The FDA presents its tactile response to foodborne illnesses and outbreak investigation processes
The FDA’s New Era of Smarter Food Safety plan to improve food safety within the supply chain not only works to implement tech-enabled traceability from seed-to-sale, but to establish new responses to foodborne illnesses and outbreaks. With foodborne illness as a major public health concern in the United States, the FDA announced its The Foodborne Outbreak Response Improvement Plan (FORIP) this month.
Their new plan serves as the next step towards a more transparent supply chain with its key goals in “bending the curve of foodborne illness by…improving the speed, accuracy, and effectiveness of the FDA’s overall outbreak response and coordination with relevant federal, state, local, tribal, territorial, and international counterparts, and industry stakeholders.”
Although the current focus of the plan is human food, there are hopes to encompass animal food in the future. Four areas of their plan have been prioritized to include: 1) Tech-enabled product traceback, 2) Root cause investigations, 3) Analysis and dissemination of outbreak data, and 4) Operational improvements to streamline processes.
Low- or No-Cost tech-enabled solutions have proven to be an essential aspect in their strategies to better detect contaminated products and diminish future outbreaks. As a winner of the FDA’s Traceability Challenge, TagOne provides a low-cost Traceability Management System, backed by blockchain technology. These cost-effective solutions allow for industry participants to adopt product tracing technologies and for consumers to ensure their food provenance.
While FORIP’s strategy focuses primarily on current FDA commitments, recognizing the interdependencies that exist in outbreak response, and necessitating a true food systems approach for success, themes of growing transparency and a digitized food system runs throughout the FORIP.
For more information regarding the FDA’s new outbreak response processes, visit this website.