National food safety regulations are poised to go into effect that will help trace foodborne illness outbreaks to their point of origin more quickly but will also impose significant new requirements on restaurants and food retailers like grocery stores. A group of food safety experts is now rolling out a free, four-hour training course to help restaurants and food retailers come into compliance with the new rule.

“This rule – the FDA’s Food Traceability Rule – will be a valuable tool for food safety and public health, but there are two complications,” said Ellen Shumaker, a food safety expert at N.C. State University who led development of the training course. “First, many of the people responsible for complying with the rule may not know it exists or when it will go into effect. Second, the rule itself is complicated and will likely be difficult for managers to comply with without training. Our goal is to help businesses prepare before the regulations take effect.”

The rule requires additional recordkeeping for any entities that manufacture, process, pack or hold foods that are part of FDA’s Food Traceability List. These foods include many types of produce, seafood, dairy products, nut butters and eggs. Businesses covered by the rule would include restaurants, grocery stores, food processing facilities and agricultural operations.

Essentially, the rule requires that any product on the FTL include labels with information that can be used to trace every step of that product’s journey from the farm to the retail food establishment where consumers buy it. For example, peanut butter crackers should include a code that can be used to determine where the peanuts were grown, where the salt was manufactured, when and where the peanuts and salt were processed into peanut butter, where the peanut butter was processed into peanut butter crackers, who distributed those crackers, and the retail food establishments that sell the crackers. That information should also include who shipped and received those components at every stage of the process. And if the ingredients were “transformed” at any stage of the process, the code should include that, too.

What’s more, every entity that serves as a link in this chain from farm to retail food establishment must also have a plan in place for how it would trace a given food item back to its point of origin. In short, a lot of businesses will have to comply with new recordkeeping and labeling requirements when the rule goes into effect on July 20, 2028.

“These regulations are designed to help public health authorities more quickly identify the source of foodborne illness in the event of an outbreak,” Shumaker said. “For example, authorities might trace a problem back to a specific farm or processing facility in less time, allowing them to address the problem faster.

“But this approach can also be good for businesses. If an outbreak can be traced to a specific point of origin, then potential recalls can be more targeted, and businesses that were not responsible for the problem won’t be affected.”

One of the reasons it may be valuable for managers of restaurants and food retailers to take a training course for this regulation is that the rule can be complicated. “You have to familiarize yourself with the various codes and labeling requirements,” Shumaker said. “You have to develop plans for food product tracking. And, on top of all that, there are also a number of exceptions and exemptions that change the regulatory requirements. For example, if a restaurant buys lettuce directly from a farm, the requirements are different than if a restaurant buys lettuce from a produce distributor.”

Because the Food Traceability Rule is so complex, Shumaker worked with food safety experts at NCSU, North Carolina A&T State University, Ohio State University and High Point University to create a relatively concise training program focused on helping small- and medium-sized businesses come into compliance with the new requirements.

The first course begins Feb. 2 and consists of both online and in-person sessions. The online component takes less than an hour, while the in-person session takes less than three hours.

“The course is free, and we’re planning to offer the course twice a month in the spring, and once a month during the summer,” Shumaker said. “We hope to continue offering the course beyond the summer, depending on funding.”

Restaurant and food retail managers who are interested in registering for the course can find information at https://reporter.ncsu.edu/index.html.

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