The food home delivery business is exploding. While most companies and consumers have never worried about food safety when ordering Pizza or Chinese foods by telephone, the home food delivery market has now reached a $46 billion level and is expected to hit over $76 billion per year by 2022. But the business models for food delivery have taken many different directions and the lack of governmental guidance or oversight has allowed for the proliferation of delivery models shown to be clearly ignorant and in disregard of food safety and food quality requirements.
Ordering food for delivery by mail or UPS is a clearly established business model. Recent research has begun to analyze delivery models and these early studies have shown that the complete lack of regulation and control allows for perishable meats, poultry, restaurant meals to be delivered without adequate sanitation, temperature, and other food safety controls.
While the Food and Drug Administration’s Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) has focused on farms, distribution, transportation, imports and other issues related to large scale long distance supply chains, FSMA rules leave the consumer end up with local or state laws that have not kept up with the changing market. Restaurants and retail food suppliers have been quick to jump on consumer demands for prepared or unique foods, quick delivery, and unique eats. Consumers looking for easy lunches and dinners that require less time to prepare, serve and eat are naively expecting good food safety and quality implementation on their behalf.
Dr. John Ryan is a certified Preventive Controls Qualified Individual (PQCI) specializing in food safety process control and food safety plan validation. He holds a Ph.D. in research and statistical methods and has extensive international manufacturing quality and operations experience in large and small manufacturing operations and he is a retired Hawaii State Department of Agriculture Quality Assurance Division administrator.He currently operates two business divisions focused on food safety system validation (http://www.RyanSystems.com) and transportation controls (http://www.SanitaryColdChain.com).He has previously published books other covering food fraud, teams and teamwork and has recently completed a new book on validating preventive controls in food operations.
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