Is your food biz as fragile as Southwest?
3-min read
I tried to get ChatGPT to write this week’s post but it didn’t work.
I’ll keep trying. If suddenly my writing gets amazing you’ll know it’s the bot. For now, here’s my take.
When it comes to food safety, I’m sure you are compliant. You pass your audits with flying colors. But if your documentation is still on paper, you are as fragile as Southwest airlines.
You know that last week isht hit the fan for travelers on Southwest. Under normal conditions, the airline works just fine. But the stress of winter storms combined with Southwest’s outdated software led the airline to lose track of pilots’ and flight attendants’ locations and bam! the whole scheduling thing broke.
When traceability breaks in food, we have quick spreading illness, shut downs, and terrible economic harm to businesses. Preventing that is what is behind the latest FSMA rule 204.
If you are thinking “we are fine” because you have a FSQA process, think about how well that process works when under stress and how quickly your org can act. If you have to go flipping through binders, OK yes it can be done, but your team members will be taken off their regular duties and you’ll get behind. Moreover, the latest rule for high risk foods under the Food Traceability List (FTL) now requires additional record keeping.
What kind of additional record keeping will you need?
At key points throughout the supply chain, including at harvesting, initial packing, receiving, processing and shipping, records containing key data elements about foods on the FTL will be required. At the farm level, for example, a farm map showing the area where the food is grown or raised, including geographic coordinates, will be required. ~Frank Yiannas, the FDA's deputy commissioner for food policy and response.
Sounds like a lot.
Not sure if you’re on the FTL? Here’s the list:
· Cheeses other than hard cheese
· Crustaceans
· Cucumbers
· Finfish
· Fresh herbs
· Fresh-cut fruits and vegetables
· Leafy greens
· Melons
· Mollusks
· Nut butters
· Peppers
· Ready-to-eat deli salads
· Shell eggs from domesticated hens
· Sprouts
· Tomatoes
· Tropical tree fruits
Solution
Digitizing all the paperwork is the solution. You will be required to submit your documents to the FDA digitally anyway, so might as well ditch the scanner now. Food safety software has been prohibitively expensive and hard to use. If you’ve explored solutions like IFooDS and Safety Chain, you know they cater to larger entities. But now there is an affordable tool suitable for small to mid-sized operations called Provision Analytics.
Provision is an FSQA tool that digitizes everything from SOPs to deviations to records and can be configured to align with all 36 GFSI food safety schemes.
You can listen to Provision’s founder Erik Westlom on the latest episode of The Modern Acre pod here
Get on it. Don’t get caught in a shut down like Southwest.
All my best,
Jennifer
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