United States: FSIS issues Directive revising Food Safety Assessment Methodology

USDA's Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) issued a directive providing instructions to Enforcement, Investigations and Analysis Officers (EIAO) regarding ways to conduct Food Safety Assessments (FSA) using a new work methodology.

The purpose of this directive is to provide instructions to EIAO s on how to conduct FSA s using a new work methodology, so an EIAO can complete the in-plant portion of most FSAs in 5 to 7 production days. This directive also provides instructions on how to document FSAs using the FSA tools that are a series of questionnaires that an EIAO is t o use to gather information. The new work methodology is designed to focus the FSAs on public health risk and to increase consistency in how EIAOs conduct FSAs.

Significant changes:

• Establishment of a t imeline for the completion of most FSA s from 2 to 4 weeks to 5 to 7 production days;
• FSA s are to be performed after the EIAO deriv es results from a Public Health Risk Evaluation (PHRE);
• The EIAO is to f ocus on certain processes during the FSA based on the PHRE ;
• Any Routine Listeria monocytogenes ( RLm ) sampling is to be conducted before the start of an FSA ; and
• The EIAO is to focus on assessing and analyzing the establishment’s food safety system as a whole and is not to only verify whether individual regulatory requirements are in compliance.