Ever wondered where that apple or deli salad you’re noshing on came from (and where it’s been)? We may soon have more clarity on questions like these, thanks to a new federal regulation known as FSMA 204.
Ben Ames has spent 20 years as a journalist since starting out as a daily newspaper reporter in Pennsylvania in 1995. From 1999 forward, he has focused on business and technology reporting for a number of trade journals, beginning when he joined Design News and Modern Materials Handling magazines. Ames is author of the trail guide "Hiking Massachusetts" and is a graduate of the Columbia School of Journalism.
The next time you pick up a snack—say, an apple or a jar of almond butter—at a local store, take a moment to see if you can figure out where that item was grown or produced. If you’re in a supermarket, you might glance at the label, but that often just tells you the name of the distributor. Bar codes aren’t much help either—they typically provide little more information than the item’s price or SKU (stock-keeping unit) number.
But just over two years from now, the picture will be much clearer—at least for players in the food supply chain—thanks to a federal regulation known as FSMA 204. FSMA 204, which stands for Section 204 of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Food Safety Modernization Act, establishes new, tightened traceability recordkeeping requirements for “persons who manufacture, process, pack, or hold foods included on the [agency’s] Food Traceability List”—a roster that includes many fresh fruits and vegetables, a variety of soft cheeses, shell eggs, nut butter, herbs, some categories of seafood, and refrigerated and ready-to-eat deli salads.
The FDA’s goal is to better protect the public from foodborne diseases by strengthening the food tracking system from farm to retailer, according to a white paper from Wiliot, an Illinois-based provider of cloud services and internet of things (IoT) technologies. The end goal is a stronger tracking system that will allow for faster identification and rapid removal of potentially contaminated food from the market, the FDA says on its website.
THE NUTS AND BOLTS
Though it’s part of a much broader food safety initiative, FSMA 204 at its core is simply about recordkeeping—recordkeeping by every entity that participates in the “harvesting, packing, and transportation of foods covered by Section 204,” according to the Wiliot white paper. That includes commercial farms, packing operations, and food processing facilities as well as a host of logistics-sector players. While carriers are exempt from FSMA 204, warehouses, food suppliers, wholesalers/distributors, grocery and convenience stores, and retail food establishments of all stripes come under the new rule’s purview.
As for the records themselves, parties subject to the rule must “maintain records containing key data elements (KDEs) associated with specific critical tracking events (CTEs) in the food handling process,” according to the FDA’s website. Examples of CTEs include harvesting, cooling, initial packing, shipping, and receiving. KDEs vary according to the CTE, but in the case of harvesting, for instance, the data elements would include the location of the farm (or even field) and date of harvest. Each affected company must store all of that information for 24 months. And if an outbreak of foodborne illness occurs, the company must be able to share all of it with federal regulators on 24 hours’ notice.
What makes this all the more complicated is that these companies must be able to share the data not just with the FDA, but also with suppliers, wholesalers, distributors, stores, and restaurants.
“Historically, the industry was only required to track where product came from and directly where it was shipped. That’s all changed with FSMA 204,” Brian Piancino, COO of Texas-based wholesaler Affiliated Foods Inc., said in a release describing his company’s response to the new requirements. “Now everyone from the grower in the field, to the processor, to the warehouse must have electronic data tracking in place and the ability to provide that data to the next person in line in the supply chain all the way to the backroom of the retail store.”
The FDA doesn’t dictate the type of technology required for compliance, but Wiliot says any company looking to meet the new requirements will almost certainly have to use automatic identification(auto ID) technologies such as smart tags and IoT sensors, all linked to interoperable online databases, to avoid incurring huge increases in labor costs.
NO TIME TO WASTE
The new traceability regulations took effect on Jan. 20 of this year, but the FDA has set a three-year grace period for adopting new processes, so enforcement begins on Jan. 20, 2026. While that might sound like a lot of breathing room, experts say it’s actually a pretty aggressive timeline for an IT project of this scope.
“That leaves only [28] months for an estimated 1.5 million-plus grocery stores, restaurants, convenience stores, and the entire supply chains of the products on the Food Traceability List to get traceability processes and traceability data management and recordkeeping systems in place,” says Derek Hannum, chief customer officer for ReposiTrak, a provider of supply chain risk mitigation and compliance management solutions. “In short, there is an enormous amount of work to get done and not very much time to do it.”
According to Hannum, the protocols needed to comply with the new traceability requirements will be a big step up from current recordkeeping practices, like the common “one forward/one back” approach, where each company keeps its own records on who it receives product from and who it ships product to. A big part of the challenge will be finding ways to share detailed information swiftly with so many other parties.
“It’s the sharing of the data between suppliers, wholesalers, distributors, stores, and restaurants that is new, and virtually no one has systems or processes in place today to make this data-sharing easy and routine in the complex network of players that comprise the U.S. food supply chain,” Hannum says.
Savanna Holt, a transportation manager with supply chain consulting and technology services firm enVista, agrees. “Based on [what we’re seeing with] the clients, organizations, and other industry stakeholders we’ve been working with, [almost] no one is compliant with FSMA 204 standards yet,” she says. “The majority of the industry is still in the initial stages of trying to wrap their heads around FSMA 204’s requirements and determine what best practices are for compliance.”
The chief hurdle is that the new rule requires a far more granular level of data tracking than current practices like one step forward/one step back, Holt says. Complying with the new standards will likely require significant technology investments, a burden that will probably fall most heavily on the parties closest to consumers. “FSMA 204 is not the first FSMA ruling. Previous rulings were more focused on suppliers, so they would likely already have more practices in place for becoming compliant with this new ruling,” Holt says. “Because of this, FSMA 204 is impacting those toward the middle and end of the supply chain, like distributors and[retailers], the most.”
FOCUS ON THE TECHNOLOGY
That’s not to say everybody has yet to leave the starting gate. Some companies, like Affiliated Foods Inc., are well underway on their compliance journey. Affiliated, which serves more than 800 member stores across the Southwest, recently adopted the ReposiTrak Traceability Network, an online portal that enables its suppliers to exchange the “key data element” information required by the FDA for every critical tracking event in the food handling process.
But Affiliated may be more the exception than the rule. As the enforcement deadline draws near, many players in the food supply chain will have to significantly up their tracking game, which will likely mean investing in more robust auto ID, IoT, and other data-management and -sharing technologies.
For those starting out on their journey, ReposiTrak’s Hannum offers a word to the wise. For all its complexities, he says, FSMA 204 compliance is fundamentally an IT matter—and organizations should approach it that way.
“As more companies start to realize that FSMA 204 traceability is not actually a food safety project, but rather a supply chain data management project, they can then begin to mobilize the people and resources required for compliance,” he says.
The number of container ships waiting outside U.S. East and Gulf Coast ports has swelled from just three vessels on Sunday to 54 on Thursday as a dockworker strike has swiftly halted bustling container traffic at some of the nation’s business facilities, according to analysis by Everstream Analytics.
As of Thursday morning, the two ports with the biggest traffic jams are Savannah (15 ships) and New York (14), followed by single-digit numbers at Mobile, Charleston, Houston, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Baltimore, and Miami, Everstream said.
The impact of that clogged flow of goods will depend on how long the strike lasts, analysts with Moody’s said. The firm’s Moody’s Analytics division estimates the strike will cause a daily hit to the U.S. economy of at least $500 million in the coming days. But that impact will jump to $2 billion per day if the strike persists for several weeks.
The immediate cost of the strike can be seen in rising surcharges and rerouting delays, which can be absorbed by most enterprise-scale companies but hit small and medium-sized businesses particularly hard, a report from Container xChange says.
“The timing of this strike is especially challenging as we are in our traditional peak season. While many pulled forward shipments earlier this year to mitigate risks, stockpiled inventories will only cushion businesses for so long. If the strike continues for an extended period, we could see significant strain on container availability and shipping schedules,” Christian Roeloffs, cofounder and CEO of Container xChange, said in a release.
“For small and medium-sized container traders, this could result in skyrocketing logistics costs and delays, making it harder to secure containers. The longer the disruption lasts, the more difficult it will be for these businesses to keep pace with market demands,” Roeloffs said.
The British logistics robot vendor Dexory this week said it has raised $80 million in venture funding to support an expansion of its artificial intelligence (AI) powered features, grow its global team, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomous robots.
A “significant focus” continues to be on expanding across the U.S. market, where Dexory is live with customers in seven states and last month opened a U.S. headquarters in Nashville. The Series B will also enhance development and production facilities at its UK headquarters, the firm said.
The “series B” funding round was led by DTCP, with participation from Latitude Ventures, Wave-X and Bootstrap Europe, along with existing investors Atomico, Lakestar, Capnamic, and several angels from the logistics industry. With the close of the round, Dexory has now raised $120 million over the past three years.
Dexory says its product, DexoryView, provides real-time visibility across warehouses of any size through its autonomous mobile robots and AI. The rolling bots use sensor and image data and continuous data collection to perform rapid warehouse scans and create digital twins of warehouse spaces, allowing for optimized performance and future scenario simulations.
Originally announced in September, the move will allow Deutsche Bahn to “fully focus on restructuring the rail infrastructure in Germany and providing climate-friendly passenger and freight transport operations in Germany and Europe,” Werner Gatzer, Chairman of the DB Supervisory Board, said in a release.
For its purchase price, DSV gains an organization with around 72,700 employees at over 1,850 locations. The new owner says it plans to investment around one billion euros in coming years to promote additional growth in German operations. Together, DSV and Schenker will have a combined workforce of approximately 147,000 employees in more than 90 countries, earning pro forma revenue of approximately $43.3 billion (based on 2023 numbers), DSV said.
After removing that unit, Deutsche Bahn retains its core business called the “Systemverbund Bahn,” which includes passenger transport activities in Germany, rail freight activities, operational service units, and railroad infrastructure companies. The DB Group, headquartered in Berlin, employs around 340,000 people.
“We have set clear goals to structurally modernize Deutsche Bahn in the areas of infrastructure, operations and profitability and focus on the core business. The proceeds from the sale will significantly reduce DB’s debt and thus make an important contribution to the financial stability of the DB Group. At the same time, DB Schenker will gain a strong strategic owner in DSV,” Deutsche Bahn CEO Richard Lutz said in a release.
Transportation industry veteran Anne Reinke will become president & CEO of trade group the Intermodal Association of North America (IANA) at the end of the year, stepping into the position from her previous post leading third party logistics (3PL) trade group the Transportation Intermediaries Association (TIA), both organizations said today.
Meanwhile, TIA today announced that insider Christopher Burroughs would fill Reinke’s shoes as president & CEO. Burroughs has been with TIA for 13 years, most recently as its vice president of Government Affairs for the past six years, during which time he oversaw all legislative and regulatory efforts before Congress and the federal agencies.
Before her four years leading TIA, Reinke spent two years as Deputy Assistant Secretary with the U.S. Department of Transportation and 16 years with CSX Corporation.
As the hours tick down toward a “seemingly imminent” strike by East Coast and Gulf Coast dockworkers, experts are warning that the impacts of that move would mushroom well-beyond the actual strike locations, causing prevalent shipping delays, container ship congestion, port congestion on West coast ports, and stranded freight.
However, a strike now seems “nearly unavoidable,” as no bargaining sessions are scheduled prior to the September 30 contract expiration between the International Longshoremen’s Association (ILA) and the U.S. Maritime Alliance (USMX) in their negotiations over wages and automation, according to the transportation law firm Scopelitis, Garvin, Light, Hanson & Feary.
The facilities affected would include some 45,000 port workers at 36 locations, including high-volume U.S. ports from Boston, New York / New Jersey, and Norfolk, to Savannah and Charleston, and down to New Orleans and Houston. With such widespread geography, a strike would likely lead to congestion from diverted traffic, as well as knock-on effects include the potential risk of increased freight rates and costly charges such as demurrage, detention, per diem, and dwell time fees on containers that may be slowed due to the congestion, according to an analysis by another transportation and logistics sector law firm, Benesch.
The weight of those combined blows means that many companies are already planning ways to minimize damage and recover quickly from the event. According to Scopelitis’ advice, mitigation measures could include: preparing for congestion on West coast ports, taking advantage of intermodal ground transportation where possible, looking for alternatives including air transport when necessary for urgent delivery, delaying shipping from East and Gulf coast ports until after the strike, and budgeting for increased freight and container fees.
Additional advice on softening the blow of a potential coastwide strike came from John Donigian, senior director of supply chain strategy at Moody’s. In a statement, he named six supply chain strategies for companies to consider: expedite certain shipments, reallocate existing inventory strategically, lock in alternative capacity with trucking and rail providers , communicate transparently with stakeholders to set realistic expectations for delivery timelines, shift sourcing to regional suppliers if possible, and utilize drop shipping to maintain sales.