Feed

By David Fairfield, Senior Vice President, Feed The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Oct. 9 that the agency will conduct a virtual public meeting to discuss potential approaches and criteria for ranking antimicrobial drugs used in animals based upon their importance in human medicine. The session is being conducted to help inform FDA’s strategy for addressing antimicrobial resistance risks associated with the use of antimicrobial animal drugs. To describe the agency’s current thinking on potential approaches for ranking antimicrobial animal drugs, FDA has published ... Read More

By David Fairfield, Senior Vice President, Feed The International Cooperation for Convergence of Technical Requirements for the Assessment of Feed Ingredients (ICCF) recently published a guidance document on homogeneity testing approaches and data for inclusion in pre-market approval or authorization applications for feed ingredients.       The new guidance outlines considerations for assessing the uniform distribution of feed ingredients within different feed matrices. To do so, topics addressed include: Homogeneity testing of feed ingredients in ... Read More

By David Fairfield, Senior Vice President, Feed The Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Livestock Environmental Assessment and Performance (LEAP) Partnership recently released guidelines on a methodology for assessing the environmental performance of feed additives. The guidelines provide a harmonized approach for generating metrics and data that may be used to enhance the environmental sustainability of livestock supply chains. The LEAP guidelines are intended to be applicable to a wide range of livestock production systems and compliment lifecycle assessments that analyze ... Read More

By David Fairfield, Senior Vice President, Feed The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as mandated by the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), on Sept. 21 announced a proposed rule to establish additional traceability requirements that are intended to help the agency rapidly and effectively identify recipients of designated foods to prevent or mitigate outbreaks of foodborne illness. When finalized, the proposed rule would standardize the data elements and information firms are required to establish, maintain and communicate to the next entity in the supply chain to ... Read More

By David Fairfield, Senior Vice President, Feed Human and animal food facilities obligated to register with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are to renew their registrations in 2020 during the period beginning on Oct. 1 and ending on Dec. 31.  The registration requirement applies to domestic and foreign facilities that manufacture, process, pack or store (hold) food for human or animal consumption in the United States. Among the facilities required to register with FDA are grain elevators, feed mills, flour mills, corn and oilseed processors, pet food manufacturers, ... Read More

By David Fairfield, Senior Vice President, Feed The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) conducted a webinar on Sept. 1 to highlight key aspects of the FDA/OSHA Employee Health and Food Safety Checklist for Human Food Operations During the COVID-19 Pandemic and provide an update on FDA inspections. During the webinar, agency officials emphasized that the checklist previously released on Aug. 18 is not a standard or regulation, and creates no new legal obligations for employers ... Read More

By David Fairfield, Senior Vice President, Feed The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will conduct a webinar on Tuesday, Sept. 1 from 2:30-3:30 p.m. Eastern time to provide a COVID-19 update for food operation stakeholders. During the webinar, officials from the agencies will highlight key aspects of the “FDA/OSHA Employee Health and Food Safety Checklist for Human Food Operations During the COVID-19 Pandemic,” previously released by the agencies on Aug. 18. In addition, ... Read More

By David Fairfield, Senior Vice President, Feed The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Aug. 18, in cooperation with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service, released the National Antimicrobial Resistance Monitoring System (NARMS) strategic plan for 2021-25. The NARMS program, established in 1996, examines bacteria isolated from humans, raw retail meats and animals at slaughter to analyze and report on patterns of resistance to antimicrobial agents. The NARMS Strategic Plan: 2021-25 ... Read More

By David Fairfield, Senior Vice President, Feed The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) on Aug. 19 announced the availability of an employee health and food safety checklist for use by FDA-regulated human and animal food facilities when assessing operations during the COVID-19 pandemic. FDA states that some or all of the content within the 16-page checklist may be useful to persons growing, harvesting, packing, manufacturing, processing or holding (storing) human and animal food regulated by FDA. Such foods include ... Read More

By David Fairfield, Senior Vice President, Feed The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Aug. 12 posted an article on its website that provides information to consumers about how lot numbers may be used in the event of a pet food safety incident. Among other things, the article describes what a lot number is and how lot numbers differ from other identifiers, such as Universal Product Codes (UPC), Best By or Use By codes, and packing codes. The article suggests that consumers save lot codes for use in the event of a pet food safety incident and include lot code information when ... Read More