Local exporters of food products (agricultural produce and processed foods) who either access US markets or aspire to do so still appear far from seized with a sense of urgency associated with the two-year-old Food Safety Modernisation Act (FSMA), a United States law that seeks to protect its citizens from food-borne diseases but which, simultaneously, could spell trouble for all food exporters to the US.
While the handful of large local companies with relatively significant US markets are doubtless putting mechanisms in place to ensure compliance, it is the larger number of small and micro enterprises, most of which are involved in shipping modest quantities of local condiments and fresh fruit and vegetables to niche markets comprising Guyanese and West Indians that could face difficulties. It is not just that these small operators are less likely to be familiar with the requirements of the FSM and its implications for their access to US markets; more than that, it is the fact that Guyana appears to be behind much of the rest of the region in the extent of official support that has been forthcoming to help small businesses – agricultural and agro-processing enterprises – reach the demanding standards which the US now requires under its new food safety regulations.
The local Food and Drug Analyst Department, a section of the Ministry of Health and the Guyana National Bureau of Standards appear to be the two state agencies responsible for sensitising farmers, processors and exporters to the requirements of the act. The work of these two agencies, however, has been limited largely to seminars which discuss the legislation and provide participants with a measure of guidance on how to interpret some clauses of the FSMA. What appears not to have been accepted, at least up to this point in time, is that if local exporters are to reach the standards required under the new regulations, those standards will only come at a cost. That has been the view of the Food and Drug Analyst Department for more than a year. The department says that the vast majority of aspiring exporters cannot afford the cost of reaching those standards and a pooling of resources will be necessary.
Oddly enough, local Business Support Organisa-tions (BSOs) have been largely silent on the FSMA despite the fact that there has been no shortage of information forthcoming from regional business organisations and from Washington.
Other territories, unlike Guyana, are prepared to invest heavily in realising the FSMA standards. Jamaica, for example, through the country’s Ministry of Agriculture, is investing in excess of J$400 million in creating institutional mechanisms that will subject the country’s fresh fruit and vegetable and agro-processed produce to realistic tests to ensure that they measure up to FSMA requirements.
Additionally, part of the funding is being spent to assigning agricultural field officers to sensitise and train rural farmers in order to render their operations HACCP-ready.
Barbados has reportedly already introduced its own standards testing at a level which is believed to be equivalent to that required under the FSMA.
While the GNBS has been urging farmers and manufacturers to ensure compliance with the Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Points (HACCP) systematic preventive ap-proach to food safety, there is every chance that many of them are not compliant and will have to be so trained. Beyond HACCP there are numerous other considerations that attend compliance with the FSMA. For example, under Section 306 of the Act the US Food and Drug Administration is authorised to carry out on-site inspections of foreign facilities that cultivate, transport, manufacture and store foods destined for the US. Products of companies that refuse to allow these inspections will be denied entry into the United States.
The FDA has already disclosed that it will be increasing the number of inspections made in both domestic and foreign markets and will set up offices in foreign countries to deal with food safety measures for food to be exported into the US.
Such standards as the FDA will set for the safe production and harvesting of fruit and vegetables will speak to soil properties, workers’ health and hygiene, packaging, temperature controls, water.
Exporters and aspiring exporters will have to establish written preventive control plans to monitor controls and identify corrective actions to deal with problems as they arise. Foreign governments, including the Government of Guyana will be required to work with the FDA to build food safety capacity. In essence, the FSMA is requiring of Guyanese exporters of food products to the United States the same levels of quality and safety assurance that it demands of its own farmers and manufacturers.
Again, one wonders whether Guyana can measure up in this regard.
The pertinent questions here are, first, whether measuring up to the standards that will allow for importation of foods into the US does not go far beyond what the state agencies are currently doing including the periodic seminars and workshops and whether exporters, the government and the BSOs – particularly the Guyana Manufac-turing & Services Association (GMSA) will not, at some stage, be required to finance specific initiatives of one sort or another designed place farms, equipment, factories and workers in readiness to withstand the scrutiny of the US FDA.
If it is one thing for local agencies to hold workshops and seminars designed to go over the tomes of theory that comprise the FSMA it is an entirely different thing for local farms, factories and other facilities to have to withstand the on-the-spot scrutiny of US Food and Drug Administration experts who are empowered under the provisions of the law to demand that they be allowed to inspect facilities in exporting countries and, where necessary, to make immediate recommendations that could bring an end to entire business operations and prospective operations, render costly equipment obsolete and cost jobs. The question is whether we can afford to take that chance.
One only needs to possess a rudimentary understanding of the rules underpinning the FSMA to appreciate the considerable risks to which all of our exports to the US are now exposed. The FSMA was enacted after a number of food poisoning incidents in the US and, moreover, against the backdrop of what the US clearly feels are heightened terrorist threats. The US FDA will take enforcement seriously, apart from mandating that random audits of food exporters to the US be undertaken. The simple fact is that food producers who fail to meet the FSMA audit requirements will be debarred from exporting food products to the US.
More worrying is the fact that if food products or food producing facilities from any country consistently fail to meet the requirements of the FSMA then all food exports from that country will be prohibited to enter the US.
What this means in effect is that any local food producer who exports to the US can affect greater volumes of foreign exchange revenue earnings associated with the export of various commodities to the US. Again, can we afford to take that chance?
