While Paul Simon used “One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor,” to refer to apartment house rules of courtesy, you might find a parallel to this separate-but-connected concept in the food supply chain. That is, one producer’s output is another processor’s input; just as you test and verify your finished product before it goes out the door, you expect no less from your supplier. This is especially true if you have no “kill” stage in your process. But there’s a major difference between apartment house rules and food safety: The latter is the law of the land under FSMA.
“For products that do not use a cooking or ‘kill’ step, a robust, reliable testing program is particularly important to help minimize the risk of contaminated ingredients moving forward in the production chain and potentially reaching the market,” says Jun Li, senior research investigator, diagnostics, DuPont Nutrition and Health. “Under FSMA, the initial farmers/growers/producers are first responsible for taking the appropriate measures to minimize or eliminate the risk of illness-causing contamination.”