SafetyChain Blog

Looking to prevent food contamination, increase brand confidence, and secure bigger contracts? More and more food manufacturers are pursuing ISO certification to stay competitive and mitigate risk. A single foodborne illness outbreak can damage a company's reputation and cost millions of dollars. Many large retailers and foodservice companies require their suppliers to be ISO-certified because it demonstrates that a company has a strong commitment to food safety. In this blog, understand the advantages of ISO-certification and how you can become eligible.

The Food & Beverage industry proved its resilience in 2020, perhaps more than any other time in history. Here at SafetyChain, we watched as companies overcame enormous pressures to keep shelves stocked and employees healthy in the midst of ever-evolving CDC updates and guidelines. While safety and agility have always been critical to success in the industry, COVID-19 called for quick thinking when supply chains were disrupted, as well as an even stronger commitment to safety - both of our food and employees.

Frequently, manufacturers in the industry use the terms “food safety plan” (FSP) and “HACCP plan” interchangeably. However, there are critical differences between these two concepts. Although both terms can support a robust approach to food safety in food and beverage companies, understanding the nuances of each program is essential to identifying best practices for ensuring compliance. Let’s take a close look into each type of plan and what they entail, along with key differences between the two. 

Paper-based systems continue to be a challenge for many food manufacturers and processors. Yet, the transition to automated record-keeping is often put off, as the task can seem daunting at best. While the timing for a technology implementation may never seem perfect, however, it turns out that this undertaking is well worth the effort. It will lift the burdens of a paper-based system, including tedious tasks, wasted time, and missing or incomplete documents.
Such was the case for HyLife™, a leading pork producer in Canada. Discover how the company solved their paper-related challenges with SafetyChain’s efficiency-driving FSQA solution below.

The start of 2020 brings us not only into a new year, but into an entirely new decade of food safety. Now seems the most fitting time to consider how food safety will evolve through the 2020s, and which shifts will have the greatest impact on the industry.

As 2019 came to a close, a couple of new FSMA developments emerged. For one, the FDA proposed a rule in regards to Section 202 of FSMA, which would require the use of an accredited lab for eligible facilities. For instance, upon receipt of a 483 notice, facilities could be required to go through an accredited lab when performing finished product and zone 1 contact surface testing to control risk. It’s also possible this rule could give the FDA the authority to request data from lab results as soon as they’re available, which would have a significant impact on the industry.

How to Prevent Hepatitis A in Your Food Plants

When we think of preventing food-borne illness, pathogens such as E. coli and salmonella often come to mind. Yet, there are other illnesses which can be transmitted through food, including the hepatitis A virus (also known as HAV). While only a small percentage of cases are believed to be acquired through food exposure, an HAV-infected food handler could pass the illness along to dozens of individuals. For this reason, it’s important for all food manufacturers, processors, restaurants, and retail establishments to take a defensive approach against the spread of this condition. 

The Importer Preventive Controls under the Safe Food for Canadians Regulations (SFCR) is of great interest to Canadian importers as well as U.S.-based companies exporting food to Canada. While SFCR is very similar to FSMA, there are some inherent differences.

September saw two noteworthy FSMA developments of which food companies throughout the U.S. should be aware. For one, the FDA and the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture (NASDA) have recently reached an agreement to partner together to implement the FSMA Produce Safety Rule within the industry.

On July 24, 2019, the FDA announced the user fee for the Voluntary Qualified Importer Program (VQIP). Participation in this program may be an attractive option for U.S.-based food companies who wish to expedite the import process for human and animal foods. The user fee for the program is $16,681, which will support program benefits from October 1, 2019, through September 30, 2020. Here, we will explore what participation in the program entails.