Experts Call for Greater Collaboration, Funding for “Closer to Zero” Efforts
A recent workshop funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) has identified several crucial working areas for mitigating the public’s exposure to toxic metals from the U.S. food supply, which is a pressing food safety issue. The workshop was conducted as part of the “Closer to Zero” initiative to address such exposure, in which USDA, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and other federal agencies are involved.
USDA’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) awarded funding to Om Parkash Dhankher, Ph.D., professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Stockbridge School of Agriculture, and Jason C. White, Ph.D., director of the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (CAES) and adjunct professor in the Stockbridge School of Agriculture, to conduct a workshop, titled, “USDA NIFA Workshop on Toxic Elements in Food: Identification of Critical Knowledge Gaps to Ensure a Safe Food Supply.” The workshop, for which the report was only recently released, was held virtually on April 4–5, 2022 and included 35 subject-matter experts from across the U.S., as well as 40 participants from USDA’s NIFA, FDA, the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), and the food industry.