The food-borne disease surveillance system in the United States has become so robust that it has detected hundreds of outbreaks in the past six years that previously would likely have gone unrecognized.

This has resulted in many foods being newly identified as vehicles of illnesses. This increased awareness of weaknesses in the US food safety net has by and large led to the Food Safety Modernization Act, which will raise the level of attention that food producers, processors, distributors and importers must give to ensuring their products are safe for human and animal consumption.

These new regulations will have direct relevance to the Chinese food industry, especially if foods or ingredients from China are exported to the US. Also, many of the new rules, if applied in China, could enhance the overall safety of its food supply.

Two areas of emphasis are the prevention and detection of food contamination. Every facility that manufactures, processes, packages or holds food for domestic consumption must register biennially with the food safety agency. The agency can then suspend a facility's registration if a serious food safety incident occurs.

In addition, every facility will be required to develop a food safety plan that includes assessing the potential for hazardous agents such as harmful microbes and toxins to contaminate its foods, and preventive measures against contamination.

These preventive controls must be in compliance with the Food and Drug Administration's approved or accepted practices, and cannot include treatments that may control harmful agents but cause adverse health effects - for example, the addition of the antibiotic chloramphenicol to food to control Salmonella or other harmful bacterial contamination.

The food safety plans must be updated every two years, and the food safety agency will issue performance standards for specific products, noting unacceptable limits for hazardous agents. Importantly, a food company must retain for up to three years all records relating to its risk analysis and food safety plan for review during inspections and investigations.

The federal food regulatory agency will augment its role in detecting contamination, and responding rapidly to minimize public exposure to a food safety hazard, by developing and implementing better surveillance and trace-back protocols.

Using state-of-the-art molecular methods, such as genomic sequencing to associate harmful bacteria found in foods with specific processing facilities, may be helpful in identifying problem food manufacturers. To help trace food contaminants back to their original source, manufacturers must be able to track at least one step forward and one back in the source and distribution of its products and ingredients. These records must be maintained electronically and provided to the food safety agency within 48 hours of a request for food inspection or food safety incident.

Because there are thousands of food processing plants, and inspection resources are limited, a schedule for inspecting facilities will be based on risk. Every food plant will be inspected at least every five years. However, those facilities that produce food of "high risk" to consumers, such as infant formula, would be inspected every six to eight months. Those facilities producing "medium risk" foods would be inspected every 18 months to three years.

Food processors would also be expected to periodically test their products and ingredients, but since the reliability and accuracy of results obtained from commercial and industry laboratories vary, a stringent certification program for testing facilities must be developed. Periodic audits and operator examinations are also needed to ensure laboratories provide reliable results. Although federal oversight of food processors is important, there is a fundamental principle that must be adopted by the entire food industry for a food safety net to be robust and effective. Everyone involved in the food continuum must be focused foremost on providing consumers with safe foods. Producers who are more motivated by economics and consider food safety to be secondary can undermine public confidence and the integrity of a country's entire food system.

The approaches to enhancing the safety of the US food supply are largely the result of decades of experience by food safety regulatory agencies and the food industry in mitigating the risk of food contamination.

With a national food safety program under development in China, the Chinese food industry and regulatory agencies could readily benefit from the US experience in improving the safety of their foods by adopting and implementing similar practices and policies.

The author is Regents Professor and director of the Center for Food Safety, University of Georgia.

(China Daily 07/17/2012 page12)