How cultural practices affect food safety

A new approach to food safety requires a cultural shift

Recently, the FDA established additional traceability recordkeeping requirements for the manufacturing, processing, packing, or storage of foods.

The ultimate goal of this project, the “New Era of Smarter Food Safety”, is to fully implement the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) by rapidly and effectively identifying recipients of foods to prevent illness outbreaks and address credible threats of serious adverse health consequences or death. 

A proposed rule for food traceability is a key component of the FDA’s directive, with modern solutions leveraged to reduce the number of illnesses. This framework uses technology and other tools to track foodborne illnesses from the source, alerting consumers before contaminated or misbranded foods are consumed.

Blueprint for New Era of Smarter Food Safety

The FDA’s New Era of Smarter Food Safety Blueprint’s framework has four core elements: traceability, improved tools and processes, new business models and retail modernization, and culture. Recognizing that food safety cannot be achieved without a commitment from everyone involved in the food system, a culture of food safety is the FDA’s fourth pillar of its new food safety era.

• Tech-enabled traceability: In most cases, food-handling records are still paper-based. Through the use of new technologies and integrating data streams, the FDA aims to identify outbreaks and trace the origin of a contaminated food in the shortest amount of time possible.

• Smarter tools and approaches for prevention and outbreak response: The FDA is making processes and communications about foods that are especially vulnerable to contamination more effective, efficient and, where possible, simpler for both the public and private sectors. Predictive analytics tools help identify when and where contamination might occur to prevent contaminated products from entering the food supply.
• New business models and retail modernization: The FDA is striving to ensure food safety as new business models emerge for producing food and distributing it via new channels. Educating distributers, manufacturers, and retailers on safety issues is part of the effort. So too is adapting the FDA’s oversight to help ensure the safety of novel ingredients, new foods, and new food production methods.
• A culture of food safety: In fostering a culture of food safety on farms, in food facilities, and in homes, the FDA aims to influence the beliefs, attitudes, and behaviors of people and organizations. Food safety culture is built on a set of shared values that operators and their staff follow to produce and provide food in the safest manner.

Food safety culture begins with compliance

Within an organization, food safety culture starts at the top and reaches down into every level of the company. It begins with compliance. It is impossible to execute proper compliance, without lifecycle visibility.

Trace One Devex PLM process solution manages all product specifications in a single integrated system and ensures that all required specifications are processed and up to date with current compliance requirements. Trace One Devex PLM automates regulatory checkpoints for every stage of global production and identifies underlying root causes of non-conformance. It pinpoints exactly where products are in the development process, tracks ingredient data, and use multi-layered formulation for deep visibility into product quality at every stage, giving insights into quality and food safety issues.

With so much data being processed and changing hands, companies must be able to access, manage and update all product-relevant information directly by mapping it through a single source of truth. Trace One Devex PLM ensures data integration to support a manufacturer’s commitment to food safety.

Trace One Devex PLM supports new food safety era

Increasingly global supply chains, e-commerce, and a consumer demand to know more about the food they eat requires new practices and solutions to ensure a safe food supply. Adopting a food safety culture is imperative for manufacturers to prevent contamination and avoid costly recalls, secure consumer brand loyalty, and maintain profits.

Trace One Devex PLM supports manufacturers in creating a safety culture throughout the organization by ensuring regulatory compliance, tracking product quality, and ensuring a single source of truth for all product lifecycle data.