More than two years after US President signed the country’s Food Safety Modernization Act into law, farmers and agro-processors who currently enjoy limited US markets still appear to be in the dark as to the magnitude of the changes that will be required if they are to meet the all of the conditions set out in the legislation.
The act significantly raises the bar for safety and health requirements with which exporters of foods to that country are required to comply.
In an interview with the Stabroek Business earlier this week Head of the Bureau of Standards’ Conformity Assess-ment Department Candelle Walcott-Bostwick said the Bureau had targeted exporters, farmers, agro-processors and other categories for public education programmes on the requirements for FSMA-compliance but that the response had suggested that the level of interest might not be as high as is warranted given the importance of the new US food safety laws. “Although we got assurances from more than 50 people that they would attend the most recent forum only around 20 turned up,” Walcott-Bostwick said.
Much of the sensitisation being done locally is shared by the bureau and the Food and Drugs Department of the Ministry of Health. Walcott-Bostwick told Stabroek Business that the exercises were focused on sensitising stakeholders to the tenets of the Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point (HACCP) process, a United Nations-recommended approach to food safety administration that is both systematic and preventive. Beyond routine inspections of finished products HACCP helps to find and correct physical, chemical and biological hazards throughout the production process.
While the Bureau appears to have committed itself to a sustained process of sensitising stakeholders on the requirements of the FSMA, farmers and agro-processors have made the point that their key concern with the conditionalties set out in the legislation is with the implications of financing the adjustments small businesses in Guyana may have to make. Last year the Food and Drugs Department had told Stabroek Business that small farming and agro processing operations were likely to find it tough to finance the changes which they would be required to make to comply with the FSMA and might wish to consider taking collective initiatives to fund such changes as they might have to make.
While the HACCP has been in place in several countries around the world since the 1960s, questions have arisen as to whether it has enjoyed strict enforceability in several countries, possibly including Guyana. Its traceability capacity depends, crucially, on the effectiveness of record-keeping by firms, a capability which many local small businesses do not have.
Arguably the most significant development to arise out of the FSMA is its granting of extra-territorial authority to the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to seek to protect US consumers against imported foods that might pose health risks. What that means in effect is that the FDA can require a local company exporting food to the US to expose its operations including its entire administrative and production processes to scrutiny. Scrutiny, in the case of agro-processed foods can, for example extend from the conditions under which the raw materials are grown to in-plant sanitary and operating conditions and the health status of workers. Failure to grant access is likely to lead to import access being denied.
The FSMA will require that local companies take several measures to prevent the occurrence of food safety issues. These include the inspection of records, registration of food facilities, mechanisms with which to undertake hazard analyses and risk-based preventive facilities. Exporters will be required to have good record-keeping practices and to implement traceability systems that will allow them to trace backwards and forwards. There will be pilot tests for rapid traceability using both fruits and vegetables and processed foods while local exporters will be required to sign on to a foreign supplier verification programme.
Additionally, the FSMA now requires that importers in the US bear the responsibility for ensuring that their foreign suppliers have adequate preventive controls in place.
Section 301 of the Act requires importers to verify that their suppliers use risk-based preventive controls that provide the same level of protection as US requirements and that the products is not adulterated or misbranded. The FDA is empowered to detain products believed to be adulterated or misbranded for up to 30 days.
Section 304 requires information on prior notice of imported food shipments including information on prior refusals. The importer must inform the FDA if a product has been denied entry in another country.
The recent GNBS forum would have made local stakeholders cognisant of the Act and the compliance requirements for accessing US markets, but it did little to address the matter of defraying the costs associated with compliance. Stabroek Business has learnt that while the bigger players in the manufacturing sector with strong ties to US markets are probing the Act and seeking compliance, smaller enterprises seeking to hold on to limited markets in the US, mostly for modest fruit and vegetable consignments or to create new niches are in a quandary.
The sloth of the local response to the advent of the FSMA has been compared with the response elsewhere in the region. In Jamaica, for example, the authorities moved last year to set up a three-year Food Safety Modernisation Project to ensure that food safety standards are compliant with those stipulated under the FSMA. Part of the objective of the project is the rehabilitation of the country’s Agricultural Marketing Complex to ensure that it attains the required manufacturing standards.
