A Watchful Eye on Food Safety

The Food and Drug Administration released a Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) public progress report in July to commemorate the six-month milestone of the bill’s existence. Key highlights of the report included a joint anti-smuggling strategy, implementing interim rules on imported foods and authorizing to suspend food facility’s registration for non-compliance.

In January, the U.S. government stepped up to take a proactive approach to food safety regulation with the January 4, 2011 passage of the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), which puts a greater focus on prevention. Each year, approximately 48 million people (1 in 6 Americans) are sickened, 128,000 are hospitalized and 3,000 die from food-borne illnesses, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Prevention, inspection, compliance and response plans create the foundation for this legislation. Overall, the law aims to strengthen the food safety system in various phases of enforcement to keep a watchful and aggressive eye on public health by empowering officials to contain problems with a focus on preclusion. Additionally, the law now holds imported foods to the same standards as domestic goods, requiring the FDA to establish offices in at least five foreign countries that export to the U.S. For multiple levels of enforcement and oversight, the bill also mandates the FDA works hand-in-hand with state and local authorities.

Most recently, officials developed a strategy to prevent food from being smuggled into the United States, reigned in and provided additional oversight for the dietary supplement industry by requiring notification when new dietary ingredients are added to products, and granted the FDA permission to detain any suspicious foods. Several meetings kept the public abreast of progress and policy changes.

The new legislation greatly increases the power of the FDA in various capacities, including the ability to directly issue food recalls, expediting the usual process of going through a specific food company for a request. The law also empowers the FDA to set standards for producing and harvesting fresh produce, internationally and domestically, with exemptions for small food companies and local farms not equipped to be held to the same standards as larger companies.

Food manufacturers will also be impacted by the bill. For example, food facilities will now be required to implement preventative control plans to evaluate hazards potentially affecting food safety and outline preventative steps. Enforcement of enhanced partnerships with other local government oversight agencies and mandatory access to records and files aims to increase transparency as well.

“[This law is] the best available science and good common sense to prevent the problems that can make people sick,” said Margaret A. Hamburg, M.D., Commissioner of Food and Drugs. “[It] represents a sea change for food safety in America, bringing a new focus on prevention, and I expect that in the coming years it will have a dramatic and positive effect on the safety of the food supply.”