May 30, 2017

By: Hilary Thesmar, PhD, RD, CFS, Chief Food and Product Safety Officer and Sr. Vice President, Food Safety Programs

FSVP Compliance begins May 30The first compliance dates for FDA’s FSMA rule on Foreign Supplier Verification Programs (FSVP) for importers of food for humans or animals begin May 30, 2017. The FSVP rule requires importers who are covered by the rule to have risk-based programs in place to verify that their foreign suppliers are producing food that provides the same level of public health protection as in the U.S.

As of May 30, 2017, at the time of entry, information required to be entered into the Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Automated Commercial Environment (ACE), under the Foreign Supplier Verification Program, will go into effect. At the time of import, a Unique Facility Identifier (UFI) must be provided for each line item of food; in addition, the FSVP importer’s name and email address must be entered into the ACE system. The FDA recognizes the Dun & Bradstreet Data Universal Numbering System number, also known as a DUNS number, as an acceptable UFI for the FSVP importer. In March of 2017, FDA issued guidance recognizing the DUNS number as an acceptable UFI. A DUNS number is unique to a specific physical location and must be obtained by the FSVP importer.

Typically, a retailer has more than one physical location and therefore may have more than one DUNS number. If that is the case, at the time of entry, the DUNS number should be provided for the location where the FSVP importer maintains its FSVP records. For example, if a retailer is the FSVP importer and keeps its FSVP records at corporate headquarters, then the DUNS number for the corporate location should be provided at the time of entry.

A DUNS number can be obtained for free at www.fdadunslookup.com. Typically, the DUNS number can be obtained within a few business days, but could take up to 45 days or more. Because some company’s may not have a DUNS number by May 30, the FDA and CBP will temporarily allow unknown (UNK) to be submitted as the FSVP Importer UFI. However, if UNK is provided as the UFI in the ACE system, FDA has said they plan to contact those FSVP Importers to provide additional information to help FSVP importers better understand the requirements of FSVP.

Even if you haven’t arrived at compliance or you aren’t sure if you are doing something correctly, you should still be attempting to make a good faith effort to work toward compliance. As we have mentioned before, communication is going to be essential for FSVP compliance, so if you haven’t already, engage in an ongoing dialogue with you supply chain partners. 

Here are few resources to help you with your foreign supplier programs: 

If you would like additional information, have questions or would like assistance, please feel free to contact FMI at foodsafetyteam@fmi.org or (202) 220-0661.