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Food and beverages are considered an area of high importance for FDA regulation. This is natural, because while food is the most essential nutrient needed for the human body; it also comes with its own risks and drawbacks, if prepared or handled improperly. Food is universal in its consumption, and man has living on food from times immemorial.
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Because of the enormous potential food has for causing diseases if cooked or stored or transported wrongly, regulation for food has become absolutely essential. These regulations are certainly the toughest to not only formulate, but to also implement, because food is so prevalent and the chances of contamination are so high and widespread that care has to be taken to ensure that the regulations are implemented quite literally till the last morsel.
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Most regulatory bodies pair beverages with food regulations because of the similarity in their natures, and also because they are usually seen as being inseparable from each other. That said, the major challenge in enforcing food and beverage regulations is that we live in a highly globalized world today. While production of food has locations; its consumption has almost none. Food can be produced in one part of the world, could be stored in another, and consumed in yet another.
A bevy of food and beverage regulations ďƒ˜
Yet, regulatory bodies do not get daunted or give up on food and beverages regulations. It makes no sense to formulate a general, blanket set of regulations for the food and beverages industries and expect the entire world to comply with a globally created set of regulations. There are many food and beverages regulations that are in place in different parts of the world. Several agencies such as the UN, the FDA, the ISO and the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) have regulations for food and beverages. Understandably, these regulations are global in nature.
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Likewise, there are national, regional and local regulations concerning food and beverages within nearly all the countries of the world. And then, there are also common food and beverages that apply to blocs and groupings such as the European Union (EU). These are framed keeping in mind the unique situations and circumstances of the different populaces of the word. This explains the diversity of food and beverages regulations, as well as the difficulty in enforcing these on a global or regional or even domestic scale.
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Regulations meant to ensure the safety of food and beverages in North America can never be the same as those in Africa. While in advanced countries and regions of the world, the emphasis is on preventing contamination and what is called bioterrorism, which will be discussed later; the priority for developing countries could be more basic, like ensuring supply of water for basic needs such as drinking and sanitation and making sure that wherever and whenever available, this supply meets minimum hygiene requirements.
THE FDA’S REGULATIONS ON FOOD AND BEVERAGES ďƒ˜
The FDA has many regulations on food and beverages. Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), Title 21 is a complete list of regulatory guidelines this regulatory body has put in place for ensuring the quality of food throughout the food chain. CFR 21 has guidelines on a whole host of activities pertaining to food in all its elements, such as display of food content and nutritional information on the packet, the nature and proportion of the ingredients, the name and location of the manufacturer, calorie content of the food, tendency of the food made by a particular manufacturer to cause or be an agent for the cause of diseases and conditions such as diabetes, cancer, hypertension or heart disease, and so on, as well as information about the presence of allergens in the food.
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The FDA also has very elaborate instructions relating to the food and beverage industry, such as how to handle recalls, outbreaks and emergencies, how to prevent foodborne diseases, and so on. In addition, the FDA also has a number of regulations that relate to Good Manufacturing Practices (GMPs), how to report adverse events, what a food or beverage manufacturing facility should do to prevent being issued a 483 by the FDA, and what to do when it is issued one.
BIOTERRORISM ďƒ˜
On top of all these, the FDA has also taken highly detailed steps in relation to bioterrorism. Bioterrorism is a form of attack on food and beverages by the disease-causing agents found freely in nature, such as viruses, bacteria or other toxins. This is done by terrorists to deliberately cause harm to humans through the food they consume. In order to prevent this, the federal government formulated the Public Health Security and Bioterrorism Preparedness and Response Act in 2002.
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Called the Bioterrorism Act in short, this legislation directs and authorizes the FDA to take urgent and effective steps to protect the public from threats arising out of bioterrorism throughout the food chain in the US. It seeks to assure public safety by preventing bioterrorism by taking a number of steps in this direction. One of these is the mandatory registration of certain kinds of facilities with the FDA. This is done to help the FDA zero in on the possible site of a bioterror attack, should one happen. Dietary supplements, infant food formulae, beverages, fruits and vegetables and foods of almost all types come under the classification of facilities that need to be registered with the FDA.
THE HACCP ďƒ˜
Another mechanism meant for ensuring the safety of food and beverages is the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP), a systematic approach that the US FDA and the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) require from manufacturers and suppliers of food and beverages in the country. Largely aimed at controlling the spread of bioterrorism through protection of products from the meat and fish industries; HACCP is an important program of the federal government in ensuring that food contamination can be contained at any stage of the food chain. HACCP can be implemented along with standards such as the generalized ISO 22000 and programs of The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), such as The Poultry Products Inspection Act, Federal Meat Inspection Act, some parts of the Agricultural Marketing Act, The Humane Slaughter Act, and The Egg Products Inspection Act. As a rule, HACCP provisions relating to meat are regulated by the USDA, while those relating to juices and seafood are regulated by the FDA.
NETZEALOUS LLC’S TRAININGS ON FOOD RELATED LEGISLATIONS ďƒ˜
The need for professional trainings in the areas of food safety is absolutely essential, when one takes the complete picture of the food and beverages manufacturing, supply and consumption chain across the globe. In the US, the standards set out for these industries are extremely high. So, industries in the food and beverages business have to ensure that they meet the very high standards of regulatory requirements set out by the FDA and other agencies.
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It is in areas like this that a professional trainings provider of repute, such as NetZealous LLC can be of great value to organizations in the food and beverages industries that are required to meet regulatory requirements. NetZealous LLC has experts from around the world who have worked extensively with the FDA-regulated industries. Their experience enables them to help regulatory professionals and industries comply with regulatory requirements.
NetZealous LLC’s experts have solid experience in handling issues relating to foods and beverages, such as: HACCP The seven principles of HACCP Monitoring and documenting critical control points Food safety and risk assessment Sanitation, allergens, pest control ISO 22000 Bioterrorism Act Food processing Food marketing
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