Description
At the October 1982 meeting of the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA) Automatic Merchandising Health-Industry Council (AMHIC) a motion was made to begin the development of design standards which could be incorporated into the NAMA “Standard for the Sanitary Design and Construction of Food and Beverage Vending Machines.” As a result of that activity, Section 900 Water Vending Machines was officially adopted and became a part of the NAMA Construction Standard at the 1984 AMHIC Annual Meeting.
Since AMHIC is comprised of regulatory officials, manufacturers and operators of vending machines, the regulatory officials on the Council mentioned that current food service regulations were not appropriate for regulating these new water vending machines. These same officials then called the Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO) and were referred to their Laws and Regulations Committee as to the feasibility of developing a model regulation for water vending machines. This resulted in the 1986 first model regulation for water vending machines in the country.
As with any technology, innovation and changes in components and treatments occur over the years. This is preciously what happened to water vending machines since 1984. Thus, NAMA suggested to AFDO Laws and Regulations Committee in 1995 that the current model water vending machine regulation should be revised to reflect the latest in technology for processing water along with updating the monitoring requirements based on 10 years of experience in the field. This 1997 model water vending machine regulation is the result of those deliberations.
