Dole Organic Lettuce
Dole Organic Lettuce
Beltway Beat

FDA Finalizes Guidance for Ready-to-Eat Fresh-Cut Produce Operations under Preventive Controls for Human Food Rule

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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The final guidance reflects public comments received on the October 2018 draft guidance and replaces the 2008 FDA fresh-cut produce guidance. This guidance represents the agency’s current thinking on the issues related to preventing contamination in fresh cut produce. FDA’s guidance documents, including this guidance, do not establish legally enforceable responsibilities. Instead, guidance documents describe the agency’s current thinking on a topic and should be viewed only as recommendations, unless specific regulatory or statutory requirements are cited. The use of the word should in FDA guidance means that something is suggested or recommended but not specifically required.

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Beyond the Survey: What Supplier Compliance Behavior Reveals About Food Safety Culture — Before It Becomes a Recall

By Santoshi Muriki
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Most food safety culture assessments still lean on annual surveys and self-reported audit responses — snapshots of what people say, taken once or twice a year. Supplier compliance behavior tells a more current story: how fast a vendor answers a document request, how often the same corrective action keeps coming back, and how long a supplier sits in an at-risk tier before anything changes. This article lays out a practical way to read that behavior as a culture signal, based on firsthand work redesigning a risk-tiered supplier verification system across a network of more than 1,000 suppliers.

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Biros' Blog

Food Safety Fate

By Rick Biros
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How a chance meeting lead to the sharing of an emotional and powerful food safety story. Was this random hotel elevator connection fate or divine intervention? I don’t know. What I do know is because Dana was willing to talk to a stranger, she was able to share her daughter, Kayla’s food safety story to an audience of food safety professionals and now to you. 

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Ask The Expert

Food Safety as Business Infrastructure

By Azure Edwards, M.S.
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Fifteen years after FSMA reoriented food safety around prevention, the technical infrastructure is largely in place. What is becoming visible at this maturity point is the layer beneath it — the business decisions, governance structures, and organizational design that determine whether that infrastructure actually holds under real operational conditions. This five-part series examines food safety through the business realities that leaders already navigate: profitability, risk, growth, brand trust, and organizational function.

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Track and Trace, traceability, supply chain
Track and Trace, traceability, supply chain

Benefits of Traceability Solutions Research Results Announced

By Carlos Alejandrino, Wiggs Civitillo
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Starfish Network recently conducted an analysis of the benefits of traceability solutions. This study surveyed professionals across various food-related sub-industries, including produce, meat, seafood, dairy, eggs, packaged & manufactured goods. The surveyed companies spanned across production, logistics, retail, and services functions across the industry value chain.

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The State of Food Safety in 2026: Risks, Technology, and What FSQA Leaders Are Prioritizing Next

By Paddy McNamara
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FSQA executives are prioritizing digitization, data integration, and predictive technologies, not as “nice to have” tools, but as foundational capabilities for protecting public health and brand trust. Over the longer term, organizations that adopt preventive, data-driven food safety systems early are expected to experience fewer large-scale recalls and more targeted product withdrawals, reducing both public health impact and business disruption.

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FDA Logo
FDA Logo
Beltway Beat

Foreign Food Safety Inspections Hit Historic Low in 2025

By Food Safety Tech Staff
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Inspections began to decline in early 2025, after 65% of the staff in the FDA divisions responsible for coordinating travel and budgets left or were fired in the name of government efficiency. Because of staff reductions, investigators suddenly had to book their own flights and hotels, obtain diplomatic passports and visas, and coordinate with foreign authorities. While the rate of foreign inspections had significantly decreased, domestic inspections have continued almost uninterrupted.

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