With several of the critical regulations under the new United States Food Safety Modernization Act (FMSA) now just a matter of months away, Guyanese exporters of foods to the United States could face loss of critical markets in the face of what appears to be both public and private sector inaction in seeking to put mechanisms in place to ensure compliance with those regulations.
The new regulations which attend the signing of the Act into law by President Barack Obama in January last year will require Guyanese exporters to comply with a risk-based foreign supplier verification programme under which they must provide guarantees that food exports to the US are produced to that country’s safety standards.
Conforming to the new regulations under the FSMA is likely to require a number of local exporters to effect major and costly changes in their manufacturing operations including the upgrading of plant and machinery and the implementation of higher safety and health standards in their production processes. The new regulations will also require Guyanese exporters to implement administrative and record-keeping systems associated with the maintenance of consignment records and details of production procedures and manufacturing processes in order to satisfy both US importers and, in the final analysis, the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Under the new US law the FDA is empowered to demand inspection visits to production facilities in foreign countries and can refuse entry into the US of foods from foreign facilities if it is denied access by either the facility or the country in which it is located.
Some weeks ago Head of the local Food and Drugs Administration Marilyn Collins told Stabroek Business that compliance with the new US regulations could hit hurdles associated primarily with the costs of implementation of compliance standards. She suggested that local efforts to seek to meet the standards will require collective initiatives by local manufacturers attended by a pooling of resources.
Earlier this week Guyana Manufacturers and Services Association (GMSA) Board Member Raymond Ramsaroop endorsed Collins’ view that the likely high costs of meeting the requirements that will be set out in the new regulations will challenge local manufacturers. Ramsaroop also told Stabroek Business that local exporters have been “slow” in responding to the promulgation of the new US regulation. So far the GMSA has taken no known initiative to respond to the new US regulations.
In his capacity as Production Executive at the Beharry Group of Companies, a major local exporter of manufactured foods into the United States, Ramsaroop has been directly involved in tracking the progress of the new US laws and monitoring progress in the US in relation to the completion of the regulations. He told Stabroek Business that while it was unlikely that all of the regulations would be completed and made available to exporters on schedule, there was still a sense of urgency associated with local manufacturers moving towards compliance with the new US laws.
Pressures on local exporters to comply with the new laws will, in the first instance, come from US importers and distributors who will be required to account directly to the FDA for the traceability of food products imported into the country for human and animal consumption. The law stipulates that in cases where food products for humans and animals are not allowed entry into the US these may be placed in a warehouse at the importers’ risk and expense, a cost which US importers will be seeking to avoid.
While the FSMA has been in force since January last year, there has been no official pronouncement from either the government or the private sector on how local exporters plan to respond to the new regulations. However, a local consumer protection source has told this newspaper that given what in many cases is the wide gap between production and safety and health standards in the United States and those that apply at some local food-manufacturing establishments, the new US law “could well shut out some local manufacturers from the US market since there is simply no way they will be able to comply with the regulations.
Ramsaroop told Stabroek Business that while it now seemed certain that there are likely to be delays in the completion of the regulations the sense of urgency associated with compliance remained.
The Food Safety Modernization Act makes provision for the US to both develop and implement strategies to enhance the food safety and defence capacities of state and local agencies and to develop a comprehensive plan to expand the capacity of foreign governments and industries to meet the new US food import requirements. One component of the plan is to provide training for public and private sector officials including food producers on US food safety requirements.
Lobbyists for stricter for safety laws in the United States have cited data from the Centers for Disease Control which indicate that about 48 million people fall ill, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die each year from food-borne diseases.
