Securing business information has never been more difficult.
There once was a time when one could physically touch every document, such as a business contract, audit result, partnership agreement or sales record, organize them in neat vanilla folders and lock them away in a desk. Those good days are over.
With the advent of technologies such as electronic signatures, emails, photocopying, fax, and file sharing, one is never sure how many copies of a critical document exist. With outsourcing and subcontracting, you never know who else has access to your internal documents. Companies are constantly at risk of security breaches.
Thats why we designed VeriSupply.com to be the bomb shelter for your critical documents. We invested in layered security, audit trails and validated access. Some of the technologies we use to ensure security and continuity are
- Industry standard SSL, 256-bit HTTPS access.
- Role based access and user authorization.
- Double encryption of documents , including at database level
- Nightly backups and mirrored storage.
Managing food safety is a tough job. We cannot help with pigs running over the fence and leaving their mark in spinach fields. But was can ensure that at least your food safety documents are safe with VeriSupply.com.
Over the past few months, there has been much written and speculated about the Food Safety Modernization Act of 2010. Below is a summary, from the perspective of a Food Safety Manager for a global brand, of what are important implications of this legislation on supplier operations.
The elements of the bill can be divided into five key areas:
- Preventive controls- For the first time, FDA has a legislative mandate to require comprehensive, prevention-based controls across the food supply. ( risk assessment / HACCP /Inspections/Audits/Registrations) Under this act, implementation of mandatory preventive controls for food facilities and compliance with mandatory produce safety standards will be required. FDA is in the process of developing a proposed rule that will establish science-based minimum standards and will address soil amendments, worker health and hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, water, and other issues. Food facilities will be required to implement a written preventive control plan, and provide for the monitoring of the performance of those controls, and specify the corrective actions the facility will take when necessary.
- Inspection and Compliance- The legislation recognizes that inspection is an important means of holding industry accountable for its responsibility to produce safe food; thus, the law specifies how often FDA should inspect food producers. FDA is committed to applying its inspection resources in a risk-based manner and adopting innovative inspection approaches. Getting the funding from Congress to ensure full implementation is something that will play out over time through the appropriations process. The funding that the FDA has available through the annual budget cycle and fees impacts the number of full time employees they have and will be a factor in the way that FDA handles its significant and far-ranging activities, including the way that this legislation is implemented. The inspection schedule in the legislation will increase the burden on FDA’s inspection functions. Without additional funding, FDA will be challenged in implementing the legislation fully without compromising other key functions.
- Imported Food Safety- FDA has new tools to ensure that imported foods meet US standards and are safe for consumers. For example, for the first time, importers must verify that their foreign suppliers have adequate preventive controls in place to ensure safety, and FDA will be able to accredit qualified third party auditors to certify that foreign food facilities are complying with U.S. food safety standards. FDA will have the authority to refuse entry into the U.S. of a food importers that have not undergone or refused U.S. inspection.
- Response- For the first time, FDA will have mandatory recall authority for all food products. FDA expects that it will only need to invoke this authority infrequently since the food industry largely honors requests for voluntary recalls. Only time will tell on this point.
- Enhanced Partnerships- The legislation recognizes the importance of strengthening existing collaboration among all food safety agencies—U.S. federal, state, local, territorial, tribal and foreign governments. For example, it directs FDA to improve training of state, local, territorial and tribal food safety officials. This is an interesting change since in some cases the FDA does not include the state, local authorities in investigation and vice versa. If this enhanced partnerships plays out it might help with how investigations are conducted. Today we are subjected to duel investigations by the State and Federal Government that do not work together in doing an investigation and have different authority in regards to access to records and enforcement.
Some authorities will go into effect quickly, such as mandatory recall authority; others require FDA to prepare and issue regulations and guidance documents. FDA has committed to implementing the requirements through an open process with opportunity for input from all stakeholders. Full impact will be determined by the FDA regulations and guidance documents that are currently being developed. However, its clear that with the passage of this bill, we are entering a new era of enhanced food safety and compliance requirements.
