Over the past two decades, there has been a paradigm shift in the relationships between food, beverage and ingredients processors and their vendors. Years ago, the role of purchasing was to find the necessary ingredients and raw materials at the best price. Today, processors must ensure what they order is safe, high quality and wholesome, and vendors must be able to prove all of these. In this way, quality and safety demands have been pushed further back in the food chain and are literally becoming a farm-to-fork exercise. The goal is to reduce risks coming into the plant and, therefore, potential liability.
Vendor quality and approval are elements of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA). As a result, all US processors must establish a vendor quality program. One of the most important elements of the program will be assessing risk in ingredients, raw materials and packaging materials they currently use, as well as any new materials they are thinking about using. Risk assessments should be conducted by a processor’s HACCP or food safety team. Different tools are available for assessing risk, but one of most commonly used is a system where each ingredient or raw material is assessed as follows: