In this episode of “At Your Convenience,” CSP Editor Chuck Ulie (left) talks with Eric Hildenbrand (right), chief strategy and administrative officer at Temple, Texas-based convenience-store distributor McLane Co., about the Food Safety Modernization Act, also known as FSMA 204.
On this podcast, Hildenbrand talks about the goal of the act, which is to make traceability much faster than it is today. He also discusses some of the foods that will be affected and what c-stores should be doing now to get ready.
“At Your Convenience” brings industry experts and analysts together with CSP editors to discuss the latest in c-store news and trends. From mergers and acquisitions to foodservice and technology, the podcast delivers the story straight to listeners in short-format episodes, perfect for the morning commute or a quick break at the office.
Listen to their conversation above, or read the transcript here, which has been edited for length and clarity:
Chuck Ulie: Part of what you do in your job is you oversee compliance and food safety and the food traceability act. Can you give a quick synopsis of what that’s all about?
Eric Hildenbrand: It’s usually referred to as FSMA 204, but that really stands for the Food Safety Modernization Act, Section 204. And the goal of that act, and that section, is just to make traceability a lot faster than it is today. What it says is there’s a group of products, those more likely to cause foodborne illness. So, think meat, fish, shellfish, dairy, and those are on a food traceability list. And it says for anything on that food traceability list, you have to capture certain critical data elements from the time it’s manufactured or farmed all the way through the supply chain until it gets to a retailer like a convenience store. And it requires everyone along the chain to get the information and then pass it on to the next person on the chain.
Ulie: And am I correct that originally this was going to be going into effect—was it this month or something? But it’s been bumped. Am I correct?
Hildenbrand: It was going to be January of next year. The Trump administration has indicated that it’s going to push off the compliance date two-plus years. And that’s because, while what I just described is a really great idea and will help protect all of our consumers from foodborne illnesses, it’s a little challenging to do it because you’ve got a lot of different food channels, a lot of different suppliers, and we all have to be able to talk to each other in a way we really haven’t done before and be able to pass those data pieces about each particular product back and forth to each other to get that full traceability. So, I think the administration realized it just needed a little more time to give the industry a chance to get all those connections done well.
Ulie: It sounds incredibly complicated.
Hildenbrand: Well, it isn’t. If you look at what you have to send, it’s not terribly complicated. But when you think of all the people that touch something and making sure everybody can read it and look at it, it gets a little complicated.
Ulie: What do convenience stores in particular need to know about this act? Other than what you already told us, is there anything else?
Hildenbrand: They need to know a few things. I think the first thing is what I just said, just, "Hey, what is this?" And they probably need to look around their store and say, “I’m probably going to be subject to this.” I can’t think of a convenience store where it’s just a normal set of products that won’t be subject. So, the next thing they need to do is start talking with their wholesaler, their distributor, about how everybody’s going to comply. How are you going to get me the information I need to comply with this? What do I need to know about this? And I think you can do that. McLane communicates regularly with our retail partners and tries to explain these things. I think there’s a lot of conferences, so you can kind of pick up that information. And with the delay, I don’t know that it’s critical it has to be done tomorrow. But I think a good c-store owner is going to be communicating with their wholesale partners now to say, “How are you planning to do this? Because I want to make sure I’m in compliance and make sure my consumers are safe.”
Ulie: Is there anything in particular that a c-store should be doing now?
Hildenbrand: I would be asking, again, the wholesaler how they are going to communicate the information to you so that you know that you can get it? Is it going to be an Excel spreadsheet? Are they going to have a portal you can log onto on the web? I would also be thinking about any food you might prepare in the store as a c-store yourself, maybe without a partner. That’s going to get a little bit more complicated here because you’re going to have to know where you got those tomatoes and all that information up the chain, right? Where if you have a good partner, and they’re providing you all that foodservice material and ingredients and things like that, they’re going to have that information, which makes it easier for you. So, starting to think about how you want to manage that now would be smart before we get too close to the deadline.
Ulie: And so it could be, I have tomatoes on a sandwich. I have to know where they originated from, right?
Hildenbrand: Correct. And that’s a very valuable thing to know. And it’s going to be great, frankly, for the whole industry once it’s in place. It’s just challenging.
Ulie: You said it’ll be challenging and that challenge will be just getting it going, getting the ball rolling, getting a regular cadence to it?
Hildenbrand: I think that’s right. I think it’s the initial connections, Chuck, and getting it rolling. You know, over 120 years, McLane has seen a tremendous number of innovations like this or legal changes that make the entire industry more food safe. And you can see that less people get sick today than they ever had. But each one of those requires you to get over that initial hump of, "How do I do this? How do I do this new thing that I know is going to be great for my consumer?" And once you get over it, it becomes common nature, right? Everyone puts gloves on before they make a sandwich, right? Everyone washes their hands. We know this now, when you told someone to do it in 1880, they thought, well, why, right? So I think we just have to get over that first time, and then it’ll be good.
Ulie: Sure. And in the big picture sense, how will the Food Safety Modernization Act affect c-stores? How do you see it affecting them?
Hildenbrand: We’ve actually spent a few minutes just talking about what I’ll call a short-term effect, right, how do I implement it? But I think the more interesting thing is the long-term effects. A supply chain that’s able to really quickly respond when there’s a foodborne illness—I think that really helps c-stores. C-stores spend all their time trying to gain the trust of their customer and make that a destination of choice, and one of the things that can destroy that is foodborne illness. So now we’ll have the ability within hours, 24 hours, to know exactly where a piece of food came from that may have caused an illness. And we can tell each convenience store, “Hey, don’t use that tomato,” to use your example. And that means less people got sick. So, where before, every day, every hour, you still had those tomatoes out there, more people can get sick, (now) less people will get sick. We also have the ability to pinpoint exactly what field those tomatoes came from. So the other problem we always have is just take all your tomatoes away, right? That’ll solve the problem, but that’s expensive for the c-store and it makes our customers less happy because they don’t have tomatoes on their sandwiches. Now we’ll be able to pinpoint. So you have less people getting sick and less waste. And I think that’s a real advantage for the c-store.
Ulie: My last question for you, Eric: Will this affect all c-stores the same?
Hildenbrand: Yes, it affects everyone in the food channel the same. I think the bigger you are, if you think about a grocery store, they have a lot more products, but they also have lot bigger backend systems and people working on it. So ultimately, everyone has to comply with the same law. I think people will do it differently depending on their size.
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