The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has revealed a revised strategy to meet four goals in modernizing the oversight of imported foods. The aim is to reduce the number of imported food safety issues.
The FDA objectives are, first, to preventing food safety problems in foreign supply chains at a point prior to entry into the U.S. The second aspect is with have a mechanism in place to effectively detect and block the entry of unsafe foods.
The third area is having the agility to respond rapidly when information about unsafe imported foods is passed onto the agency. The fourth, and final, part concerns measuring progress to gain assurance that the imported food safety program remains robust and is succeeding in stopping potentially harmful food from entering the country.
So the four pillars of the strategy are:
Goal 1: Food offered for Import meets US Food Safety Requirements,
Goal 2: FDA Border Surveillance Prevents Entry of Unsafe Foods,
Goal 3: Rapid and Effective Response to Unsafe Imported Food,
Goal 4: Effective and Efficient Food Import Program.
FDA commissioner Scott Gottlieb said: “Our modern strategy is designed to leverage our different authorities and tools to provide a multi-layered, data-driven, smarter approach to imported food safety.”
