The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has recently announced that the ANSI-ASQ National Accreditation Board (ANAB) has been accepted into the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s voluntary Accredited Third-Party Certification Programme, which was established by the Food Safety Modernisation Act to expand FDA’s oversight of imported foods.
ANAB is the first accreditation body to gain FDA recognition for the programme.
As an accreditation body recognised by FDA, ANAB has the authority to accredit third-party certification bodies that will conduct food safety audits of foreign food entities using FDA's safety standards and, based on their audit findings, may issue certifications of foreign food facilities and the foods they produce for people and animals.
The FDA also announced that it had officially launched the FSMA Voluntary Qualified Importer Program (VQIP). Importers interested in participating in VQIP will be required to meet a number of eligibility requirements, which include ensuring the facilities of their foreign supplier are certified under the Accredited Third-Party Certification Program.
LRQA is working towards accreditation in order to deliver accredited certification under the FDA FSMA program.
Read the FDA’s announcement.
For questions, to express interest or to discuss your potential participation in VQIP and/or your organisation’s accredited third party certification under the FDA FSMA programme, please contact us at enquiries@lr.org.
Alternatively, come and talk to LRQA's food safety experts at stand 105/106 during the Global Food Safety Conference which starts in Tokyo on 5th March.
*Please note that as of January 2018, we have moved to the LRQA brand and retired the LRQA name.