Andrew Lorenz

The last year has been one of change. We have a new administration, which includes a new acting undersecretary for food safety and a new acting administrator.

The term that comes to mind is “regulatory overreach” – a phrase that crops up from time to time, typically when regulators decide to make and enforce their own regulations.

We can track yields and loss at each step in our operation, but what value, if any, has your Food Safety and Quality (FS&Q) team added?

The food industry spends billions of dollars to address the issues raised by the estimated number of illnesses and deaths attributed to a pathogen or allergen. The predictions and statistics these agencies provide and use are truly critical.

While the total number of FSIS recalls is down and allergen recalls are down by roughly 50 percent, there are several troubling trends.

There are several misconceptions about what acceptance inspection is, what it is used for and even if it is valid in today’s world of third-party audits and government oversight.

There has been a lot of talk, hype and hand-wringing over the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service’s (FSIS) validation data.

I have been asked quite a bit about food-safety training, for production employees and for quality assurance and other food-safety monitors.