USA -FDA – Sampling to Protect Food Supply

FDA

The FDA Food Safety Modernization Act is based on preventing problems before they happen, rather than solely responding to outbreaks of foodborne illness.  But in order to develop prevention-based systems, you need data and other information to help identify hazards that need to be addressed and minimized.

That is why sampling is an important part of this preventive approach and why the FDA is developing a new microbiological surveillance sampling model designed to identify patterns that may help predict and prevent future contamination by disease-causing bacteria.

This new proactive and preventive approach was developed in 2014 and is part of FDA’s efforts to further protect the food supply by keeping contaminated food from reaching consumers. The FDA will publicly share the data it receives through this approach and will engage stakeholders throughout the process.

Surveillance sampling is just one type of sampling that is important for food safety.  There are different kinds of sampling, and the methods that the FDA uses fall into three broad categories: environmental, product, and emergency response/emerging issues sampling.

• Types of Sampling
• What to Expect When the FDA Collects Samples
• Recent Sampling Activity