Dive Brief:
- The U.S. Department of Agriculture's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) will begin releasing quarterly data sets featuring inspection and enforcement actions and sampling and testing results tied to individual companies and plants.
- This data will include more detail about the processes in each facility, and will be easily sortable.
- Prior to this initiative, FSIS only released establishment-specific information in limited scenarios, like official enforcement actions against violators of the Humane Methods of Slaughter Act or in response to Freedom of Information Act requests.
Dive Insight:
FSIS devised this plan during the past seven years as part of the Obama administration’s open government plan.
In that time, many manufacturers have worked on their own to better communicate food safety and animal welfare practices through annual reports, websites and social media, or even through in-person facility tours. This has improved transparency of their operations and could make them less vulnerable to having these data sets made publicly available.
Transparency is a key factor in consumers' meat purchasing decisions, evidenced by high growth percentages for segments such as antibiotic-free, hormone-free, grass-fed, natural and organic, according to the annual Power of Meat survey released by the Food Marketing Institute and the North American Meat Institute.
Using technologies like the Internet of Things can also improve supply chain traceability, which enables manufacturers and regulators to more quickly and easily identify potential causes of contamination.
There have already been positive outcomes from FSIS's approach to data collection and analysis. The agency's data-driven strategy for identifying and preventing food safety risks has reduced instances of foodborne illnesses by 12%, according to federal reports.
If manufacturers can achieve that same level of success by applying a data-driven approach to their own internal food safety strategies, companies could save millions of dollars and preserve their reputations in the long run.