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The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) held a four-hour webinar to give stakeholders an in-depth overview of the newly issued final rule on Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods (Food Traceability Final Rule).

Domestic mutual reliance, part of FDA's New Era for Smarter Food Safety initiative, is a key component of the Integrated Food Safety System. It enables FDA and states with comparable regulatory systems to rely on each other for a safer national food supply. Three additional states have recently formalized domestic mutual reliance partnerships with FDA to advance collaborative activities to help ensure continued access to safe foods.

On November 15, 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued its final rule on Requirements for Additional Traceability Records for Certain Foods (Food Traceability Final Rule) under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Section 204(d).

In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we talk to Dr. David Acheson, President and CEO of food safety consultancy The Acheson Group, about a variety of pressing topics for the food industry, such as the declaration of Salmonella as an adulterant in poultry, Cannabis edibles regulations, compliance with the agricultural water rule, modernizing recalls, mitigating the risk of PFAS, and others. Dr. Acheson has a background in internal medicine and infectious diseases, and also served as the Chief Medical Officer at FDA’s CFSAN.

Part of Food Safety Magazine’s series with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), titled, “Evolution of a New Era: Advancing Strategies for Smarter Food Safety,” this episode of Food Safety Matters discusses the agency’s commodity-specific strategies to prevent foodborne illness outbreaks through FDA's Foodborne Outbreak Response Improvement Plan under the New Era of Smarter Food Safety initiative. We are joined by Stephen Hughes, Prevention Coordinator in the Office of Food Safety at FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, and Dr. Jennifer McEntire, Chief Food Safety and Regulatory Officer at the International Fresh Produce Association (IFPA).

In this episode of Food Safety Matters, we interview Conrad Choiniere, Ph.D., Director of the Office of Analytics and Outreach at the U.S. Food and Drug Administration's (FDA's) Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN), about his work leading FDA's Toxic Elements Working Group, as well as the agency’s efforts and considerations related to the Closer to Zero initiative, which aims to reduce the health risks posed by toxic elements in the U.S. baby food supply. We also review the results of FDA's Total Diet Study (TDS) related to toxic elements in baby food samples. 

Additionally, we spoke to Kruti Ravaliya, M.S., Consumer Safety Officer in the Division of Produce Safety at FDA's CFSAN, about how FDA intends to implement Subpart E of the Produce Safety Rule—the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) Proposed Rule on Agricultural Water—including the recently extended compliance dates for pre-harvest agricultural water requirements. Finally, Bob Ferguson, President of Strategic Consulting Inc., speaks about his latest Food Safety Insights column on the projects and priorities that food processors put on hold during the pandemic and are now revisiting.

The Northeast Center to Advance Food Safety has published the Processors’ Food Safety Toolkit, a webpage designed for small and very small food processors that are required to comply with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Preventive Controls for Human Food Rule under the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has released English and Spanish paper-based versions of its agricultural water assessment builder tool.

On Monday afternoon at the 2022 International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) Annual Meeting, representatives from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (USDA’s FSIS) provided U.S. regulatory updates on food safety.

Assuring food safety in this "New Era of Smarter Food Safety" and with the increasing use of whole genome sequencing provides many new challenges for food safety professionals. While these challenges are many and multi-faceted, it is helpful to look back to the "old" era of food safety, to some of the foundational concepts in the 1938 Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act that are still in force today. In this article, the authors focus first on one of many important legal terms that is extremely important and often misunderstood: adulteration.