Inspection

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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.

The Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO) published a guidance that clarifies the differences between mandatory requirements of the Produce Safety Rule (PSR) and multiple U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Good Agricultural Practice (GAP) audits.

AIB International has updated its Consolidated Standards for Inspections, and the group will be providing free educational sessions and resources for stakeholders regarding the updates.

The Food Safety Authority of Ireland recently published an audit report that focused on food businesses’ levels of compliance with food law as it relates to traceability and labeling for meat products.

During a Tuesday afternoon workshop of the 2022 Food Safety Summit, regulators and the regulated industry shared suggestions for how to better communicate together and meet regulated requirements while maintaining a sensible level of operational necessity.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many companies to pivot to virtual food safety audits and inspections, but there has been reluctance to sustain this model of remote evaluations. Recently, advances have emerged in Information and Communication Technology (ICT) and development of novel approaches to auditing that have worked to bridge the gap and help virtual audits and inspections move closer to gaining equivalency to traditional onsite formats.

Understanding the types of violations observed during inspections is a requirement for correctly citing a violation and providing quality feedback to the facility operator. Breakdowns in this chain of communication can lead to additional inspections and possible enforcement actions, which waste valuable time, money, and effort. To ensure that this chain is firm, inspectors are provided with access to training and continuing education, as needed, to properly identify violations and apply their guiding regulations.

Food Safety Matters welcomes Erik Mettler and Michael Rogers with FDA's Office of Regulatory Affairs and Travis Waller with the Utah Department of Agriculture and Food to discuss the Domestic Mutual Reliance program and the many benefits of formal agreements between FDA and state partners.