Supply Chain

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Food companies that prepare fresh food items often source individual ingredients from primary suppliers. The food safety risk is typically controlled at primary supplier plants or farms; however, the food safety stakes are high. It is necessary to have "boots on the ground" to assess how food safety and quality programs are integrated with the front-line operation for those suppliers who mitigate food safety risk on the behalf of a receiving company.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has published a new webpage with resources for farmers and producers of human and animal food whose crops are adversely affected by severe weather incidents. 

Food safety has always been an important issue, but like workplace health and safety, its profile is growing and must be viewed as a business essential.

Squadle Sense™ Remote Temperature Monitoring helps defend against food spoilage and saves work time.

In our ongoing coverage of the supply chain crisis and how it is affecting food processors, Food Safety Insights surveyed more than 150 food processors in North America and around the world about how they are managing their recovery, the difficulties they are still coping with, what changes they have made and will be making in the future. Most processors told us that they continue to have some level of difficulty with high prices, availability of employees (including truck drivers), and supply shortages.  A large majority (about 75 percent) also tell us that they plan to implement changes and to manage their supply chains differently to avoid these issues in the future.

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) has reviewed Regulation 2019/1793: Controls Applied to Imported Food and Food Safety, and has proposed amendments to the legislation for the first time since the UK’s exit from the EU.

The Produce Traceability Initiative (PTI) aims to explore how technology can enhance traceability solutions in the produce sector with a new working group.

The U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Economic Research Service found that Salmonella caused 80 percent of pathogen and toxin violations from 2002–2019, based on a recent study of import refusals.

This article provides an overview of the status of the rules and regulations regarding nutritional labeling of food packaged at the global level and its impact on consumers' understanding. New and consumer-friendly proposed solutions (e.g., Nutri-Score, also known as the five-color nutrition label) are also presented. 

The COVID-19 pandemic dramatically disrupted the food supply. This article seeks to explain the transcendent lessons of this national emergency, with the hope that being aware of them will help national decision-makers better prepare for next time. Our food systems, like the larger supply chain, will be challenged in the future with new kinds of disruptions, making it essential that mistakes are not repeated and that proactive, correct solutions are discovered and preparations made now.