TUBAC, Ariz. – As food safety understanding and global requirements continue to advance and evolve for the produce industry, attendees of the America Trades Produce Conference will learn more about the key steps moving forward during the event, which will feature top-level food safety authorities from both the U.S. and Mexico.
Giving a key bi-national update, Mike Taylor, Deputy Commissioner for Foods of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, and Octavio Carranza, General Director of Food, Aquacultural, and Fishery Safety of SENASICA, will present a picture of how the Food Safety Modernization Act and Mexico’s Good Agricultural Practices programs stand to complement each other. Also on hand at this session will be Jim Gorny, Senior Advisor for Produce Safety at FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.
“To have a key architect of FSMA in Mike Taylor, on stage with his counterpart in Mexico, Octavio Carranza, is an unprecedented opportunity for the industry,” said Lance Jungmeyer, President of the Fresh Produce Association of the Americas, which is co-hosting the event along with Texas Produce Association. “Mike and Octavio will lay out their vision for food safety, and the audience will have a chance to ask questions. This is a great chance for a response session for the industry.”
Additionally, attendees can get an inside look at how FDA, the Centers for Disease Control, SENASICA and the industry react to a hypothetical food safety incident. The session, “The Mechanics of Responding to a Food Safety Outbreak/Recall,” will feature representatives of FDA, SENASICA, CDC and the industry, to walk the audience through a hypothetical food safety scenario, responding step by step to details of an investigation as it unfolds.
“Food safety is the regulatory tsunami facing the produce industry for the foreseeable future, especially the import/export community” said TPA President John McClung. “This conference will allow participants to hear the latest on two matters that will directly impact their bottom line: the long-awaited Produce Rule, and the Foreign Supplier Verification Rule. These issues will reshape U.S. /Mexico produce trade in the decade to come, and this conference is the perfect window to learn about them.”
Another session, “The Mexican Papaya Autopsy” will explore ongoing food safety advances and lessons learned from a 2011 papaya recall. This session again will feature a representative from FDA.
In yet another nuts-and-bolts session that will give importers a glimpse into FDA’s import processes, Domenic Veneziano, Director of FDA’s Division of Import Operations and Policy, along with Adrian Garcia of the FDA Nogales office, will discuss two new important risk-based preventative controls tracking systems: Predictive Risk-based Evaluation for Dynamic Import Compliance Targeting (PREDICT) and Import Trade Auxiliary Communications System (ITACS).
The America Trades Produce Conference is March 21-23, 2012, in Tubac, Ariz., near the importing city of Nogales.
Space is limited for the event, so register soon at www.americatradesproduce.com
Source: Fresh Produce Association of the Americas