Sliced Cheese and Burger Patties Meet At Last in the Aisle

By: Hilary Thesmar, PhD, RD, Vice President, Food Safety Programs, Food Marketing Institute

Last week hundreds of food safety representatives from regulatory, industry, academia, professional organizations and consumer groups gathered at the 2016 Conference for Food Protection biennial meeting in Boise, Idaho. Each Council had close to 14 hours to deliberate issues submitted to CFP to address food safety concerns and develop recommendations to incorporate into the next FDA Food Code edition.

This year, FMI submitted one issue to address the separation of packaged products displayed at retail. Retailers have a desire to cross merchandise certain items for customer convenience at point of sale (e.g. packages of cheese singles displayed adjacent to modified atmosphere packages (MAP) of raw preformed hamburgers, cooked bacon packages near raw bacon packages). Modern package integrity has improved and is less likely to leak when compared to historical packaging. This improved packaging mitigates the cross-contamination concerns over juices spilling from a package containing one species of meat/poultry onto another package containing another species. The Science and Technology Council deliberated on this issue and council members amended to add more clarity and the issue was accepted as amended.  This is a win for the retail industry and will allow retailers to expand their marketing options to meet the ever growing customer demand for convenience.

Council members are committed to having consensus among the different constituency groups and really try to work with the issue submitter to understand and address their concern. However, this year’s issue submissions saw a number “No Action.” Insufficient science or issue is already addressed adequately in the Food Code were among the most commonly cited reason for “No Action.” Click here to view all the Council Issue Recommendations sent to assembly of delegates.

The Conference will take action on accepted and amended issues by corresponding with organizations and agencies such as FDA, USDA, and CDC as directed in the final Issue recommendation. The final decisions are with the federal agencies, but approval from the councils and the Assembly of Delegates at the Conference of Food Protection is the first step. Additionally, the Conference will refer new charges to existing committees as well as establish new committees to further review issues and make recommendations at the 2018 Conference for Food Protection in Richmond, Virginia. It is a long and sometimes tedious process, but one that is built on consensus and FMI is more than happy to participate on behalf of our member companies.