An example is the 1999 Food Code, a model code of food safety guidelines for food service establishments that promotes food safety by serving as a reference for more than 3,000 state and local regulatory agencies that oversee food safety in restaurants, grocery stores, nursing homes, and other institutional and retail settings. Working together with food industries to establish voluntary guidelines, such as the good agricultural and good manufacturing practices for raw fruits and vegetables, also help prevent pathogens from entering the food supply. Education about food safety practices for food handlers along the farm to table continuum is an effective prevention program as well. Verification of the effectiveness of the prevention programs is achieved through varying types and frequencies of inspection procedures at domestic food production and processing facilities, at international borders, and at foreign locations of producers and processors who export food to the United States. This program identifies points where contamination is likely to occur and puts in place appropriate process controls to prevent contamination during production and processing at seafood, meat and poultry facilities.
Industry has the primary responsibility for the safety of the food it produces and distributes.
The government's principle role is to verify that industry is carrying out its responsibility, and to initiate appropriate regulatory action if necessary. The Produce Safety Initiative Fresh fruits and vegetables are important to the health and well being of the American consumer. However, in recent years the detection of outbreaks of foodborne illness associated with both domestic and imported fresh fruits and vegetables has increased. As a result, President Clinton introduced the Produce Safety Initiative in the fall of l997. Like the FSI, of which it is a part, the PSI addresses the entire produce food chain from grower to table.