FDA advances traceability of foods

A Major Milestone in the New Era of Smarter Food Safety

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has proposed a new rule that lays the foundation for the end-to-end food traceability across the food industry that FDA will be working toward over the next decade as part of the New Era of Smarter Food Safety initiative.

When we say traceability, what we are really talking about is the ability to track a food at every step of the supply chain. While limited to certain foods, this proposed rule would create a first-of-its-kind standardized approach to traceability recordkeeping, paving the way for industry to adopt and leverage more digital, tech-enabled traceability systems both in the near term and the future. 

FDA has also released a draft Food Traceability List that identifies foods to which the additional recordkeeping requirements would apply.

More comprehensive traceability through access to records of key data elements associated with critical tracking events in food production and distribution has the potential to help pinpoint the exact sources of foods involved in outbreaks.

Not only does this help us to remove potentially unsafe products from the market more quickly, preventing additional illness or death, but it also helps to conduct root cause investigations to figure out what went wrong leading to the outbreak