At the Food Safety Summit 2017 I heard an announcement that piqued my interest. The FDA and my home state of Wisconsin have an agreement for recognizing the other’s inspections. There will not be duplicate inspections! That is great news. Wisconsin Department of Agriculture, Trade and Consumer Protection (WDATCP) and the FDA Minneapolis District Office (MN‐ DO) have developed a process for sharing inspection reports, work plans and establishment inventories; read more about that agreement here.
First, I want to state the obvious. That’s the way it should be. I feel for the food companies that have more audits and inspections than there are months in the year. Inspections are time-consuming and costly to business. Food prices include the cost of audits and inspections.
This was a big announcement at one of the keynote presentations in front of a packed room. It was big, because that is not what is normally done. Even though the state and FDA inspectors use the same federal rules and have the same goals, they rarely coordinate inspections, resulting in duplicity.
The other reason this agreement makes sense is that both FDA inspectors and state inspectors are going through the same training on the FSMA rules. Matt Botos, ConnectFood CEO, and I know, because we trained them. For the last year I have had state of Wisconsin inspectors in my Wisconsin workshops and FDA inspectors in workshops across the nation. Everyone feels better knowing that FDA inspectors, state inspectors and industry are all in the room for training together. I have only had good experiences with exchange of information. I did not get a sense in the classroom that industry was shy about asking questions, which one might fear. Inspectors were honest about where they were in the process of learning and enforcing the Preventive Controls for Human Food (PCHF) rule. As I have attended training, listened and read about the roll out of other FSMA rules, I have heard over and over that FDA plans to train inspectors with industry, following the training model of the PCHF training. That is more good news.
At Food Safety Summit 2017 I confirmed that FDA is conducting 300 PCHF inspections for fiscal year 2016-2017, the year ending in September. These will be at businesses with more than 500 employees. Other inspections beyond the 300 will be GMP inspections and are designed to educate on PCHF. The food industry can relax (a bit) in the knowledge that the FDA is getting trained alongside industry and will use inspections as an opportunity to educate on FSMA.
Dr. Kathy Knutson has food safety expertise in microbiology, hazard analysis, and risk assessment. As a recovering academic, she resides in Green Bay home-of-the-Packers, Wisconsin with her brilliant husband and two handsome sons. Learn more about her consulting services at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathyknutsonphd.
