The U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Human Foods Program (FDA’s HFP) has updated its compliance program for pesticide residues in food.

The updates are designed to strengthen FDA’s regulatory Pesticide Residue Monitoring Program, through which the agency tests thousands of food samples for hundreds of different pesticides annually. FDA also monitors pesticides in human foods through focused surveys, the Total Diet Study, and in collaboration with states, the Laboratory Flexible Funding Model Program.

The updated Compliance Program 7304.004, which has been renamed to “Pesticides in Human Foods—Domestic and Import” to reflect its now-sole focus on pesticides, includes revisions that streamline the program and clarify objectives such as:

• Risk-Based Sampling Priorities: The updates include a focus on sampling foods commonly consumed by infants and children, among more than 150 raw agricultural commodities FDA samples as part of its responsibility to enforce U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-established pesticide residue tolerances. These procedural enhancements are intended to ensure resources are directed toward the areas of greatest potential risk.
• Enhanced Operational Procedures: Instructions for laboratory, compliance, and enforcement staff have been revised to align with updated FDA procedures. Updates to the laboratory testing methods reflect the transition by FDA regulatory laboratories to a harmonized, multi-analyte gas- and liquid-chromatography tandem mass spectrometry method for the determination of pesticide residues and elimination of separate, analyte-specific methods. These changes are intended to improve throughput and consistency of results. All activities related to industrial chemicals listed in the compliance program, including dioxins, will now be conducted under their own programs, and therefore references to non-pesticide chemicals in the compliance program will be removed.
• Strengthened Collaboration with Regulatory Partners: New information outlines interactions and partnerships with FDA centers, related FDA compliance programs, other federal agencies, and U.S. state and local partners.