The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in the US has been urged to develop a fresh produce certification system which goes beyond “mere traceability” in order to protect both public health and trade.
Speaking last week at the FDA’s public meeting on “Product Tracing Systems for Fresh Produce”, Bryant Ambelang, chief marketing officer for Desert Glory (the leading grower of premium small tomatoes in North America), said there is currently no real incentive for produce industry members to quickly adopt a universal traceability system.
“Desert Glory has a complete traceability system in place,” explained Mr Ambelang. “We’ve had one for more than 10 years and test it regularly, yet even with our diligence to traceability, we could not ship our Roma tomatoes during the recent salmonella (St. Paul) outbreak.”
Mr Ambelang indicated that the industry could take a page from the successful Customs-Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT) that was developed and implemented in urgent response to the post 11 September need for import security, and has proved “wildly successful because one participating company requires all other companies it works with – suppliers, shippers, distributors – to participate.”
“The same sort of incentive model should be applied to a pre-certification system for both domestic and imported produce,” Mr Ambelang told the FDA panel.
He provided an outline where the FDA would work with the industry to design required programme criteria including good agricultural practices, full product traceability, third party testing/certification and documented training.
Mr Ambelang noted that the benefits of FDA pre-certification, in addition to increased ability to protect public health, includes the opportunity to gain early clearance of product during outbreak investigations.
“If you do this, if you provide the incentive for industry members to continue to do business based on their good practices and third-party certification during an outbreak, you will have industry members fall in line to sign up,” Mr Ambelang said.
Mr Ambelang called on the panel to think beyond just traceability systems to a dynamic process that will benefit both the public and fresh produce businesses.
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