Why Blockchain Is The Answer To Your FDA Compliance Woes

The regulatory landscape around the Food & Beverage Industry is shifting, given new and emerging risks, changes in customer perception, and policy changes. Food safety and quality have gained a fresh salience in this environment, and stakeholders within the F&B space must be ready to meet the ever-changing requirements.

According to a regulation introduced by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in 2020, actors in the food supply chain are now required to maintain sortable end-to-end electronic records to be made available upon request within 24 hours during a food-borne outbreak or food recall investigation, which would impact an estimated 20-30% of the food categories in the US. Some of the key recommendations include initiating voluntary recalls in a timely manner, establishing a recall communication plan, using adequate product coding, and maintaining proper distribution records. Similar laws are already in effect in the UK and France and expected to take effect soon in Germany.

The tightening restrictions in food safety regulations are better understood in the context of food recalls, which represent one of the biggest risks in the industry with potentially grave consequences. Recalls are, in fact, more common than we realize. Approximately 81% of the total food recalls in the US were class 1 recalls, where the item poses a grave health concern and sometimes, possible death. Health risks aside, food recalls also represent enormous waste, as more than 15.5 million pounds of food (including 9+ million pounds of chicken) were recalled in the US in 2021 alone. Considering the losses, inefficiencies and changing regulatory environments around food recalls, food companies need to be recall-ready.

As a result of these developments, compliance burdens have become increasingly more complex for food manufacturers and the future is not looking any different. To meet the FDA’s requirement for recordkeeping and lot-traceability, F&B manufacturers must be able to track and identify every ingredient in the manufacturing process.

Compliances are not only costly, but also significantly decelerate time to market, which can mean substantial losses in an extremely competitive industry. At the same time, being non-compliant can have calamitous consequences including lost orders, customers and revenue, fines, and penalties for damage control, and most importantly, irreparable damage to your company’s brand reputation.

So how can F&B players stay one step ahead of the new compliance requirements? Blockchain provides a technology solution that is cost-effective, efficient, and effective. With this digital solution, you can cut through the new FDA rules to remain competitive and thrive.

Blockchain technology is the answer to ensuring compliance-readiness in the food supply chain. It tokenizes the food item to convert it into a unique digital token which can then be tracked across the entire supply chain. Blockchain also enables secure, immutable data storage over a distributed, decentralized network, ensuring data democratization and easy data sharing between supply chain partners.

With blockchain, organizations can get a better, overall view of a product’s inventory at all points in the supply chain and significantly reduce the time taken for data consolidation in the event of a food recall. Coupled with shared process automation, it can also help in efficient recall management and escalation management. With improved data transparency, recall monitoring and status reports to regulatory bodies become easier, without adding to the administrative burdens of an organization.

Bosch Truefood+ provides an easy, intuitive solution to build end-to-end transparency and record-keeping in the food industry using enterprise IT systems, IoT sensors, PLC systems. Truefood+ streamlines recall management through:

• Built-in recall execution logic for efficient communication to the distribution channel
• Automated escalation for timely action on urgent recall issues
• Dashboard views to assess recall status and report to regulatory bodies

The mock recalls feature in Bosch Truefood+ allows a company to assess its recall-readiness and take corrective actions without delay.

Blockchain is revolutionizing business across industries, and its potential to transform the F&B industry is still waiting to be explored. In an industry where the regulatory requirements are only set to increase, blockchain provides a solution to ensure that companies are compliance-ready while staying competitive. As an industry leader in IoT and software-led technologies, Bosch brings its expertise to provide technology solutions for a smarter, greener, better tomorrow.