Dr. Justin Ransom, administrator of the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) will present at this year’s Food Safety Consortium Conference October 21-23 in Washington DC along side, Dr. Donald A. Prater, Acting Deputy Commissioner for Food, FDA.
New award will recognize food and beverage organizations applying innovative technology to strengthen food safety performance
FSTR is being launched in conjunction with its anchor research study: The Food Safety Digital Maturity Benchmark, giving food manufacturers an independent way to measure the impacts of digital transformation, technology adoption, and operational performance. The study findings will debut at the 15th Anniversary Food Safety Consortium Conference & Expo, October 21-23, in Washington DC.
The term, Normalization of Deviance has since become standard vocabulary in aviation safety, nuclear safety, and patient safety literature, precisely because the pattern keeps recurring: a known risk, documented, unresolved, tolerated because the bad outcome hasn’t happened yet… until the day it does.
HHS proposed a rule requiring manufacturers to notify the FDA when concluding that the use of a substance added to human or animal food is GRAS and, alongside the USDA, submitted for final review the federal government’s first proposed definition of ultra-processed foods (UPFs). Critics complain that while the GRAS rule would require manufacturers to notify the FDA when they determine a new food substance is GRAS, manufacturers would still self-determine that safety conclusion themselves. Substances introduced into the market before the regulations go into effect, would be eligible for a separate, time-limited streamlined submission pathway.
The FDA is implementing a major reorganization plan called “Simple Reform” on October 1, 2026, which shifts field inspectors from specialized product roles back to generalist investigators and centralizes administrative functions. The food and beverage industry should expect a shift in audit dynamics, meaning audits will likely focus less on highly specific, niche technical processes and more on foundational, broad-spectrum quality systems. Dr. Stephen Ostroff and Frank Yiannas, both former Deputy Commissioners at FDA offer their opinions on Simple Reform.
Raw food safety data is most valuable when paired with actionable insights. By replacing manual workflows with automated software, food manufacturers can unlock real-time trend analysis and identify contamination hot spots before they spread.
FDA sent a letter to the infant formula industry and their supply chain partners highlighting multiple recent public health events where risks were introduced through the supply chain and to call for increased vigilance by industry to ensure the safety of ingredients and finished infant formula products.
Fifteen years of preventive controls investment has produced a record detailed enough to answer a question most operations confront only under pressure: not whether a system performs, but whether it can carry what growth asks of it. Rising volume, added complexity, new customers, and shifting requirements all impact the same structure, and they reveal whether the structure was built to absorb them, or whether people have been absorbing the difference on its behalf. This five-part series examines food safety through the business realities leaders already navigate: profitability, risk, growth, brand trust, and organizational function.
On the same day the SCOTUS sided with the Trump administration and the maker of the weedkiller Roundup, Trump issued an executive order aimed at reducing pesticides in the food supply and studying the health risks they pose but with no new federal funding, and it does not call for new regulations or legislation.
