SafetyChain Blog

Effective food supplier management is a resource-intensive endeavor for food and beverage companies. Ensuring your suppliers are aligning with the food safety regulations and customer requirements your facility must follow is no easy task. While manufacturers and processors have historically relied on offline systems to oversee vendor management, many are finding that web-based tools can transform their processes to drive efficiency and compliance.

Blog post courtesy of Roger Woehl, Chief Technology Officer, SafetyChain Software.

Many of the food safety and quality issues that eat away the bottom line of food production are found in the "Long Tail" of data collection and assessment.

In the last thirty years, huge progress has been made in the speed at which data can be automatically collected and analyzed. This is true in the food industry where high volumes of food quality, safety, and operational data is collected every few milliseconds, seconds, or minutes.

Food safety is the practice of minimizing the risk of food-borne disease outbreak or similar illnesses through specific handling, preparation, and storing activities. It encompasses a broad set of rules and routines that are implemented to reduce health hazards. In the food and beverage industry, food safety activities span far and wide, impacting the supply chain all the way from food’s origin points to where it reaches the final consumer. Practices could encompass food labeling, hygiene, management of import and export inspection, among others.

Blog post courtesy of Eric Hansen, Director of Technical Solutions, SafetyChain Software.

We at SafetyChain are often asked by participants in the food industry how we can help them leverage, make sense of, or progress toward the blockchain. The answer is simple—before any organization can leverage the blockchain, their key records and documents must be digitized.

The Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) requires food manufacturers and processors to have specific measures in place for protecting against acts of intentional adulteration (IA). FSMA food defense specifically aims to protect against acts that could cause wide-scale harm to the public, which may include acts of terrorism. To ensure your facility’s food defense plan is FSMA-compliant, be sure it encompasses the following five goals.

The supply chain poses inherent risks for the food and beverage industry. While supply chain management has always been a complex endeavor, supplier compliance has become an increasing challenge in light of regulatory changes that have taken place within recent years. To ensure safety, quality, and compliance, food and beverage companies are reexamining their supplier management strategies. This is especially true for companies that fall under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

For our July FSMA Fridays session, we took the opportunity to invite food and beverage professionals to submit their most pressing FSMA questions, which are answered below by Dr. David Acheson, Founder & CEO of The Acheson Group.

While there are many topics surrounding FSMA compliance, food fraud is one which has received significant attention. While FSMA’s Intentional Adulteration (IA) rule aims to combat the tampering of the food supply to inflict wide-scale public harm, it also has sections of the Preventive Controls Rule for Human Food which apply specifically to food fraud. Let’s take a look at how food companies can develop a robust food defense plan to address all types of food fraud.

Regulatory compliance can be an overwhelming challenge. Whether your food safety programs revolve around requirements to satisfy the FDA’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) or the USDA, aligning all of the intricate moving parts to meet your overarching compliance goals is no easy feat. This is precisely why industry leaders are implementing regulatory compliance software for food manufacturing.

Allergen control has become an increasing source of concern for the food industry. Product recalls have risen due to undeclared allergens on labels in recent years, but there’s actually a benefit to this issue: companies are now more aware of the steps they must take to achieve allergen audit compliance, and to support public health and safety. Here, we review some key steps you can take to control allergens in your facility.