AIM North America Praises FDA for Tech-Focused Blueprint for Safer Food Supply Chain

​The FDA has released the long awaited strategic blueprint for the New Era of Smarter Food Safety Initiative, an initiative designed to promote industry collaboration and adoption of technology and other modern tools to create a digital, traceable and smarter food system by 2021. The FDA strategic initiative was launched in 2019 and focuses on four major pillars:

• Tech-Enabled Traceability and Foodborne Outbreak Response
• Smarter Tools and Approaches for Prevention
• Adapting to New Business Models and Retail Food Safety Modernization
• Food Safety Culture

 
The new blueprint elaborates on the four core elements that will be driving the initiative, in addition to stating the values and principles the FDA aims to advance through their work. Building on the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which focuses on preventing food-borne illnesses rather than purely responding by tracing back from foodborne outbreaks.  In the months since the launch of this new initiative, there has been a public meeting, as well as an opportunity for public comment on the FDA’s design and approach.
 
AIM North America supports these efforts to create a safer, digital, and traceable food supply chain. The use of asset tracking technologies such as barcodes, RFID, RTLS, and IoT, enable traceability systems to identify contaminated foods, trace them to their origin, and to implement a strategic recall both addressing the issue and minimizing the supply chain impact.  Enabling the digital food supply chain will both boost the confidence of the consumer while reducing supply chain costs.
 
“Implementation of asset tracking technologies can harmonize the food supply chain visibility from farm to table,” stated Mary Lou Bosco, COO AIM North America. “The retail industry has been utilizing these technologies for decades to reduce waste, provide accurate inventory management, and maximize efficiencies.”
 
AIM North America also submitted comments to the FDA General Principles for Food Standards Modernization which would establish a set of general principles for food standards for FDA to use when considering whether to establish, revise, or eliminate a food standard. Read AIM NA’s submitted comments here.
 
For more information on how you can get involved, fill out our form or email AIM NA.