While the private industry has already implemented some tools to better trace products through the food supply chain, incidents (with and without health impacts) still happen. This is evident when searching the EU RASFF system. Serious, recent, incidents include 3-MCPD and glycidol in biscuits from Iran, Salmonella in halva from Turkey, and glass dust in food supplement capsules from France. From the beginning of this year until today (2022-10-28), more than 2100 serious notifications have been issued. The centralised rapid alert system allows consumers and competent authorities to rapidly share information on non-compliant potentially dangerous products in the European market. RASFF is a very useful system for this type of information and has been implemented in various versions in other countries, e.g. the RIAL system in Chile. However, despite the global food trade, not all countries have such system. To provide guidance and help for the implementation, FAO commissioned research on this topic which led to the recent publication “Technical Guidance for the Implementation of e-Notification Systems for Food Control”. The work was led by Bert Popping of FOCOS – Food Consulting Strategically – and Spencer Hansson from the Guelph Institute of Development Studies, Canada. Both, with the help and guidance of Esther Garrido Gamarro, Giulia Loi, John Ryder and Markus Lipp from FAO and the support of experts from around the world, including Hajime Toyofuku from Japan, Lotte Drieghe and Simon Padilla from Switzerland, Naomi Flynn from Australia, Laura Maria Müller from Austria, Sally Griffin from New Zealand. The publication outlines the minimum requirements to establish and maintain an e-notification system at country level. The publication will help facilitating the implementation of such system in those countries that do not have such a system yet and contribute to a safer inter- and intra-country food trade.
