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

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

In part three 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 four, Acheson and Bender continue the conversation.

Jill: Gordon is asking about supply chain risk control and how far will the FDA push into the supply chain. Gordon's saying, “Do we see the FDA pushing deeper into the supply chain on RTE processing to investigate and swab all suppliers to the ready to eat foods, especially those without a kill step?” Then, he's sort of following up, “How soon do you see them going that in depth in the food chain?”

David: To answer Gordon's second part first, “Is the FDA pushing into the supply chain already?” They always were. It's been a few years since I worked at the FDA. We did that then. If there was a situation with food, the whole point was to chase back into the supply chain to trace back to find out where the most likely cause was. This, particularly, was in the fresh produce space, where you might get an outbreak linked to a particular produce item and you're wanting to chase back through handling, repacking, sorting, farm levels, to see if there is any point where those more likely than others to be the source of that. Do I see FDA pushing deeper in the supply chain? Absolutely.