by Eric Moore, Director of Food Safety & Industry Outreach, Testo North America

FDA's New Era of Smarter Food Safety journey has been full steam ahead since its launch in mid-2020. Check out these notable highlights to understand what progress has been made thus far!

• Core Element 1 - Tech Enabled Traceability: One of the most notable accomplishments has been the finalization of the Food Traceability Rule. This rule is intended to support faster identification and removal of potentially hazardous products from commerce.
• Core Element 2 - Smarter Tools and Approaches for Prevention and Response: Continued work on using Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to improve import safety, Interactive on-line tools for farmers, and began development of standards for Advanced Root Cause Analysis.
• Core Element 3 - New Business Models and Retail Modernization: Food Safety Best Practices for third party delivery service providers and a Food Code Adoption Tool Kit (for regulatory department use) were released.
• Core Element 4 - Food Safety Culture: Over 1000 FDA inspectors trained on food safety culture principles and hosted four webinars focused on the building blocks of food safety culture.

Check out the FDA’s website to learn more about the FDA’s work: FDA 2022 Accomplishments