Posts Tagged ‘food’
Food safety reform
Recent events could be conspiring to bring food safety reform closer.
Take a string of food borne illness outbreaks and product recalls, from the salmonella in peppers that sickened 407 last year and killed two, to salmonella in peanut products this year, which led to at least 691 illnesses and nine deaths. Add spinach, pistachios, and most recently alfalfa sprouts, and you have the recipe for some shocking statistics: About one in four Americans is sickened by food borne disease each year, 325,000 are hospitalized, and about 5,000 die. Since the early 90s, food borne illness outbreaks have more than tripled to nearly 350 a year.
The peanut product outbreak in particular led to a flurry of activity; legislation was proposed at both a state and federal level, including the bipartisan FDAFood Safety Modernization Act, and finally it sounded like everyone was speaking with one voice. All the main players were lined up asking for more or less the same things: FDA power to order mandatory recalls; more inspections; greater transparency from manufacturers.
The FDA’s lack of authority to issue recalls has often been cited as one of the department’s greatest weaknesses, forcing it to rely on the cooperation of food companies. It is hard to believe that anyone would refuse to withdraw a potentially deadly product with their company’s name on, but it happens. Where are we headed with food safety and what will it take to get the powers that be to make real progress toward safer food.
Supplier Quality Management
Due to recent economic, safety and security issues, supplier quality management has emerged as one of the leading business practices in recent years. Today it is imperative for manufacturers to make significant investments in systems and processes to improve supplier quality. For instance, companies in the aerospace, food, and industrial products arena, need to preserve their preferred supplier status to continue to be considered for future business. As a result, they are under pressure to ensure that their products continue to meet or exceed acceptable quality levels and Corrective Action thresholds set by their customers. Therefore, managing their supplier’s quality is mandatory for these companies.
Supplier Auditing is an excellent tool to ensure that suppliers are following the processes and procedures that you agreed to during the selection processes. The supplier audit identifies non-conformances in manufacturing process, shipment process, engineering change process, invoicing process and quality process at the supplier. Once the audit is completed, the supplier and customer jointly identify corrective actions which must be implemented by the supplier within an agreed-upon timeframe. Continued surveillance audits ensure that these corrective actions have been successfully implemented.