Coastal Restoration

The FDA published its final rule about new traceability protocols for a variety of food products vulnerable to contamination. People who manufacture, process, pack or hold foods including produce, cheeses, eggs, nut butter, seafood and deli salads will be subjected to new recordkeeping requirements during production and along the supply chain.
The compliance date for the new requirements is Jan. 20, 2026. The law makes exemptions for small farms, stores and foodservice entities, as well as some foods that are treated to reduce contamination and produce that is rarely consumed raw. 
Traceability technology has long been touted as a way to identify contaminated food and ingredients quickly in the system. The FDA has said this kind of program can make the U.S. food system safer.

The Covid pandemic has rightly received most of the blame for global supply chain upheavals in the last two years. But the less publicized threat to supply chains from climate change poses a far more serious threat and is already being felt, scholars and experts say.

The pandemic is “a temporary problem,” while climate change is “long-term dire,” said Austin Becker, a maritime infrastructure resilience scholar at the University of Rhode Island. “Climate change is a slow-moving crisis that is going to last a very, very long time, and it’s going to require some fundamental changes,” said Becker. “Every coastal community, every coastal transportation network is going to face some risks from this, and we’re not going to have nearly enough resources to make all the investments that are required.”