The USP Expert Panel on Food
Ingredients Intentional Adulterants (formed at the request of the Food
Ingredients Expert Committee) proposes this new Appendix to the Food
Chemicals Codex to elaborate guidance frameworks and tools to assist users
in the development of preventive management systems for food fraud.
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The first guidance proposed for
addition to this Appendix, A. General Guidance for Food Ingredients,
guides users in how to develop and implement a preventive system specifically
for adulteration of food ingredients. It provides a qualitative, step-by-step
and structured approach to characterize food fraud vulnerabilities and guidance
on how to develop mitigation strategies. This guidance framework is generally
applicable to any food ingredient, and is intended to guide users toward the
development of their own fraud management system that prioritizes and focuses
mitigation resources towards ingredients that not only carry the most
vulnerability but also have the potential for the most detrimental consequences
when fraud occurs. It is intended to be adaptable to individual operating
environments that may have varying enterprise risk tolerance for food fraud,
and access to different types of fraud mitigation resources. It is intended to
be applicable to any user responsible for ensuring the safety and integrity of
food ingredients, including companies purchasing food ingredients, regulatory
authorities, along with auditors and food safety management scheme owners.
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The approach proposed in A.
General Guidance for Food Ingredients is divided into four major steps. The
first three steps are aimed at characterizing the overall fraud vulnerabilities
of an ingredient by assessing factors contributing to fraud occurrence and the
potential impacts when fraud does occur,
including both public health and economic consequences. The last step provides
guidance on how to use information from the first three steps to develop a
mitigation strategy. Stakeholders are encouraged to evaluate the effectiveness
of this tool and provide comments and feedback to Jeff Moore, Ph.D., Senior
Scientific Liaison at JM@usp.org.
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Additional, similar guidance
sections that tailor this general approach to specific ingredient categories
such as milk-based food ingredients are planned as future additions to this
Appendix. Stakeholders interested in contributing to additional guidance categories
in this area can contact Jeff Moore, Ph.D., Senior Scientific Liaison at JM@usp.org.
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This proposal is targeted for
publication in the Third Supplement to FCC 9.
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Comment deadline: March 31, 2015
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LINK: http://www.usp.org/sites/default/files/usp_pdf/EN/fcc/Notices/guidance_on_food_fraud_mitigation.pdf
