If we start with what we know for sure will happen in 2018, this would be the last sentence of the article. Still, one can make a few educated guesses as a prelude to devising effective regulatory and business strategies 2018.
GAO says the FDA and USDA’s FSIS need to get together on testing imported catfish for residual drugs.
December 20, 2017
The saga dates back to 2012 when the Government Accountability Office said that the responsibility for inspecting catfish should not be reassigned from FDA to the USDA. However, that’s not what happened.
The FDA and U.S. Department of Agriculture can cause concern in the minds of food and drug manufacturers and co-packers. Although these government agencies might be considered demanding at times, they play an important role that ensures there are procedures to protect the safety of the American public. There is an overwhelming amount of project planning and sourcing that goes on in the background of developing a product. Packaging is a large part of that process, which is also highly regulated by the FDA and USDA.
The last year has been one of change. We have a new administration, which includes a new acting undersecretary for food safety and a new acting administrator.
Faster PCR methods, better culture methods, more selective enrichment methods and quantitative biosensor methods all have advance the field of rapid pathogen testing recently.
After 18 years, FSIS has updated Appendix A and other agency guidance on ensuring compliance to the Lethality Performance Standards for certain meat and products.
Every day around the world, in most countries, food products are refused entry—not just due to food safety issues, but also inaccurate paperwork, label issues and adulteration.