New Food Traceability Final Rule to Improve Food Safety, Expedite Recalls and Protect Public Health

How much information do you have about the foods your company handles in the course of business? If subjected to a food recall, would you be able to produce clear records delineating every touchpoint where the food was produced, harvested, processed or transformed, shipped, received, and used? How long would it take you to produce all that information when the FDA came calling?

When a foodborne illness outbreak occurs, a complete record of such information is needed to quickly identify a contamination source and trace affected products’ movement through the supply chain so they can be found quickly and removed from distribution. To ensure availability of such traceback data for “high-risk” foods, in particular, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published the “Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods” (Final Rule) in November 2022, and is a key component of FDA’s New Era of Smarter Food Safety Blueprint and implements Section 204(d) of the…