Regulatory Liaison Meeting Recap
On October 30, 2022 there was a PDA Liaison meeting with members of the PDA, members of PAFP, and several members of the industry. The goal of the meeting was to give recaps of things going on in the industry and misc updates for all of those involved.
The PAFP group has a goal of trying to always bring the most up to date information to those in the food industry and involved in Food Safety throughout Pennsylvania.
The following points are some general notes taken at the meeting:
There continues to be outbreaks of farms/flocks with Avian Influenza throughout the state and they continue to monitor as the outbreak continues. There were multiple farms depopulating their flocks after an outbreak at the time of the meeting including a chicken flock and a turkey farm.
An update on spotted lantern flies was requested, and it was noted that trees should be scraped in the fall and treated in the spring. As of now there is not an end all be all procedure for mitigating the problem, but more of learning to adjust to current levels.
An update in the LEO program, is that Donna Krouse has retired and her replacement will be Phillip Harchack. There should be a seamless transition for Phillip to move into this role, and in the future expanding on this role and building depth in this department.
It is the overall goal of the PDA to continue to build it’s staff while keeping in mind that a large majority are within retirement age in the next 5 years.
An update from Justin Holder was that Eric Fischer is now certified to audit plants and for the time being they are both avoiding audits in plants that are in Avian Influenza zones to avoid potential cross contamination. If they do complete audits in those areas it will be after receiving approval from FDA/PDA.
No major updates from Zach Travis or the milk program. They are continuing to work on the milk hauler certifications and how they want to continue to hold certification days at larger country fair grounds to get as many milk haulers certified at once as possible and continue this into 2023 as well.
There are no major updated from the PAFP group, other than we are continue to work on the conference planning process overall. We are also looking at the current framework of the PAFP group and how we can rebuild and grow the group after recent retirements and changes in the industry.
An update from Amanda Rife for NCIMS was that the conference date was confirmed for April 3rd to 7th in 2023. This will be the first in person conference in 4 years. Proposals will be due in January of 2023 for the conference to give time for review.
There are some suggestions out there to lower the SCC count requirements to better match the requirements of the EU.
There was also the discussion of another Appendix N drug surveillance trial, that would be double blind with no consequences for positive results. There would be 19 new drugs with a concentration on anti-parasitic drugs over a 36 month time period. More information on this would be coming in 2023.
It was also noted that Appendix N and Appendix B are in a rewrite phase for clarifying some of the information overall in those sections of the PMO.
Please check back for more updates on the above information as it becomes available and there are more details.
The next meeting will be held on Friday, March 17, 2023.