There remains a great deal of uncertainty in the world right now. That uncertainty extends to all aspects of our lives, including our businesses. Setting aside the personal toll taken by the spread of the novel coronavirus and resultant COVID-19 pandemic, businesses are struggling because of disruptions caused by mandatory closures, travel bans, quarantines and worker shortages.
With the Coronavirus in the news, now seems to be a good time to talk about disease defense and prevention. Coronaviruses are a family of zoonotic viruses (meaning transmitted between animals and humans) that can cause respiratory illness in humans.
The future is an unpredictable place. As such, we generally prefer to leave predictions to others. We would be reluctant to break our no-prediction rule even in the most stable times, when little in the way of change is expected.
To protect consumers, the USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) strongly encourages meat processors to utilize label declarations for products containing any of the eight major food allergens (milk, eggs, fish, crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat and soybeans).
Companies can protect themselves against many recall-related losses through the procurement of adequate recall insurance coverage; yet, procuring the right recall insurance, can be a difficult process.
Last month, the USDA Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) published the final rule for the New Swine Slaughter Inspection System (NSIS), a rule that requires additional pathogen sampling for swine slaughter establishments and eliminates the numbers of FSIS inspectors, with a goal toward modernizing swine slaughter safety and more efficiently utilizing agency resources.
Numerous stories have been published in recent weeks relating to a waiver request submitted by Tyson Foods that proposes to reduce the number of inspectors in its facility.
In "The Art of War," Sun Tzu admonishes us to know our enemy or be defeated by it. As a society, we have failed to heed that wisdom in our fight against foodborne illness.
RSS
