The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) conducts a public consultation on a proposed regulation related to smarter food safety in the United States.

On September 23, 2020, the FDA published that regulation to establish additional traceability record-keeping requirements for people who manufacture, process, pack, or preserve certain foods defined in the regulation.

Food traceability is the ability to follow the movement of a food product and its ingredients through all steps of the supply chain, both backwards and forwards.

Traceability involves documenting and linking the chain of production, processing and distribution of food products and ingredients.

According to a notification to the WTO, in the event of a foodborne illness outbreak or contamination event, efficient product tracing helps the FDA and those who produce and sell food quickly find the source of the contaminated product and identify where the contamination may have occurred.

FDA

This allows for faster removal from the market of affected products, reducing the incidence of foodborne illness.

The proposed regulation would require individuals who manufacture, process, package, or maintain foods on the Food Traceability List (including foods that contain listed foods as ingredients) keep certain records that describe their traceability operations and the foods listed that manipulate.

This information can help FDA understand your procedures and traceability records when it reviews them during a foodborne illness outbreak or routine inspection.

The record keeping requirements in the proposed rule would only apply to foods on the Food Traceability List.