Please refer to these food safety recordkeeping requirements along with the product trace-ability. Currently, the most common recordkeeping is performed with paper and transferred to spreadsheets for all food safety records.
These are the two most critical points many traceback systems are not accomplishing at this point:
1. Tracing of food safety activities and prevention with time-stamped reports along with complete documentation with the food safety plan a chain of responsibility to maintain these records. Important note to keep in mind, if you export goods overseas, your traceback system must be in a format to exchange into foreign tracing systems (Unix is supported by foreign applications).
http://www.fda.gov/regulatoryinformation/guidances/ucm125067.htm#iiic
2. Maintain surveillance of food borne illness prevention practices to be made available upon inspections, or on demand. You can either dedicate an employee to the surveillance of practices, or implement a surveillance recording system to provide this data. Once again, a dedicated employee will need to be monitored with time-stamped recordkeeping. Or, a time-stamped surveillance system can accomplish the same thing with much higher ROI than labor.
http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FSMA/ucm247548.htm#SEC205
These are just two parts to the new act that are misunderstood. There is no traceback system on the market besides ScoringAg that are fully FSMA compliant to meet the standards required by the new law. Please, take the time to review your recordkeeping systems and compare them to the new law. These two rules along with updating your food safety and food defense plans will be essential.
Systems Consulting can help you meet these two requirements.
