Tag Archives: HACCP

FSMA, One Year Later: Top 5 Things We’ve Learned

By Erika Miller
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Now that the first of the FSMA compliance dates have passed, let’s look back at the past year of training new PCQIs, their questions and concerns from classes as well as the perspective from our FDA friends (yes, really!) who attended our workshops. We have learned so much, it is hard to narrow it down to only five things—but if we look at the issues that arose, the following five proved to be recurring themes throughout 2016.

5. Don’t Scrap Your Current Plan

Many clients have approached us and said they were planning to throw their current food safety and/or HACCP plan in the trash and start from scratch. Please don’t do this! Companies that care about quality and food safety already have effective quality management systems in place. It would be a disservice to the company and the general public for all these time-tested plans to go straight into the bin. It is more realistic to take a look at the current system in light of the new regulation and ask yourself if there are any gaps that can be addressed. This brings us to the next point.

4. Education Is Key

A compliant system cannot be developed without an understanding of the requirements. Although FSMA is derived from the basic principles of HACCP, there are key differences, and not all of them in the direction of less regulation. It is important to understand not only the updated Good Manufacturing Practices and Preventive Controls for both Human and Animal food, but also the Foreign Supplier Verification Program, Sanitary Transportation and the Produce Rule (if they apply). Although the FDA-recognized curriculum for some of these companion regulations have not yet been released, some independent training providers are offering workshops to help fill the gap while the FDA and FSPCA are working on the official curriculum. (Comment on this article for more information via email).

3. “You Must Evaluate If You Need It” Is Not the Same as “You Don’t Need It”

Some training providers have told their attendees that they can scrap many of their current systems because FSMA is less stringent than GFSI-approved schemes. Your certification body for FSSC 22000, SQF or BRC does not care one whit how stringent FSMA is (as long as you are compliant with its requirements, as local regulatory compliance is a key factor in GFSI approval). FSMA will not change expectations related to the GFSI-approved food safety schemes. It is also misleading to think that because FSMA is flexible, FDA regulators will not have expectations of excellence when they arrive at food processing facilities. This law gives regulators the power to take legal actions to address many infractions they have seen over the years but have been powerless to stop; the flexibility may well be a double-edged sword in that regard. Ensure that all decisions are based on data and records exist to validate any claims.

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Zia Siddiqi, Orkin
Bug Bytes

From HACCP to HARPC, and Integrating Pest Management

By Zia Siddiqi, Ph.D.
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Zia Siddiqi, Orkin

September 19, 2016 is a date that many of you probably had circled on your calendars. It marked the first date in which many food processing companies had to be in compliance with the FSMA preventive controls final rule.

It’s okay if you’re still revising your food safety plan. The regulations are so sweeping that some companies are still struggling to figure out if their plans are in compliance. At the heart of this law is a change in the philosophy of how we deal with contamination. Now, the focus is on preventing contamination rather than responding to it after it occurs.

This proactive approach to safety must be kept in mind when discussing how food safety plan requirements have changed. For many food manufacturing facilities, it means a change from HACCP to HARPC.

Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points, or HACCP, should be more familiar to you. First developed in the late 1950s and early 1960s to provide safe food for astronauts in the U.S. space program, HACCP became the global standard for food safety in the 1980s, as large, multinational companies sought to ensure that their supply chains were safe.

HACCP evolved over the years into an effective, efficient and comprehensive food safety management approach. The system addresses food safety through the analysis and control of biological, chemical and physical hazards from raw material production, procurement and handling, to manufacturing, distribution and consumption of the finished product.

The seven principles of HACCP include:

  1. Conduct a hazard analysis
  2. Identify critical control points
  3. Set critical limits
  4. Establish monitoring actions
  5. Determine corrective actions
  6. Develop verification procedures
  7. Institute a record-keeping system

How are HACCP and HARPC different?

Following the passage of FSMA, the FDA instituted a new set of food safety standards, known as Hazard Analysis and Risk Based Preventive Controls (HARPC).

HARPC shouldn’t be seen as a replacement of HACCP standards. Rather, it’s an evolution of them. The following are some key changes.

You Must Anticipate Potential Hazards. One of the big changes in moving to HARPC standards is that your food safety plan must identify any and all reasonably foreseeable food safety hazards and include risk-based preventive controls for them. This moves beyond HACCP’s critical control points and asks that food processors look at how to minimize risk from the second food enters their facility to the second it ships out.

This includes naturally occurring hazards as well as hazards that can be intentionally or unintentionally introduced to the facility. The potential hazards that have expanded under HARPC include:

  • Biological, chemical, physical and radiological hazards
  • Natural toxins, pesticides, drug residues, decomposition, parasites, allergens and unapproved food and color additives
  • Naturally occurring hazards or unintentionally introduced hazards
  • Intentionally introduced hazards (including acts of terrorism)

You should review the potential hazards—both seen and unseen—that could impact your facility to determine the risks that you should analyze for your plan.

HARPC Applies to Almost All Food Processing Facilities. The HACCP standards generally did not apply to all food processors. HARPC, however, covers many more U.S. processors. There are six major exceptions, however.

  • Food companies under the exclusive jurisdiction of the USDA
  • Companies subject to the FDA’s new Standards for Produce Safety authorities
  • Facilities that are subject to and comply with FDA’s seafood and juice HACCP regulations
  • Low-acid and acidified canned food processors
  • Companies defined as “small” or “very small” businesses
  • Companies with a previous three-year average product value of less than $500,000

Do these changes mean that your existing food safety plan needs to be scrapped? Not at all. An existing HACCP plan can be modified with the help of a Preventive Control Qualified Individual (another new requirement) to comply with HARPC guidelines. This person needs to be intimately familiar with potential hazards and the risk-based preventive controls for them.

This may sound daunting at first, but moving to HARPC from HACCP will be an easier shift than starting from scratch. The key adjustments that you would need to focus on include identifying risk-based preventive controls for the hazards previously mentioned. Just remember, these hazards should be expanded to include both naturally occurring and unintentionally introduced hazards.

How Does Integrated Pest Management Fit into a Food Safety Plan?

Much like HARPC, Integrated Pest Management (IPM) focuses on being proactive. It emphasizes prevention, focusing on facility maintenance and sanitation, before considering chemical options for pest management.

An IPM plan is benchmarked with regular monitoring and analysis of effectiveness. This may seem cumbersome, but one shouldn’t overlook the value of documentation as a management tool. Collecting data and putting it in context with detailed analysis can be an effective way to prioritize your pest control efforts.

Detailed analysis accounts for things such as normal seasonal cycles, deficiencies in maintenance, exclusion, sanitation and harborages, just to name a few. This analysis can also help improve pest control efforts by prioritizing areas needing attention, especially when your staff is limited by time or resources.

Integrating IPM into your HARPC plan should include analyzing the risks of what could encourage pests to enter your facility, such as doors left open or incoming product shipments. Consider your pest control provider an expert source in how to assess all risks associated with pests and how to establish preventive controls for them.

Despite preventative efforts, unexpected pests will be inevitable. More emphasis will be placed on establishing action thresholds for different pests. This can be a problematic topic, because there are not scientific or broadly accepted threshold values for food processing pests.

Every facility, and often zones within facilities, will likely be different. Identify logical zones—ingredients, processing, packaging and warehousing—and sensible threshold values for each key pest in these zones. Furthermore, establish what the appropriate response should be at certain thresholds. The escalating responses to different levels of pest activity often include things such as automatic authority for certain limited types of pesticide application, more intensive monitoring and inspection, and, of course, higher management notifications, which might lead to more extensive measures.

IPM plans should be reviewed on an annual basis to ensure your program remains as effective as possible. Written food safety plans that follow the HARPC approach and comply with the FSMA rule should be reanalyzed whenever there is a significant change at the facility that might increase a known hazard or introduce a new one. Review the plan at least every three years, if no significant changes occur.

Even if your facility’s deadline for compliance with HARPC standards is a year or two away, now is the time to take a look at your plan and make sure you’re in compliance.

Kassy Marsh, Techni-K
FST Soapbox

The Solution to Combining a HACCP & HARPC Plan

By Kassy Marsh
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Kassy Marsh, Techni-K

Since the publication of the FSMA Preventive Controls Rule for Human Food, the term HARPC has become a common way of describing the type of food safety plan that is needed to comply with the requirements. On first glance its similarities to HACCP could possibly lead one to believe that the requirements for both systems are aligned. But beware, there are a number of fundamental differences and one main contradiction in the requirements, which requires a clarity of understanding when trying to amalgamate the two systems.

With the introduction of the FSMA Preventive Controls Rule, food facilities that have HACCP systems are now faced with the difficult task of trying to adapt their current food safety system to meet the HARPC requirements. These facilities will continue to be required by local law in the countries where they export to, by their customers and by standards such as those recognized by the GFSI to adhere to the HACCP principles. A straight swap from HACCP to HARPC is not going to be an option for many businesses. Therefore, a combined approach is required, one that meets both sets of requirements and has a clear, practical and effective methodology.

Structure of the Controls

One of the consequences of combining the requirements of HACCP and HARPC is that all of the control principles need to come together and work as one. For this reason, the distinctions between pre-requisite controls (PRCs), preventive controls (PCs) and critical control points (CCPs) must be fully understood.

  • Pre-requisite control: A facility-wide generic control, not specific to one particular process step
  • Preventive control: A control that prevents or significantly minimizes the hazard
  • Critical control point: A control that eliminates or reduces the hazard to an acceptable level

There is a hierarchy to the controls, with PRCs being the building blocks for facility-wide general controls; PCs are more specific controls that are typically associated with a particular step in the process; a CCP is one that is above and beyond a PC and is critical to the safety of the food (see Figure 1).

Figure 1.
Figure 1.

A PC is one that either prevents the hazard from occurring in the first place, or if the hazard has occurred, it recognizes it and minimizes the impact of the hazard by controlling it and not allowing it to be released as product.

A CCP controls a hazard that is inherently expected in the product by eliminating it or reducing it to a level at which it is safe.

Key Challenges

There are a number of differences between the requirements of HACCP and HARPC. The PC Rule is not as specific or detailed in the way in which the plan should be documented or designed, as the principles laid out in the National Advisory Committee on Microbiological Criteria for Foods (NACMCF) or Codex Alimentarius. However, the FDA may not have directly stated that certain elements such as product description, intended use or intended user must be included, but they do elude to the fact, as the hazards that must be assessed would require this information to be understood and fed into the system. This means that in order to comply with both systems, the principles of HACCP must be adhered to as well as those of HARPC, so elements such as process flow diagram will still be required.

The key difference between the systems related to how significance is determined within the risk assessment. Both systems require a risk assessment that takes into account the severity of the hazard and the likelihood of the hazard occurring. The results of this should determine if the hazard is a significant food safety risk, where it is, and whether a PC is required. Hazards that are not significant would need to be managed through the application of PRCs.

The difficulty enters the picture when assessing the likelihood of the hazard occurring, as the two sets of requirements contradict each other:

The PC Rule asks for the likelihood to be determined in the absence of any controls.

HACCP principle states that the likelihood should be determined, taking the controls into account.

It is acceptable to HACCP principles to follow the requirement for HARPC and carry out the assessment in the absence of any controls, however there are consequences in doing so. The number of significant hazards that will be produced will be substantially higher than in a traditional HACCP plan. Each of these hazards will need to be controlled through a PC, and the CCPs will need to be determined from this set of PCs. Using the typical CCP decision tree is not a practical solution, as the result will likely mean that most of the PCs become CCPs. Nobody wants to go back to the days when facilities had many, many CCPs, as this produces an unmanageable and ineffective food safety system.

A new methodology is required for the determination of CCPs—one that is clear and does not contradict the HACCP principles.

The Benefits of HARPC

Although the introduction of HARPC makes designing and developing a food safety plan more complicated, it does have its benefits. Over time, as pre-requisite programs have developed, the number of hazards that are managed by PRCs have grown—to the point now where most facilities only have a handful, if not one or two, CCPs.

Through a HACCP plan, even very significant food safety hazards can be managed by the PRCs. These significant hazards are therefore managed, just the same as insignificant or low-risk hazards. This may be the reason that the most common recalls and withdrawals today are due to lack of control from pre-requisites.

By introducing the new tier of PCs and assessing significance without taking any controls into account, we mitigate this problem. Ensuring that the key food safety hazards, which perhaps are not critical, are managed through the application of PCs and they thus receive additional focus.

Resources

  1. “Comparing the Standards for HARPC”. Techni-k. Retrieved from http://www.techni-k.co.uk/comparing_the_standards_for_HARPC.
  2. Marsh, K. (2016). Combine Your HACCP & HARPC Plan.
FST Soapbox

Intelligent Algorithms Shape Food Safety

By Steven Burton
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The North American food safety testing market is projected to reach $16 billion by 2020, according to a recent study by Markets and Markets. In just a few short years, it’s safe to say that purchasing a software solution to create and manage food safety programs will become ubiquitous, equivalent to that of employing any other software tool such as Microsoft Excel.

However, there is a broad range of capabilities for food safety software, and some solutions are much more complex than others. Many types of HACCP software operate as part of an ERP system, merely managing documents online under IT administration. But the technological capabilities of a food safety management system are endless in terms of value-driven innovation. Any competitive software on the market should go further, and be flexible and agile enough to meet and contain the challenges of a changing regulatory landscape and aggressive market space.

One of the ways food safety management can take things further is through the use of intelligent algorithms that can help food safety professionals get the most out of their software—and their HACCP plan. For example, instead of manually searching for all the physical, chemical and biological hazards (as well as radiological hazards under HARPC), intelligent algorithms can use data from other HACCP plans to suggest hazards. By comparing facility types, process flows, ingredients and more, a sophisticated algorithm can make smart suggestions that give food safety professionals a significant leg up, cutting down research time and providing a context of learning since it’s much easier to learn by example than starting from scratch. As such, suggestions can equip food safety professionals with the right mindset to discover potential hazards.

There are core benefits to searching for software technologies that have intelligent algorithms in place to analyze and retrieve data for those food businesses looking to get the most long-term value out of their vendor purchase.

Facilities with High-Risk Products and Complex Process Steps

High-risk foods are defined by the FDA as foods that “may contain pathogenic microorganisms and will normally support formation of toxins or growth of pathogenic microorganisms.” High-risk foods include raw meat, poultry, fish, dairy, fresh fruit, and vegetables, and processors working with these products handle more hazards and process steps in general than processors making low-risk foods. Instead of sorting through hundreds of hazards, facilities with high-risk products and complex process steps are able to skip much of the manual grunt work and simply select automatically generated hazards and process steps suggested to them at their fingertips.

Small Business Owners or Basic Food Safety Professionals

It’s common for small food businesses to put the bulk of their food safety duties on the shoulders of the owner. For many who have no previous background in food safety, there can be an unexpected and frustrating learning curve to overcome before you can pay the sweat equity required to develop a HACCP plan, and not for lack of trying. Similarly, junior food safety employees in new facilities can find established food safety practices challenging to navigate. Through intelligent algorithms, a software system can reinforce food safety hazards and process steps that might have been missed or forgotten by making them instantly available for retrieval and selection.

Giving Back Time

Recordkeeping is an essential component to an excellent food safety culture. In the grand scheme of things, managing resources to allocate time to high-level tasks that require human expertise on the production floor is a critical activity that most food safety professionals prioritize. Having more time to correct potential risk actions is crucial to ensuring the lowest possible likelihood of a recall. Smart software systems facilitate better employee time management practices so they can maximize their hours for meaningful, rather than menial, work. By taking back the time that would have been spent researching hazards, smart suggestions provide food safety professionals with a starting point that allows them to choose from a curated selection without delay.

Experimental Facilities with Changing Product Portfolio

Facilities that have a tendency to experiment with product development (i.e., food startups) are prone to using a significant amount of ingredients and formulas. When it comes time to present the right information for inspections and audits, this translates into a substantial amount of additional work in maintaining a HACCP plan. Intelligent algorithms enable a clear and organized focus, eliminating the minutiae surrounding information management of experimental product development.

New Regulations and International Compliance

Around the world new regulations surrounding acceptable food safety documentation are coming into effect; notably, FSMA even adds to the traditional hazards included under HACCP. For foreign exporters as well as American businesses, regulatory expectations for a more comprehensive approach to hazards and critical control points are higher than in the past. In the face of new regulatory demands, smart algorithms help food businesses lay out a common framework so that they can build internationally compliant programs

Extra Safeguard Check

Human error is inevitable. The beauty of technology is that it acts as a safeguard to ensure there are no glaring omissions that may have an impact on food safety duties. As a final once-over before sending in the HACCP plan, it makes good sense to have smart suggestions to cover all the bases.

Intelligent algorithms allow food safety professionals to do more with their time. By selecting from suggestions related to ingredients, materials, packing and process steps, a considerable amount of time is restored to the work day compared to the time-consuming exercise of manually assembling lists. The main benefit to a food safety software solution with intelligent algorithms is to reinforce the right mindset for listing physical, chemical and biological hazards for ingredients, material, processes and beyond. While smart suggestions should always be verified by a food safety professional familiar with the internal operations of a facility, for companies that aim to work smarter but not harder, smart algorithms are a key feature to keep in mind when researching software vendors.

John Sammon, ParTech
Retail Food Safety Forum

Break the Pencil: Goodbye Paper, Hello Technology

By John Sammon III
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John Sammon, ParTech

With the passage of FSMA, any location that handles food for public consumption must implement Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) plans to reduce food safety risks across the food chain. Many businesses with multiple locations in the restaurant and retail industries are finding that traditional paper-based methods of record keeping are no longer adequate to comply with the FSMA. By abandoning paper-based systems and adopting cloud-based technology, restaurant and retail locations can embrace and enforce stronger food safety cultures and help eliminate human error.

According to the CDC, each year an estimated 48 million Americans get sick, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die from foodborne disease.

Why? The process of purchasing, transporting, preparing and serving food heavily revolves around individual human behaviors related to cooking, cleaning, handling and refrigerating food. When employees do not follow the correct processes and procedures, it can lead to accidental food safety issues.

FSMA & HACCP Plans

In an effort to shift from responding to food contamination incidents after the fact to proactively preventing them, the FDA introduced FSMA in 2011. To allow businesses time to adjust to new rules and regulations, the FSMA requirements are implemented in phases, which began in September 2015 and will continue through May 2016.

As part of a larger food safety initiative, FSMA requires any business that handles food for public consumption to implement a HACCP plan. The purpose of the plan and its procedures is to identify potential hazards in any food-related processes where a lapse in attention or failure to complete a task could turn a potential hazard into an actual one.

The three main components of an HACCP plan that are required to be documented are:

  • Hazards: Evaluate potential hazards that exist in the enterprise. For example, how, when and why Salmonella or Listeria could migrate into a finished product
  • Critical Control Points: Identify critical control points where failures could occur, such as when products are moved from preparation to the sales floor
  • Preventative Steps: Establish the preventative steps that must be followed at each critical control point to reduce hazards, for example, interval checks to make sure correct temperatures, whether hot or cold, are consistently maintained

FSMA also mandates a record of food safety compliance to ensure a company follows its HACCP plan. Every location must document all actions, including ongoing monitoring of when a problem was spotted and corrective actions taken. These records, which have traditionally been created and maintained with pen or pencil and paper logs, must be kept for a minimum of two years.

Deli worker checks cold food temperatures using a handheld probe and wireless device. Maintaining proper food temperatures and recording checks for consistency is an important part of HACCP guidelines.
Deli worker checks cold food temperatures using a handheld probe and wireless device. Maintaining proper food temperatures and recording checks for consistency is an important part of HACCP guidelines.

Compliance Challenges

With multiple locations and an ever-changing labor force, it is difficult for companies to be confident that the food they sell is safe and that every employee is acting diligently when it comes to food safety across the entire enterprise.

In a busy restaurant or retail environment with ever-changing customer demands for a variety of different products and services, a food safety culture and plan can unintentionally become compromised.

With local farmers to international food manufacturers supplying fresh, frozen and prepared foods and a variety of workers in contact with each for different reasons, it can be difficult to track food safety procedures.

Add an inefficient, manual, paper-based food safety record-keeping system that does not proactively remind employees to complete tasks or prompt corrective actions when needed, and you are opening the door to potential problems.

It’s Time to Break the Pencil

Companies must implement the highest standards of food safety processes at all levels and locations. Once a food safety culture is defined, it needs to be enforced every day. Employees should be well trained on policies, feel empowered and mandated to behave consistently.

A major part of the solution is abandoning traditional pen or pencil and paper-based record-keeping systems. By adopting technology, restaurants and retail locations can embrace and enforce stronger a food safety culture and help eliminate human error.

Electronic and intelligent checklists and digital record keeping on mobile, handheld solutions that are integrated into the Internet of Things (IoT) represent a major technological advancement over what was previously possible, and can manage and dynamically influence food safety processes. Through connectivity to the cloud, mobile, digital solutions can be deployed anywhere throughout a business, from warehouses to sales floors, to prompt the desired behaviors and provide a detailed, accurate audit trail of completion. Devices can also keep track of relevant safety alerts and recalls to improve efficiencies and initiate steps that may not be part of a typical routine.

Daily employee work schedules can be preloaded and custom electronic-based checklists and templates can be built specifically around potential hazards to manage employee tasks and processes. Any missed steps or violations are flagged for easy correction.

As tasks are completed, data is electronically gathered and transmitted directly to the cloud where it can be stored, analyzed and reported for compliance.

In addition, through the cloud and IoT, employees at various levels of an organization, from corporate headquarters to store managers, can view and access real-time data from each location. New information can be uploaded from any location and automatically distributed to a particular store, region or all locations across an enterprise. Enterprise-wide access helps ensure all locations are practicing the most up-to-date HACCP plan and procedures.

Digital food safety solutions have many benefits for a business:

  • Overall Food Safety: Ensures critical control points are monitored and proper corrective actions are taken when necessary
  • Higher Performance: Employees are reminded to complete assigned tasks, so more tasks are completed on time with fewer misses
  • Audit Trail: Detailed, automated audit trail of who completed the action, what time it was completed and the data retrieved from the action
  • Process Improvement: A single database of comprehensive information detailing timing, missed checklists, commonly missed items and top violations to help improve overall processes
  • Cost Savings: Fewer resources are needed to complete food safety inspections, a 60% reduction in time compared to pen or pencil and paper-based systems1
  • Quality Improvement: In addition to HACCP compliance, the information gathered can be used for quality control. For example identifying where there has been over- or under-cooking in the food preparation process

Handheld, wireless and cloud-based technologies can serve as more accurate, reliable and efficient systems. Electronic systems are part of the solution for businesses to comply with new FSMA regulations and improve food safety procedures. When implemented properly, these technologies can help turn food safety in a positive direction and potentially avoid the next foodborne illness outbreak.

Reference

  1. National Grocers Innovation Center, Center for Advancing Retail Technology. Intelligent Checklist for Quality and Safety in the Supermarket. Retrieved from http://info.partech.com/whitepaper-intelligent-checklist-for-food-safety

GFSI and the Road to FSMA

By Maria Fontanazza
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Many companies certified to a GFSI scheme appear to have a leg up on preparing for FSMA, especially in the area of documentation and record keeping. During a quick chat with Food Safety Tech, Bob Butcher, group operations manager at Ipswich Shellfish Company, explained how GFSI has helped the seafood processor get ready for FSMA. Do you agree? Sound off in the comments section.

Food Safety Tech: What common challenges do companies experience when managing compliance with a GFSI scheme?

Bob Butcher: Every time there’s a new regulation it’s a matter of understanding how that regulation applies to us. The seafood industry has been regulated by FDA mandatory HACCP requirements for years now. Some of the items that are covered under FSMA have already been covered by the seafood regulations. Our facilities have also undergone third-party audits for a number of years and three are already SQF certified—so in order to meet those certifications, we comply with all the FSMA requirements at this point. That being said, there’s always a challenge or opportunity to make sure we comply with all the regulations and above that, make sure that the quality [of the product] we send to our customers meets both their standards and our standards.

FST: Has being certified to a GFSI scheme helped your company better prepare for FSMA compliance?

Butcher: Because we’re SQF certified and are meeting most of the requirements of the seafood industry, we’re well ahead of meeting FSMA requirements. Maintaining the GFSI requirements put us in great shape for FSMA.

GFSI covers so many areas. [Regarding] vendor compliance, we critically examine the seafood that comes in every day and it’s a very perishable commodity, but every plant is a little different in the talent they have and the number of people. We’ve been able to focus on making sure that the product meets the same criteria at each of the facilities no matter who is receiving it and documenting it accordingly. And whether [complying with] GFSI or FSMA, documentation is important.

We’ve gone the extra step in automating so we can better track how each of the plants and suppliers are performing. We started rolling it out at one plant two years ago and then extended it to all plants. All of our facilities have been under it for a year.  

I think more and more companies are acknowledging the need to automate. With paper forms it’s difficult to make sure the employee has the correct and latest version, and the filing and recovery of that document [is difficult]. If it’s digital, you can get your hands on the latest version any time you want. Plus, you can analyze digital information and easily look for trends.

However, the seafood industry isn’t like a number of other industries—the margins are low, and so cost is absolutely a factor. If it’s a single facility, having paper forms, depending on the extent of the operation, may be acceptable. But if you get into multiple locations, it’s a whole different challenge all together.

FST: What are the broader issues that the seafood industry is currently facing?

Butcher: Supply and sustainability—making sure that you have a handle on the sustainability of the species and are able to explain that to your customers. That ties into record keeping—getting the right product, when it’s an MSC [Marine Stewardship Council] or ASC [Aquaculture Stewardship Council] chain of custody, or whether it’s having the right relationship with the vendors so you know your source. Cost is a concern, along with quality and inventory levels.

There are a lot of very small companies and a lot of them aren’t GFSI certified. A lot of them don’t even have any type of third-party audits, so I’m not sure how ready they are. It’s always a challenge for a small company to get up to speed.

FST: Does compliance with a GFSI scheme help address these issues to some extent?

Butcher: As we started working on GFSI or FSMA, and even HACCP many years ago, we started looking at products differently. You’re documenting more and gaining information—and once you have that information, you can focus on cost factors and inventory. So from that standpoint, it has been very helpful.  At this point, we’re SQF Level, and we plan to go Level 3, which involves more quality parameters and certification. That will greatly impact the product and the profitability as well.

FST: What are your tips for companies in terms of being audit ready?

Butcher: The software program we use helps us maintain our facilities to be as audit ready as we can from a documentation standpoint. With SQF there will be unannounced audits, and it’s always been FDA’s practice or the state inspector’s practice to pop in anyway, so you have to be ready for that inspection at any time. The whole principle of HACCP is to make sure you’re documenting what you’re doing. And whether it’s an auditor or an inspector, they’re coming in at any time and can look at records for the past two years, so you should be in compliance and be able to prove that.

Fritz Kriete
FST Soapbox

5 Ways Food Companies Can Protect Themselves And Customers

By Fritz Kriete
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Fritz Kriete

While illnesses linked to Chipotle restaurants are grabbing headlines, the federal government recently took steps to improve how manufacturers and packagers process and handle food. Last year FDA released several final FSMA rules, giving food companies a roadmap for ensuring food safety. The proactive approach of the regulations can help companies avoid the hazards that lead to disease and allergen contaminations, and even legal troubles. Indeed, unsafe food handling can carry costly consequences from both a financial standpoint as well as in lives lost or harmed.

In 2011, the good intentions of a family-owned cantaloupe company produced tragic results. The company, seeking more natural melons, followed a consultant’s advice and discontinued the chlorine rinse used to wash off contaminants. A Listeria outbreak followed, killing 33 people and hospitalizing 147 more. Although prosecution is rare in foodborne disease outbreaks, the company owners were sentenced to probation, home detention, community service, and $150,000 each in restitution.

A more egregious case occurred in September 2015, when the former CEO of the Peanut Corporation of America was convicted of knowingly shipping Salmonella-tainted peanut butter, which had caused an outbreak that killed nine people and sickened hundreds more. Stewart Parnell was sentenced to 28 years in federal prison.

The new regulations require companies to undertake hazard analyses of their production, along with remedial steps. This scrutiny leads to the creation of a written plan that details the controls to prevent contamination and establish a schedule for periodic testing. This analysis and control system is called the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point, or HACCP.

Adherence to regulations doesn’t necessarily protect a company from liability, but not adhering can sound a company’s death knell when there’s a problem. The following are five ways in which companies can protect themselves:

  1. Put food safety first. The company culture must revolve around it. The message that the HACCP plan is to be followed must be relayed to all levels of the organization. Otherwise, companies can face severe consequences, based on the question, “Did the company behave badly enough to face strong punitive damages?”
  2. Concentrate on internal communications. In many cases, food recalls happen because of a breakdown in the communication process.
  3. Hire accredited consultants. Make sure that your consultants are qualified and have been accredited by an appropriate body such as the International HACCP Alliance or The Seafood HACCP Alliance.
  4. Don’t overlook supplied products. Suppliers should adhere to strict contamination-prevention protocols, but don’t assume they follow guidelines completely or have flawless processes.  Your contracts with them should require that they periodically audit their facilities and share the audit results with you.
  5. Label clearly. Packaging language might state that a product is manufactured in facilities that also process allergens such as peanuts and tree nuts. These types of warnings allow consumers to make up their own minds. It is also a reminder that HACCP plans must address prevention of cross-contamination (i.e., putting cleaning protocols in place if products with and without allergens are processed on the same equipment).

Many problems involve internal slip-ups or problems with supplied ingredients that allow contaminated food to reach consumers. If the contamination becomes known—and it often is not, when victims don’t equate their illnesses with tainted food—the businesses involved often face strict liability, meaning they carry some blame even if they didn’t act in a negligent manner and cause the problem directly.

Keep in mind that liability isn’t the only consequence of non-compliance. A recall or outbreak can damage the reputation of the company and the product. The cantaloupe tragedy sent sales of the melons plummeting, even in states not linked to the outbreak.

To minimize the hit on sales, a recall team should be in place, with a plan modeled on crisis management principles. Team members should come from all divisions of the company, including transportation and distribution to track down products, and communications to manage messaging. Legal counsel should be on board to advise on the ramifications.

When it comes to foodborne outbreaks, it’s a matter of taking classic prevention and preparation steps. Do everything you can to keep it from happening, but be ready just in case it does.

FST Soapbox

Technology Can Help Food Manufacturers Navigate FSMA in 2016

By Jack Payne
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It’s safe to say that 2015 has been one of the worst years in recent history when it comes to food contamination. Everyone from global food manufacturers to major restaurant chains and grocery stores perpetuated or experienced outbreaks of foodborne illnesses like E. coli, Listeria, Salmonella and Norovirus. From farm to fork, the food industry needs to evalutate and improve its processes to deliver the utmost health and safety to consumers.

With FSMA and tougher industry standards in place, there will be much more emphasis on preventative measures—especially for food manufacturers. FSMA establishes a legislative mandate to require comprehensive, prevention-based controls across the food supply to prevent or significantly minimize the likelihood of problems occurring.

FSMA
Not surprisingly, most food manufacturers say they are being impacted by FSMA

Even though most of the regulations affiliated with the FSMA have just gone into effect, or will go into effect in 2016, food manufacturers are already feeling the heat. A recent survey found that the majority (81%) of food manufacturers are experiencing some level of impact from current and impending regulations. Processes pertaining to traceability, supplier and facility audits, HACCP and product recalls are causing the most concern. While most food manufacturers support FSMA’s mission to put prevention at the forefront, the reality is that many aren’t equipped to handle growing compliance demands.

There are still a sizeable number of food manufacturers that manually record their processes for identifying, evaluating and controlling food safety hazards. In fact, more than 30% of food manufacturers document their HACCP plan in this manner.

FSMA Infographic
58% of manufacturers surveyed are using an in-house system for recording issues as part of their HACCP plan

With FSMA, there isn’t any room for human error. Although technology with track and trace capabilities has been available long before FSMA came into play, obstacles such as complicated interfaces, lack of interoperability and resources deterred wide-spread adoption among food manufacturers. The tide is changing here. Advanced enterprise resource planning (ERP) solutions have built in track and trace functionality that is more intuitive and integrates seamlessly with vital manufacturing execution systems (MES).

FSMA and traceability
Manufacturing execution solutions play a key in helping companies achieve traceability. All figures courtesy of Aptean. View full infographic

Although the FDA does not have the legal authority to require companies to use computerized traceability solutions, implementing track and trace technology is one of the most effective measures a food manufacturer can take when it comes to FSMA compliance. It can help create a more systematic and reliable account throughout the lifecycle of a food product, and also establish preventative measures, including automated product checkpoints and quality tests throughout the supply chain. Ultimately, this gives food manufacturers the opportunity to identify and prevent issues before they become epidemics.

In addition to taking strong measures to prevent contamination, under FSMA the FDA now has authority to initiate mandatory recalls. Although mandatory recalls are anticipated to be rare, food manufacturers should use track and trace technology to make recall preparation routine. When used properly, these tools can pinpoint specifics about a product in real time, streamline quality reporting, and launch mock recalls.

Of course, technology is not only the vessel for improvement—to actually see change, food manufacturers need to take a critical look at their processes and make adjustments. Automating poor processes will only accelerate poor results, therefore approaching FSMA compliance and implementing track and trace technology requires time and strategy.

Ultimately, your company’s reputation is on the line as well as the safety of consumers. Dedicating necessary resources toward compliance planning and technology implementation is always well worth the investment. Many of the companies and suppliers that were in this year’s spotlight for contamination will look back on 2015 with regret because safety wasn’t at the forefront. Let’s learn from the hard lessons they provided and make 2016 the year that food manufacturers win back consumer trust and focus on quality.

Jill Bender, SafetyChain

GFSI in the Age of FSMA Series Helps Companies Prepare for FSMA Compliance

By Jill Bender
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Jill Bender, SafetyChain

The “GFSI in the Age of FSMA” three-part series wrapped up in early December, providing the food safety community insight on how leading GFSI schemes align with, and help prepare for, compliance with FSMA.  The series was presented by SafetyChain with media partner FoodSafetyTech.

Each GFSI scheme leader from SQF, BRC and FSSC 22000 discussed how their schemes align with FSMA in several key areas, including Supply Chain Controls, migrating Food Safety Plans from HACCP to HARPC, and audit readiness. While each scheme leader provided insights and details on how their scheme aligns with FSMA, common key themes across all three sessions included: 

  • FSMA’s focus on prevention vs. reaction is similar and aligns with GFSI’s objectives; Scheme certifications and ongoing compliance is centered around continuously assessing risks and putting preventive measures in place to mitigate those risks
  • GFSI’s global approach surrounding a company’s food safety program—to ensure better supply chain controls internally, upstream and downstream prepares companies to manage FSMA’s increased focus on both domestic and foreign supplier compliance
  • GFSI stringent documentation and recordkeeping requirements—along with unannounced audit protocols—are a strong foundation to help food and beverage companies prepare for FSMA’s “if it isn’t documented you didn’t do it” mantra

The GFSI scheme leaders also spoke about the importance and opportunity companies have to leverage technology tools to help more effectively manage the complexities and requirements of GFSI and FSMA compliance.  Series participants were able to see an example of how these automation tools work and the impact they can have on managing a robust food safety program via a post session demo of SafetyChain Software.

Archived recordings of all three sessions—SQF in the Age of FSMA, featuring Robert Garfield, Senior VP, SQF; BRC in the Age of FSMA, featuring John Kukoly, Director, BRC Americas; and FSSC 22000 in the Age of FSMA, featuring Jacqueline Southee, U.S. Liaison, FSSC 22000—are available and can be accessed here.

Debby Newslow

Strong Prerequisite Programs Half the Battle in FSMA Compliance

By Maria Fontanazza
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Debby Newslow

Having a strong prerequisite program is a key part of maintaining compliance with FSMA and food safety management systems standards. In a recent discussion with Food Safety Tech, Debby Newslow, president of DL Newslow & Associates gave a preview of some of the expertise that she will be sharing during her session at next week’s Food Safety Consortium, “Food Safety/HACCP Prerequisite Programs” (session takes place Thursday, November 19).

Food Safety Tech: What are some of the challenges that companies face in establishing prerequisite programs for HACCP?

Debby Newslow: Understanding the significance of the prerequisite program—a lot of times, employees are [going through the motions] of things like wearing hairnets or not wearing jewelry—but [they need to] understand why it’s important. There’s a weakness in the education of employees. We need to redefine the word “training”, because training should mean education, too and understanding the importance of it. Companies take it for granted—they have defined procedures that they may or may not follow. And the other challenge is commitment and an understanding from management as to why it’s important.

On Wednesday, November 18, Debby Newslow will participate in the Ask the Experts session, “Food Safety Training Challenges”. LEARN MOREFST: What are best practices that companies can implement in this area?

Newslow: They need a program established, along with commitment to and support from a food safety team that has a responsibility to the team to evaluate the effectiveness. They also need support from top management. Every group and department needs to understand their requirements and why they’re important. They need to have the tools and the knowledge to understand what’s needed. Through the food safety team or internal audit team they can have the independence to monitor and look at its effectiveness. A lot of companies hold strong that the auditors need to find everything that’s wrong, and that’s an old school way of thinking.

Educate everyone and encourage them to take ownership for compliance, and use the internal programs and teams to evaluate the effectiveness.

On Thursday, November 19, Debby Newslow will present, Food Safety Management Systems—Understanding the Three Legged Stool” LEARN MOREFST: What do you hope attendees gain from your session on food safety & HACCP PRPs at the Food Safety Consortium?

Newslow: My session is going to be focused on prerequisite programs and how they fit with FSMA and the preventive controls (they really go side-by-side)

  1. I want folks not to be so nervous about FSMA. If they have a strong program now for food safety and HACCP, and have the prerequisite programs identified and managed, they’ll be 95% there for FSMA [compliance]. Companies really need to focus on their internal programs and have a food safety program that is compliant with FSMA, and expand and confirm the effectiveness of these internal programs. Take pest control, for example. Some companies will hire the outside company and will monitor and know the effectiveness on a regular basis. Other companies will hire an outside firm and let them do whatever they want, and not have a clue what’s going on. Then there are smaller companies that have someone come in, spray, and send them a bill, and they won’t even know what the [outside] company is using as an insecticide. So you have different levels, and that’s why we have to understand each program and what is required for effectiveness and compliance.
  2. The role of the prerequisite program and preventive controls is that if you look at recalls in today’s world, 90% of recalls are caused from ineffective or nonexistent prerequisite programs [Newslow estimate]. Very seldom do we see a recall because a CCP fails. We get so hung up on other things and forget why do we take off our jewelry, for example. The odds of something going wrong are thin but when you look at it from the big picture, it can happen and it does happen. I’ll have some significant recent examples in my session.