December 8, 2009 was the end of the enforcement discretion period for FDA's new program for keeping contaminated food out of the food supply.
The law requires any "responsible party"--which includes any registered food facility that manufactures, processes, packs, or holds food for human or animal consumption--to issue a report to the online portal within 24 hours if they become aware of food that could likely cause serious consequences to the people or animals. A farm is defined as a facility if it either co-mingles products from several locations or does any one of a very wide variety of activities to prepare the product for market including washing, cooling, trimming, labeling, or packaging. These farms, regardless of size or type of production, would be subject to FDA registration.
The only two foods explicitly exempt are infant formula and dietary supplements. The mandated system applies to pet food and animal feed as well as international food facilities.
You can either read the whole FRF regulations on FDA's website or read about the Key Definitions, Reporting Process and Potential consequences at this website:
www.foodproductdesign.com/articles/2009/12/reporting-food-safety-issues.aspx
Having electronic records ready in a case like this is essential to every facility listed above. As you can see on USDA and FDA's WebPages, recalls of contaminated food happens almost every day.
ScoringAg electronic Site-Specific Recordkeeping Item-level records, as required in the new Food-Safety-Bill, can be provided from any facility in the supply-chain from field to fork to the authorities in seconds.
ScoringAg leads the worldwide agriculture and food industry as it provides the only complete electronic recordkeeping and traceback system with global standards, working in different languages, where records can be moved within the secure system from one owner to the next in real time.
A label on a box with a lot number does not work under the new law. Lot numbers are not unique identifiers and can be duplicated worldwide any time, any place. Without an adequate recordkeeping system it's like you buy a license plate for your car and there is no database behind to keep the information. (That would be great, but is doesn't work this way.)
To set up a complete recordkeeping and traceback system in ScoringAg is easy, fast and inexpensive and has worked for many years. As ScoringAg is webbased there is no need to buy multiple software programs, installing servers and hiring IT people. Just Open an Account online or one of our representatives will help. We have 1800 agriculture products to choose from, all ingredients (farms mixing feed will need the ingredient tables), farm and food machinery, GAP and HACCP records. Software programs, they are not capable to send the traceback information into an interoperable system, like ScoringAg in order to send the record with the product and have the information available at a mouse click, are only good for internal management purpose, but not for the required traceback documentation. ScoringAg is the only provider of All-up and All-Down item-level traceback from Field-to-Fork, including Case, Container or Pallet.
The best part for all facilities is the fact that the needed Traceback Code can be created with the information from the database without any extra cost and printed on the label of choice and only as many as needed. ScoringAg automatically generates traceback codes as an unique identifier, that can be applied to every single product with no duplication. From a tomato on item-level to cases or containers.
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