FSMA Fridays: What The FDA's FSMA Guidance Is Telling Us (Part Three Of Four)

View the full webcast or read Part One and Part Two of this series

In Part Two of FSMA Fridays: What The FDA's FSMA Guidance Is Telling Us, SafetyChain Software’s VP of Marketing, Jill Bender, discussed with the Acheson Group’s Dr. David Acheson the FDA’s recently released FSMA guidance documents and what they are telling the food industry. Here, in part three of the series, the duo will continue their conversation.

Jill: How should a regulated food company use the guidance documents?

David: I’ve sort of been touching on that throughout the course of the conversation so far. I think my first point is these are long and very, very detailed. For anybody to have read them from one end to the other, that’s a significant list. We’re not done yet. We just basically got the first few chapters out on the preventive control rules ones, and there’s going to be a whole lot more coming.

My suggestion is, first of all, just glance through them from one end to the other. Look at the headers. If you don’t have time to literally read this from one end to the other - and even if you did, you probably wouldn’t remember everything that was in it. Look at the headers and see if there are things in that that jump out to you as, “Here’s a process that we’re using. Here’s a preventive control that we’re focused on,” or, “Here’s a situation that pertains especially to me.” Take a read of that section and then just see whether your thinking is aligned with FDA’s thinking. Again, if it’s not, that’s not by any means suggesting you’re out of compliance. There’s more than one way to get from A to B. Use them as a reference, in the first instance.