President's Report
Bob Bauer
Association of Food Industries, Inc.
Tick,
tick, tick. Some of you reading this probably thought of a time bomb. While
that can be true for some people for the subject I’m going to cover, for most
the tick, tick, tick simply is a reminder that the clock continues to move –
toward FSMA implementation.
Final
rules to implement the Food Safety Modernization Act will be released beginning
in the summer of 2015. Tick, tick, tick. If your company has paid attention to
what was in the proposed rules and taken steps to address those requirements,
the ticking is just the clock in the background. Keep being proactive; keep
protecting yourself. We don’t expect many changes in the final rules, so the
work you’ve done to date puts you ahead of the game. The final rules won’t go
into effect immediately; there will be a phase in time of one to two years in
most cases, depending on the size of the company. Though that ticking noise may
seem to get a little louder at times, you can keep it as background noise with
continued compliance efforts. Don’t let the length of that implementation time
fool you. It’s not as long as it sounds and stopping efforts aimed at ensuring
compliance will only make the ticking sound louder at some point down the road.
The
time bomb scenario comes into play for those who have not paid attention to the
proposed FSMA requirements and/or have not taken steps to ensure compliance. As
the guys on the late-night TV infomercials say, Act Now! Don’t Delay!
Again,
we don’t expect a lot of changes from the proposed to the final versions of the
rules. So for those who are saying, “we’re waiting until the final rules are
published”, bad move. I doubt there’s a company on the planet that has or will
put together a preventive controls plan with no required changes. So why put
off 100 percent of the initial work for the possibility that rule changes will
impact 5 percent of the plan? Putting things off until the final rules are
published leaves you that much less time to make any required changes to your
plan.
The
“plan” is foundation upon what FSMA is built. It refers to a preventive control
plan. Every U.S. facility is required to have a preventive control plan in
place that identifies all potential food safety hazards, outlines steps to
address those hazards and spells out how the plan will be monitored and
verified. FDA can’t directly require foreign facilities to meet these
requirements, so the law requires the U.S. importer to be able to ensure the
food being imported by the company meets or exceeds the requirements U.S.
producers must meet. Therefore, FSMA requires importers to have the preventive
control plans for every facility from which it imports.
So
what steps should people be taking?
Foreign
exporters shipping to the U.S.: Design your preventive controls plan. Most
companies have such a plan in place but it’s called by a different name. Many
people are concerned that although they have a plan in place to meet
requirements in the European Union or someplace else, the certifications, etc.
are not recognized in the U.S. A key thing to keep in mind is that the plan has
to ensure the food is safely prepared; the law does not spell out what
certifications are accepted. So a plan a company has in place for the EU, for
example, could very well meet most or all of the FSMA requirements.
Here’s
a step to take that not only protects you but sends a strong statement about
your commitments to quality and the U.S. market – ask your U.S. customers for a
date by which they want to receive your preventive control plans. Not only does
it show you’re being proactive, it can give you an idea of how much the
customer knows about FSMA regulations. This is important because an importer’s
failure to have sufficient plans from each of its customers could lead to FDA
halting that company’s operations. You want to work with progressive companies
that take the steps needed to protect themselves and you.
U.S.
importers: Request preventive control plans from every facility from which you
import. Remember, this is facility-specific, not company-specific. So if you
import from a company with more than one facility, get the preventive control
plans from all of the facilities producing product you sell. It’s not enough
just to get the plans. You need to review them because if a problem arises, the
importer is ultimately responsible. Since some of your suppliers will need time
to develop/adjust their plans, request this information as soon as possible.
The
relationship between U.S. importers and their foreign suppliers and the FSMA
requirements that further connect them are so important there are two articles
elsewhere in this publication by attorneys at two leading law firms that cover
the topic. Though the perspective in the articles and the report you’re reading
now are all a little different, one message is the same – don’t wait! Tick,
tick, tick.
Source:http://www.afius.org
