Food Industry Regulatory Update June 4, 2021

In this Week’s Edition:

Administration Requests More Funds for FDA Food Safety Efforts
FDA on Vaccinating Seasonal Food Industry Workers
FDA Initiative on Food Safety Traceability Software
FSIS Revises Guidance on Salmonella and Campylobacter Sampling at Certain Poultry Processing Establishments
AMS Announces National Organic Standards Board Meeting for October
U.S. Codex Office Annual Report on Sanitary and Phytosanitary Standard Setting Activities
FSIS Updates Lists of Foreign Establishments Eligible to Export to U.S.
FDA Import Alerts
FDA Warning Letters

Administration Requests More Funds for FDA Food Safety

FDA is requesting nearly $100 million more for FDA food safety efforts.

FDA on Vaccinating Seasonal Food Industry Workers

As the vaccine supply increases, the FDA encourages the leadership and management of food facilities to support migrant/migratory and seasonal food and agriculture workers vaccinations. When an essential worker gets a COVID-19 vaccine, they protect themselves, their families, co-workers, and their communities. Healthy workers help to ensure the availability of a safe and plentiful food supply. See CDC’s Guide to Vaccinating Workers: Vaccinating Migrant/Migratory and Seasonal Food and Agriculture Workers.

For additional information, Food Safety and the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) | FDA.

FDA Initiative on Food Safety Traceability Software

FDA has launched a challenge to spur the development of affordable, tech-enabled traceability tools to help protect people and animals from contaminated foods by enabling the rapid identification of their sources and helping remove them from the marketplace as quickly as possible.

The FDA New Era of Smarter Food Safety Low- or No-Cost Tech-Enabled Traceability Challenge advances a goal set forth in the New Era of Smarter Food Safety blueprint, released in July 2020, to encourage the development of creative financial models for low- to no-cost traceability solutions that would enable food producers of all sizes to participate in a scalable, cost-effective way. FDA states tech-enabled traceability is one of the foundational core elements of the New Era initiative. However, affordability can be a barrier to the adoption of tech-enabled traceability systems, especially for smaller companies.

FSIS Revises Guidance on Salmonella and Campylobacter Sampling at Certain Poultry Processing Establishments

The guidance is available here.

AMS Announces National Organic Standards Board Meeting for October

The in-person meeting will occur in Sacramento October 19-21, 2021, from 8:30 a.m. to approximately 6:00 p.m. Pacific Time each day and may include a virtual broadcast. The NOSB will meet to discuss substances petitioned for addition to or deletion from the National List of Allowed and Prohibited Substances (National List), substances due to sunset from the National List in 2023, and recommendations on organic policies. More details and a link to register may be found here.