FDA SEEKS FOOD-SAFETY BENCHMARK FOR RETAILERS

JOANNA RAMEY

ROCKVILLE, Md. (FNS) -- The Food and Drug Administration here wants to create a benchmark by which food-safety programs at supermarkets, restaurants and convenience stores would be judged.

As part of the Clinton administration's food-safety initiative announced earlier this year, the FDA is proposing a National Retail Food Program Standard, which an agency spokeswoman said would be "a uniform piece of advice" for businesses to follow, but would not take the form of a federal regulation.

The proposed standard is to be discussed at six one-day public meetings to be held throughout the country.

The meetings started in Atlanta, June 26, and include Dallas, July 22; Pittsburgh, Aug. 14; Portland, Ore., Aug. 19; Portland, Maine, Aug. 21; and Chicago, Aug. 27.

FDA officials decided to create a retail food-safety standard despite the existence of a federal food-handling code, released in December 1992, as the state-of-the-art in food safety for all retail establishments to follow. At that time, federal officials anticipated that states -- which inspect supermarkets and other food outlets -- would uniformly adopt the code, thus creating a national food-safety standard.

For the most part, however, states have either not adopted the food code or have adopted only pieces of it.

Therefore, FDA officials, who have final authority over how supermarkets and other retail food outlets are inspected, are now saying they want to have a benchmark by which they can measure the effectiveness of each jurisdiction's food-safety standards.

The series of hearings, in addition to opening the idea of a proposed standard up for discussion, will also address Hazard Analysis Critical Control Point programs and how businesses can best use such tools to respond to food-borne illness outbreaks.

For more information about the meetings FDA officials said interested parties should call the agency at (301) 827-2908.

A spokeswoman for the Food Marketing Institute, Washington, said association officials were still evaluating the FDA's proposals for such retail food-safety standards. The trade group plans to get member supermarkets involved in the meetings, the spokeswoman said.