barbara Levin of SafetyChain, a leading provider of food safety and quality assurance automation and compliance solutions, hosts FSMA Fridays™, the leading online forum for the food and beverage community to learn the latest information about the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). Featuring Dr. David Acheson, the popular monthly interactive pod/webcast is sponsored by SafetyChain Software and The Acheson Group.

In the third portion of FSMA Fridays: Traceability Requirements And Best Practices, Safety Chain’s Barbara Levin and the Acheson Group’s panel answered questions from the pod/webcast’s live audience regarding what companies should do to prepare for upcoming traceability requirements, what companies should do to track direct-contact packaging and how FSMA affects these practices. Here, in the fourth, and final, installment on the topic, the group will continue answering the live audience’s questions.

Barbara: David, let's stay with you here, for a moment. Tomas is asking, “What are current lot numbering requirements, and will FSMA change them?

David: That's the question that certainly should have gone to Jennifer, but let me give it a shot, and then she can clean up my mess. My belief is that there are no current lot numbering requirements. The FDA — of you've got lot numbers — they want them in regard to the one up, one back, but the requirement to keep lot numbers, no, I don't believe that's a requirement right now. Will FSMA change them? Yeah. I think it will. As Jennifer pointed out, the new record-keeping requirements around high-risk food, that's precisely what they want to do; to put in much tighter requirements which I think will include lot numbers. Jen, did I get that right?

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