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FDA has issued a proposed rule to amend the Standard of Identity (SOI) for orange juice, reducing the minimum Brix requirement from 10.5 to 10. This addresses modern agricultural challenges making it difficult for manufacturers to meet Brix content requirements.

In this bonus episode of Food Safety Matters, recorded live at IAFP's 2025 Annual Meeting in Cleveland, Ohio, we speak to two top officials from FDA’s Human Foods Program (HFP) about the HFP’s current areas of focus—including produce safety and other goals aligned with the “Make America Healthy Again” (MAHA) initiative—as well as the future of the HFP and how food safety culture influences its work.

Beginning September 1, the “Failure to Prevent Food Fraud” corporate offence under the UK Economic Crime and Corporate Transparency Act will make it so that large businesses can be held criminally accountable for acts of food fraud committed by an individual within the organization.

On July 29, the Senate confirmed Trump Nominee Susan Monarez, Ph.D. as the new director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). She is an immunologist and microbiologist, and the agency’s first non-physician Director in more than 70 years.

Western Growers and FDA have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to improve fresh produce safety and prevent foodborne illnesses through a new data-sharing framework. The MOU is aligned with the Reagan-Udall Foundation’s recently published Roadmap to Produce Safety report.

The UK Food Standards Agency (FSA) and Food Standards Scotland (FSS) have put out a call for data on the presence of acrylamide in food to better understand the health risks of dietary exposure and support policymaking decisions. 

In support of the development of a systematic post-market review process for chemicals in the U.S. food supply, FDA has published a new Expanded Decision Tree (EDT) chemical toxicity and risk screening tool, which will help prioritize chemicals for safety evaluation based on their structure and estimated toxicity.

Trump Administration appointee Trey Forsyth has been named Acting Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety at USDA, a role in which he will oversee USDA’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA-FSIS). He has expertise in agricultural policy, trade, and sustainability.

Despite a lack of scientific support to justify a carcinogenic risk determination, hundreds of companies have been sued under California's Prop 65 for failing to provide a "clear and reasonable" warning on food products containing acrylamide.

Effective August 4, 2025, FDA is changing its import entry review process for regulated goods from a geographic-based system to a national-based system. Industry must be aware of new communication protocols for the Nationalized Entry Review (NER) program.