At a Thursday afternoon session during the 2022 Food Safety Summit, a panel of industry and regulatory officials discussed how food safety culture and behavior can contribute to modernization of the inspection process. The panel was moderated by Steve Mandernach, J.D., Executive Director at the Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO). Panelists included Patrick Guzzle, Vice President of Food Science at the National Restaurant Association; Roberta Wagner, Vice President of Regulatory and Technical Affairs at the Consumer Brands Association; Dionne Crawford, Manager of Restaurant Food Safety Field Partnership at McDonald’s; and Natalie Adan, Division Director of Food Safety at the Georgia Department of Agriculture.
Ms. Wagner, who previously worked within the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA FSIS), was the first panelist to express her thoughts on modernization of the food safety inspection process. Ms. Wagner began by explaining that large and some medium-sized food companies have corporate regulatory technical affairs teams that centrally develop and manage food safety-related programs and plans, to be implemented at the facility level. “Given the diversity of food companies, inspection programs need to be modernized to align more closely with current industry practices, and should be customized ... which means moving away from a one-size-fits-all inspection model,” she said.
