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.
While the department’s food safety leadership likes to repeatedly emphasize that they use a science-based and data-driven approach to policy making, consumer advocates worry that these statements are meaningless if they don’t translate into policy initiatives that aim to prevent foodborne illness.
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.
The food sector is already using AI to optimize its supply chains, reduce waste and improve demand forecasting. Now, pioneering food and beverage companies are also using AI for food safety processes.
The white paper, argues that the United States’ fragmented federal food safety system—split across more than 15 agencies (primarily FDA and USDA FSIS), 30+ laws, and numerous interagency agreements—creates inefficiencies, duplication, regulatory gaps, and preventable public health harms. Advocating for a unified federal food protection entity integrating safety, defense, authenticity, and infrastructure protection, the authors propose five core reform directives and four prime outcomes: better public health protection, reduced burdens, enhanced resilience against threats, and a modern, science/risk-based 21st-century system.
Food Safety 4.0 represents a new operating philosophy, not simply a new set of tools. I introduce this term intentionally and for the first time, recognizing that language shapes action. What an organization names, it prioritizes; what it prioritizes, it invests in; and what it invests in, it ultimately leads.
The food industry is at a turning point. It is time to move past fragmented assessments and toward a harmonized risk model that combines science, data, governance, and human behavior. By doing this, we can strengthen resilience, protect public health, and build the trust on which our food system depends.
Events like the Food Safety Consortium are more than a conference, they are platforms for building a stronger network of professionals and advancing food safety culture across our industry. You’ll have the chance to connect with regulators, suppliers, QA leaders, and peers who face the same challenges you do, and return to your company with better understanding, innovative tools and new ideas that make a difference.
To celebrate future and current leaders of the food safety industry, non-profit Show Me Food Safety announced the selected recipients for its 4th annual Food Safety Leadership Award and Food Safety Scholarship.
Lott has authored articles, presented in several Food Safety Tech webinars, virtual events and at past Food Safety Consortium Conferences.
