FSMA Fridays: FSMA's Final Rules — What You Should Do To Prepare Now (Part Two Of Three)

Check out Part 1 of this series

On the last Friday of every month, SafetyChain, a leading provider of food safety and quality assurance automation and compliance solutions, hosts FSMA Fridays™, the leading online forum for the food and beverage community to learn the latest information about the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). Featuring Dr. David Acheson, the popular monthly interactive pod/webcast is sponsored by SafetyChain Software and The Acheson Group.

In the first portion of FSMA Fridays: FSMA's Final Rules — What You Should Do To Prepare Now, Barbara Levin and the Acheson Group Panel— Jennifer McEntire, Anne Sherod, and Valerie Scheidt — discussed what’s not going away with the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act and what food-producing companies should begin doing to prepare for it. Here, in the second portion, the panel dives deeper into the topic and begins handling questions from the pod/webcast’s live audience.

Barbara: Anne, let’s look at this from a scientific standpoint. It sounds like companies are going to need to validate their safety processes. Will FDA be flexible in accepting tried and true operations, or will new studies need to be conducted? What's your thought on this?

Anne: I think that the FDA will accept tried and true. For example, if you're doing a cook process and you're monitoring and endpoint internal product temperature of 160 degrees, they'll probably be okay with that. Same for if you have a pH control in your process that's less than 4.6. Now, these two things eliminate or control certain pathogens in your product that might be a risk in your facility, but make sure that you have the available published literature, the trade association data — something along those lines that's a scientific nature of what's going to be required in your food-safety plan for your validations. These should exhibit tried and true scientific support for those process controls that you have in place today.

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