The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Human Foods Program (FDA’s HFP) has published a list of priority research, data, and method needs, which, if fulfilled, would help FDA better understand the underlying factors that may cause or contribute to health risks from HFP-regulated products.

FDA is providing its list of research, method, and data needs for researchers who may be interested in pursuing science that is useful to advancing food safety. The list may also be helpful for writing grants to agencies that fund food safety research; some of the listed priorities may be the subject of current research projects.

The priority areas of scientific inquiry span:

• Nutrition, including infant formula, ultra-processed foods (UPFs), and other areas
• Human behavior, perceptions, and attitudes related to allergen labeling, food additives, foodborne illness risk communication, and other areas
• Microbiological food safety, including screening and detection methods, and hazards identification and prevention for important foodborne pathogens
• Food chemical safety, dietary supplements, and innovation, including methods to detect food adulteration, understanding the presence of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and toxic heavy metals in food, developing New Approach Methodologies (NAMs) for toxicity assessments, understanding the effect of chemical additives on health, and other areas
• Risk assessment across various population groups, and on the impact of manufacturing processes, procedures, and practices
• Other areas, specifically, the prevalence of economically motivated adulteration of seafood products.

While HFP prioritizes these areas of scientific inquiry, any data collected and conclusions reached in studies related to these areas would be subject to HFP review prior to use in policy, planning, or resource allocation decisions.

The list will be updated periodically. The full list can be found here.