It's June's News from the Food Industry Employment Program

Food Industry Employment Program Newsletter

Food Safety First

Noncompliance=Death

Here is the newsletter from the Food Industry Employment Program for June 2019.

Featured Article

This month I focused on prerequisite programs as they are the core to a good food safety program. Do you know the main components of a good prerequisite program,? If not check out my post. This post explains what is meant by GMPs, SOPs, and SSOPs.
I also posted more information on prerequisite programs the Food Industry Employment Program's Facebook Page.

Do you need help with your prerequisite program? Set up a free consultation.

Books to Consider

I am still reading Outbreak which is a look at how food safety governance occurs. Not just government but how industry, consumers, consumer advocates, academia also cause changes to food safety regulations to occur. Over time the expected standard increases. I find it fascinating, and a little scary, that we don't know if the food safety programs for produce are working. We don't know because we don't have baseline data. There is little known about how much bacteria produce naturally carries even when it is considered harmless.

Next month I will be reading Farming While Black by Leah Penniman because I am facilitating a book group discussion with the Food Systems Leadership network. Interested in joining me?

Compliance and Regulatory News

The flour recall due to E.coli outbreak has been expanded and has caused 17 known illnesses with 3 hospitalizations. Strongly recommended that you get your flour tested, especially if you bought it from Pillsbury or ADM. Additionally, as a consumer, I recommend avoiding cookie dough and cake batter, and especially keeping young children away from it. Hard to do, I remember loving cake batter when I was a child. Cleaning out the bowl was one big reason why I loved baking.

The FDA released draft guidance about how to represent added sugar on your nutritional labels. There is a factsheet, if that makes it easier. I am amused that cranberry juice manufacturers are allowed to put a footnote to essentially explain to consumers that cranberry juice is so freaking sour that we have to add sugar otherwise no one would drink it.

The FDA also released a guidance document about determining the number of employees for the purpose of small business declaration. It must be late, because I am very glad I don't have to do the math and work out whether this facility or that facility are affiliates of another and therefore have work out which employees count towards my small (or not) business declaration.

Please contact me if you need any food safety advice and want to talk over how these guidance documents affect your business.

Food for Thought

It's June. Get out and enjoy your local farmers' market or farm stand. Get ready for your 4th July bbq by buying a meat thermometer and extra spatulas so you can have one for raw meat and one for cooked meat and perhaps one for veggie burgers. Enjoy ice cream and all the fruits and vegetables of summer.
All the best,
Cathy