bake - April 2014 - 16

legislation

Food Code
The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently updated
its Food Code for food retailers including bakeries. This is the
model that local public health agencies use when inspecting
retail food operations. The previous revision took place in 2009.

preventative controls. For bakers, this means proving that
their ovens really do destroy pathogenic organisms. And

The model Food Code is what retailers live with every day,

that requires verifying that the temperature proﬁle within the

according to Dennis Stanton, the owner of Swedish Bakery in

product reaches and sustains the kill step during its transit

Chicago, who represented the Retail Bakeries of America at

through the oven.

a recent Food Technical and Regulatory Affairs Committee
meeting of the American Bakers Association (ABA).

The problem with validating the oven at the kill step, however,
is that no one in their right mind would want to run routine

The FDA's Food Code marks its 20th anniversary with the release

tests with live pathogens in a working bakery. The ABA,

of the 2013 edition. The 2013 edition reﬂects the input of regula-

through its Food Technical and Regulatory Affairs Committee

tory officials, industry, academia, and consumers that participated

(FTRAC) in collaboration with AIB International, has a possible

in the 2012 meeting of the Conference for Food Protection (CFP).

solution, but it needs to make sure that the idea works.

The FDA encourages its state, local, tribal, and territorial partners
to adopt the latest version of the FDA Food Code. The beneﬁts

Although the kill points for Salmonella, Enterococcus faecium,

associated with complete and widespread adoption of the 2013

E. coli and similar pathogens are well researched and widely

Food Code as statutes, codes and ordinances include:

known, none of that testing was done in a bread matrix,
according to ABA's FTRAC.

* Reduction of the risk of foodborne illnesses within food
establishments, protecting consumers and industry from

ABA and AIB want to offer bakers yeast, Saccharomyces

potentially devastating health consequences and ﬁnancial

cerevisiae, as a safe stand-in. This will require veriﬁcation that

losses

yeast experiences the same kill step in a bread or bun matrix
as the dangerous microbes. The work will be done in a quali-

* Uniform standards for retail food safety that reduce
complexity and better ensure compliance
* The elimination of redundant processes for establishing food
safety criteria

ﬁed biosafety level No. 2 laboratory and published in a peerreviewed journal.
If bakers yeast earns that surrogate role, then bakers could
validate their ovens as FSMA preventative controls by running
regular temperature proﬁle tests using probe-equipped data

* The establishment of a more standardized approach to

loggers and their regular yeast-raised doughs.

inspections and audits of food establishments
Members of FDA's National Retail Food Team are available to
assist regulatory officials, educators, and the industry in their
efforts to adopt, implement, and understand the provisions of
the FDA Food Code and the Retail Program Standards.
FSMA update
When regulations carrying out the Food Safety Modernization
Act (FSMA) go into effect roughly two years from now, operators of food plants must validate the effectiveness of their
16 < APR 2014 | bakemag.com

THE FDA'S NATIONAL RETAIL FOOD TEAM
Inquiries may be sent to retailfoodprotectionteam@
fda.hhs.gov or directly to a Regional Retail Food
Specialist located in one of FDA's five Regional
Offices across the country.

www.fda.gov/food/guidanceregulation/
retailfoodprotection/foodcode

http://www.fda.gov/food/guidanceregulation/ http://www.bakemag.com

bake - April 2014

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