Who’s your PCQI?
By Loren Israelsen, President, United Natural Products Alliance
If I were to ask, “Who is your PCQI?” (Preventive Controls Qualified Individual), there would be three typical responses:
1. What is PCQI?
2. I don’t know; I’ll ask around and get back to you.
3. Yes, we do have a PCQI (BTW: PCQI is a person, not a thing!).
If an FDA investigator or a major customer were to ask this question of you or your staff, then what? I confess, it took me a while to get the acronym and the concept of PCQI straight in my head, so if that is your situation, you are not alone.
What’s a PCQI?
So, what (remember, it is a “who”) is PCQI?
Preventive Controls for Human Foods is one of seven provisions of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), the most sweeping reform of our food safety laws in more than 70 years, which was signed into law by President Obama on January 4, 2011. According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), FSMA aims to “ensure the U.S. food supply is safe by shifting the focus from responding to contamination to preventing it.” CONTINUE →