RICK STEIN
Vice President Fresh Foods, Food Marketing Institute (FMI)
The Food Marketing Institute advocates on behalf of the food
retail industry, which employs nearly 5 million workers and
represents a combined annual sales volume of almost $800
billion. FMI member companies operate nearly 33,000 retail
food stores and 12,000 pharmacies. ( www.fmi.org)
“FMI guidance to its members is to work with their
supply chain partners and focus on prevention of contam-
ination, increase communication with FDA and supply
elements for traceability and flexibility in how those data
elements are shared. Our members want to be able to make
technology choices on their own, and we fully expect tech-
nology to advance as it has done in the past.
“We firmly believe in the importance of the safety of
products and the increased use of technology as a tool
to share information among supply chain partners. Our
RICK BLASGEN
