ARLINGTON, VIRGINIA, U.S. — The American Feed Industry Association (AFIA) announced on June 18 that registration is open for two additional Food Safety Modernization Act Regional Seminars: Phase 1: Building a Foundation for Compliance. The meetings will be hosted in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., and Atlanta, Georgia, U.S., Aug. 11-12 and Aug. 14-15, respectively. 

The Iowa- and Georgia-based seminars are two of the three meetings making up the FSMA Regional Seminar phase I process. The first meeting, to be hosted in Sacramento, California, U.S., July 27-28, was announced by the association earlier this month. 

"All three seminars will cover identical topics and are designed by AFIA experts to help the industry better understand the largest set of rules to impact feed and pet food since the 1950s," said Richard Sellers, AFIA senior vice-president of legislative and regulatory affairs. 

The training sessions will cover various components of the new law that will be required by feed and pet food manufacturers as well as ingredient suppliers. All three phases of the regional seminars are ideal for those interested in understanding how FSMA will impact their business, and will be most beneficial to those that manufacture animal feed, pet food and feed ingredients.

Instructors will focus on the requirements for feed manufacturing, pet food manufacturing and ingredient suppliers to comply with the FSMA law. Participants will be provided with samples of procedures, forms and reference information that can be utilized in their corporate offices to develop a compliance plan.

All three two-day seminars will include presentations such as "CGMPs: The Foundation for an Effective Food Safety Plan," "What are the Key Components of a Supplier Verification Program?" and "Hazard Identification and Analysis."

AFIA plans to roll out phase II and phase III of the FSMA Regional Seminar meetings in 2015.

To register online for the phase I FSMA Regional Seminar in Sacramento, click here. 

To register for the Des Moines seminar, click here. 

To register for the Atlanta seminar, click here.