Inspection

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The Northeast Center to Advance Food Safety (NECAFS) recently announced its new online Produce Safety Handbook for Buyers. The handbook is formatted as an interactive website that clarifies the complex landscape of food safety regulations and standards across different states in the U.S. Northeast.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) has established a uniform appeals time period requirement for the filing of appeals of certain FSIS food safety inspection decisions or actions.

The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) is seeking stakeholder input on changes to a framework that would increase the frequency of primary production official control inspections for less compliant dairy establishments in England and Wales. 

Posting health department restaurant inspection scores at restaurants and using letter grades for restaurant inspection results are linked with fewer foodborne illness outbreaks, found a study partly funded by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). 

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has released a guidance for industry that describes the actions, behaviors, and statements made by a foreign food establishment or foreign government that the agency considers to be a refusal of an FDA inspection.

A recent review provides insight into the challenges of conducting retail food inspections during the COVID-19 pandemic, and summarizes lessons that can be learned for future unprecedented public health events.

We have been monitoring the relationships between food processors and regulators for a number of years. Our attention to this topic started with the implementation of FSMA to watch the evolution of the FDA's enforcement posture, as well as inspection and sampling procedures related to the new requirements. Now that the FDA has resumed its regular in-person inspections, we asked processors: (1) whether they have had an inspection so far in 2022 and, if so, did FDA collect any samples; (2) now that processors are seeing inspectors again, do they still agree that FDA "educates before it regulates"; and (3) with their experiences from recent and previous inspections, what do processors wish that regulators understood better? This column presents answers from more than 300 food processors in every category on these and related regulatory questions. 

A California U.S. District Court has upheld the authority of swine processing plant employees to pre-sort animals prior to slaughter as outlined in the Modernization of Swine Slaughter Inspection Rule under the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s New Swine Inspection Service.

The National Association of County and City Health Officials recently published a study, grounded in the Voluntary National Retail Food Regulatory Program Standards, that analyzed the factors affecting the implementation of food safety risk factor intervention strategies among local retail food regulatory programs.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) and the state of Oregon have finalized a cooperative agreement that allow for Oregon’s inspection program to inspect meat products produced for shipment within the state.