The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recently released its Food Code Adoption Status Report for 2021. The Food Code is FDA’s official guidance on food safety best practices in retail and foodservice environments for local, state, tribal, and territorial jurisdictions (SLTTs). FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition’s (CFSAN’s) Office of Food Safety compiled the Food Code Adoption Status Report, using data obtained from FDA’s Retail Food Specialists who monitor Food Code adoption activities within states and territories.
All 50 states, Washington D.C., Guam, Northern Mariana Islands, Puerto Rico, American Samoa, and the U.S. Virgin Islands were monitored for and included in the 2021 Status Report. According to the report, almost 90 percent of the U.S. population lives in a state where at least one state agency has adopted some version of the food code. More specifically, 62.47 percent of the population lives in a state that has adopted one of the two most recent versions of the Food Code (2017 and 2013 versions), while 43.42 percent lives in a state that adopted the most recent version (2017 version).