FDA Prepares to Broaden Traceability Requirements for Food Supply Chains

Interesting article of how the U.S. Food and Drug Administration is cracking down once again on food producers, with a new and tougher requirement for product safety and traceability.

The following article was posted by: Robert J. Bowman, SupplyChainBrain Titled: FDA Prepares to Broaden Traceability Requirements for Food Supply Chains
URL: https://www.supplychainbrain.com/blogs/1-think-tank/post/35137-fda-prepares-to-broaden-traceability-requirements-for-food-supply-chains
Article Posted: June 6, 2022

The key take-aways from the article are as follows:

• FDA is cracking down once again on food producers for requirement for product safety and traceability
• Requiring additional recordkeeping and reporting requirements for persons who manufacture, process, pack or hold foods the agency has designated for inclusion on the Food Traceability List.
• Use to be a traceability of 'one up to one back up' now has to be anyone that 'touches it'
• Reporting time frames have also increased with tracking times reduced from 10 days to 24 hours.
• If this goes into law, grace period of two years within which companies unable to supply the required information would not be subject to penalties
• Penalties for non-compliance could amount to substantial fines or even jail time
• At the grocery or restaurant end, software allows sellers to scan the applicable information and determine whether a given product is being subject to recall
• The technology makes the process relatively straightforward even for a restaurant chain with thousands of locations and an extensive list of ingredients to manage.

This article is similar to our previous article: RFID technology tested by Chipotle to improve food traceability

Costmenu can help restaurant owners address the concerns noted above as we provide the following solutions:

If there are recalls track detailed ingredient lists on Costmenu for quick analysis of replacements

By tracking detailed lists of food items and ingredients in Costmenu's platform, users can quickly identify any recalled items if they arise. As noted above if users have multiple locations it will prove effective and efficient to quickly assess what food item may need to be replaced and how it can affect the menu and the items made with those. Costmenu provides visual graphs showing how much of a food item is used and what portions and where those would need to change.

Track and monitor your vendor and food suppliers.

As noted in our prior posts about Food Prices and Corporations, by keeping purchase records on your vendors users can determine how effective or fairly you are being serviced not only by pricing but also by regulation conformance. Using Costmenu will allow you to monitor your purchases and the costs associated with them and if those vendors are keeping you up to date on any issues. Costmenu users can rate the service of each purchase order and that rating has the ability to be subjective to what is important to the user such as compliance to FDA regulations.

About Costmenu:

Costmenu is a food/menu/recipe costing software that offer many advantages over excel spreadsheets and other inventory management programs. Costmenu integrates a powerful dashboard, food, prepared, and menu item costing features, menu building features, custom qr code label makers, document storage, event/catering management features, data security, performance measurement, data analysis and comparisons, CRM, and generation of various reports. For more information on Costmenu, visit https://costmenu.com, email sales@costmenu.com, or phone (949) 274-4814.