How to prepare for potential changes to US Food Standards?

Hi Everyone,

For those who work more globally in food safety, how are you handling the changes proposed to the US food sector?

Some of the things I'm curious about are:

1. How are you managing or planning to manage US suppliers that may now face a larger gap between federal and potentially state requirements versus the general food safety and sustainability minimums by the rest of the world?

2. If the NOSHA bill passes, how will workplace safety be affected and how will that affect their GFSI certifications and/or sustainability certifications?

3. With the silencing of HHS departments and potential rollbacks of regulations for food manufacturers - will you add more supplier audits to ensure safe food production? 

 

4. If the USDA and FDA reduce regulations and provide less governmental oversight - do you see non-US countries beginning to look at suppliers on a state level?  

 

5. While I expect many suppliers to continue wanting to produce safe food that meets the same requirements they have always followed - do you expect to see a decline or an increase in GFSI certification for US suppliers? 

 

 

here is the real challenge.

 

International trade is based on Federal regulations and countries vet each others program when determining what will be acceptable to import/export

 

So in short, NO other countries WILL NOT be looking at state level as that is not how the IMPORTS are managed

 

• In the case of meat and shellfish, you can import only from countries that have a food safety system that the CFIA has approved and recognized as providing the same level of protection as that provided by the Safe Food for Canadians Act and its regulations. You can find a list of approved meat and shellfish inspection systems and approved establishments for meat and shellfish on the Foreign countries establishments eligible to export meat products to Canada and the Importing live and raw molluscan shellfish webpages.

Types of foreign suppliers

The type of foreign supplier you are sourcing your food from will affect the documentation you need to include in your PCP to demonstrate that you meet the foreign supplier requirements of the SFCR.

1. Importing food from a foreign supplier in a country that the CFIA has entered into a recognition arrangement with, and the food being imported is part of this arrangement

There are 3 types of recognition under CFIA's Foreign Food Safety Systems Recognition Framework. These are:

• foreign food safety systems recognition
• commodity specific recognition
• recognition of systems of inspection as a pre-requisite to trade

In general, the above recognition arrangements mean that we have assessed the food safety system in the foreign country and determined that it provides a similar level of food safety control as that provided by Canada's food safety system.

See the Foreign Food Safety Systems Recognition Framework, and Importing from specific countries for more information.