In early 2011, Congress passed the Food Safety Modernization Act (“FSMA”). The new legislation, which was signed into law quickly, was designed to improve the overall safety of FDA-regulated products. FSMA accomplished this by mirroring many of the FSIS HACCP requirements applicable to the meat industry, such as requiring a written food safety plan, a hazard analysis, and preventive controls.
FDA’s efforts to improve the overall safety of food did not stop with the passage of FSMA. More recently, the agency announced new initiatives to improve safety further. As part of what FDA calls the “New Era of Smarter Food Safety,” the agency will begin focusing on, among other things, the development and promotion of food safety culture within food facilities. According to FDA, food safety can be enhanced at the industry level by working to influence the core “beliefs, attitudes, and… behaviors of people” working in a food company. If a company has a good food safety culture, the theory goes, the company will make decisions that increase, as opposed to decrease, the safety of their products.