The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Organic Program (USDA’s NOP) has updated the Strengthening Organic Enforcement (SOE) final rule, which relates to the oversight and enforcement of the production, handling, and sale of organic products.
A big part of implementing a food defense plan is deciding between expensive technology and cheaper, low-tech strategies to protect your product from intentional adulteration.
Unless your facility is a USDA shop, then it most likely falls under FSMA regulations, which for the vast majority of processors is the law of the land. If you haven’t yet been visited by FDA for an audit, it is past time to get ready for that inevitable moment. I asked Ib Elandaloussi (CAL), Food and Consumer Products Group with Burns and McDonnell to talk briefly about designing facility solutions to meet FSMA rules.
Under the Intentional Adulteration rule, domestic and foreign food facilities are required to complete and maintain a written food defense plan that assesses their potential vulnerabilities to deliberate contamination where the intent is to cause wide-scale public health harm.