Reportable Food Registry First Year Report

One of the major regulatory initiatives for preventing foodborne illness in the US is the Reportable Food Registry.  FDA regulated companies and regulatory officials are required to report food safety issues associated with food and feed.  For example, if  Company B receives a RTE ingredient from Company A, and this ingredient  has Listeria, Company B must report it.  This registry will certainly impact FDA’s ability to get involved in cases where there is probable contamination.
In this report, there were 2240 acceptable submissions. Of this number, 229 were primary reports and the rest were subsequent reports.    Of the 229, Salmonella and allergens accounted for the majority of cases. Import products accounted for 53 of the primary reports, and the report stated that additional emphasis will be placed in this area. One of the success stories was that this registry was responsible for the recall of HVP early last year when Salmonella was detected (There were no know illnesses.  )
The Reportable Food Registry was established by FDA and requires FDA regulated companies to report any “food/feed for which there is a reasonable probability that the use of, or exposure to, such article of food will cause serious adverse health consequences or death to humans or animals. All foods under FDA's jurisdiction, including animal feed/food (including pet food) may be reportable foods, except for dietary supplements and infant formula.”
The Reportable Food Registry is “an electronic portal by which reports about instances of reportable food must be submitted to FDA within 24 hours by responsible parties and may be submitted by public health officials. These reports may be primary, the initial submission about a reportable food, or subsequent, a report by either a supplier (upstream) or a recipient (downstream) of a food or food ingredient for which a primary report has been submitted.”


http://www.fda.gov/Food/FoodSafety/FoodSafetyPrograms/RFR/ucm200958.htm#pr