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In the last few years, food and beverage companies have been defending against a new trend of claims related not to the products they manufacture, but the packages in which the products are sold.
Food Chemical News spoke with Bob Hibbert about his thoughts on what the regulatory climate under the Trump administration means for the food industry—particularly for USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) and the meat and poultry industry the agency oversees.
Recent public controversy surrounding an issue many readers would probably rather not hear about—whether it is acceptable to use heart meat in products labeled as “ground beef”—has raised a series of questions involving not simply what might wind up on your grill this summer, but also how USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) goes about developing, changing, and publicly announcing policy developments and changes in the labelling of the meat and poultry products it regulates.
As our Canadian neighbors gaze south across the border, their minds are no doubt filled with countless questions over what can safely be described as the unusual political circumstances that currently prevail within the United States
On December 1, the US Department of Agriculture's (USDA’s) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a proposed rule to amend the nutrition labeling regulations for meat and poultry products (Proposed Rule). The revisions in the Proposed Rule are meant to parallel, to the extent possible, the US Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA’s) two similar final rules concerning nutrition fact labels (Nutrition Labeling Rules).
The Final Rules implementing the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) issued over the last several years contain numerous requirements, compliance dates, definitions, applicability guidelines, extensions, and related guidance.
As part of its continuing implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), on October 31, the FDA announced the availability of a draft guidance document titled “Draft Guidance for Industry: Describing a Hazard That Needs Control in Documents Accompanying the Food, as Required by Four Rules Implementing FSMA” (Guidance).
On November 2, the Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS or the Agency) released its Fiscal Year (FY) 2017–2021 Strategic Plan, which provides a framework for FSIS to address continual challenges with inspection modernization and articulates FSIS’s goals for meeting its public health mission over the next four years.
On August 17, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a Final Rule on the Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) notification program, a voluntary premarket notification program for products used in food substances.
On October 5, the US Department of Agriculture’s FSIS released an updated version of its Labeling Guideline on Documentation Needed to Substantiate Animal Raising Claims for Label Submission.