The global food industry is faced with some of the biggest food-safety changes in history. Not only has the U.S. proposed changes in the way food safety will be addressed, but so has Canada, China, India and other countries. At no other time have there been so many different countries putting forth efforts to improve food safety for their citizens and world trade.
The Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) proposed regulations on the Foreign Supplier Verification Programs places responsibility on the U.S. importer for evaluating its foreign supplier’s food-safety program for food and/or food ingredients. In addition, the FDA Proposed Preventive Control Regulations require that the manufacturer perform hazard analysis and establish preventive controls for the hazards identified with products that it produces. In the end, when these two FDA proposals are finalized, manufacturers’ responsibility for food safety will increase, with the FDA focusing greater attention on the details of a firm’s food-safety programs.