This week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released a new outline of the agency’s comprehensive approach to helping ensure the safety of food imported into the U.S. The document is FDA’s "Strategy for the Safety of Imported Food."
For imported food, the volume and variety of imports and the complexity of global supply chains make food safety a challenging issue to address. Further complicating the issue, some exporting countries may have food safety systems that differ from U.S. food safety systems, and differing levels of regulatory capacity. FDA has been provided with a range of tools and authorities to address the situation both domestically and in the foreign arena. The strategy document released this week describes how FDA is integrating new import oversight tools with existing tools to help ensure that imported food is safe for consumers in the United States.