FSMA Fridays: Environmental Monitoring — Answers To Your Questions (Part Five Of Five)

Check out the entire webcast or read part one, part two, part three , and part four of this series

In par four  of FSMA Fridays: Environmental Monitoring — Answers To Your Questions, SafetyChain Software’s VP of Marketing, Jill Bender and  The Acheson Group’s (TAG) founder and CEO Dr. David Acheson addressed questions from the webcast’s live audience on FSMA’s environmental monitoring requirements. Here, in part five, Acheson and Bender continue the conversation.

Jill: David, we do have one more question from the audience. Omid's asking, “What if we make a low-risk product in the aspect of water activity of less than .6, do we need to conduct an environmental monitoring?”

David: Well, obviously that's a pretty tight scenario. My answer to that is, if your product does not have the subsequent kill step that I've talked about, it's not pasteurized, it's not HPP, it's not irradiated, it's not gone through something, or it's formulated to kill Listeria or Salmonella, then the FDA would regard this as, I am making the assumption that it's ready to eat. In terms of this question, then the FDA would say, "Yes. You do need an environmental monitoring program because you may put, you may have Listeria mono all over your Zone 1 surfaces, or Salmonella. It gets into the product just because it may not support the growth, doesn't mean it's not, it doesn't create a risk."