FDA Deputy Commissioner Details Agency’s Food Safety Priorities

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is moving quickly and purposefully on several fronts to improve the safety of the American food supply, said Donald Prager, acting deputy commissioner for food, during a speech and subsequent question-and-answer session with Anna Rosales, vice president of science and policy at IFT, at a session during IFT FIRST on Tuesday.

Responsible for regulating about 80% of the country’s food supply, the FDA has reorganized its Human Food Program aimed at addressing issues like strengthening oversight of ingredients and additives, decreasing the prevalence of diet-related diseases, and leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to find patterns in the vast droves of data related to food safety held by the government, academia, and industry, Prager said.

While the speed of innovation moves rapidly, the FDA needs to balance that with the demands of science, one of which can be sufficient time to undertake important underlying research, he said. “We need the help of the food community to continue to develop that science, and in some cases even communicate it,” he added. “We have a particular role as regulators to take that, interpret it” and ensure that regulations are soundly based on it.

Among the FDA’s ambitious moves, and one he believes has the “biggest payoff,” is an initiative called the Better Regulatory Inspections for Dynamic Government Efficiency (BRIDGE) project, an intergovernmental partnership with state regulatory agencies. Under this program, the FDA will offload to states the responsibility for routine inspections and sampling related to food safety while retaining the responsibility of handling higher-risk scenarios, Prager said.

“This modernized inspection approach will enhance public health protections by increasing coverage and maximizing resources,” he said, and the FDA is currently working with a few states on a “proof of process,” while intending that both federal and state investigators and inspectors will be trained the same way. “Anything we can do to improve efficiency will be a gamechanger in the fight to improve human health,” he added. “We’re placing attention on the highest-risk situations while reducing the unnecessary burden on facilities with strong compliance records. That’s good for public health and good for business.”

The FDA also has been undertaking a variety of projects related to microbiological safety and foodborne illness, coordinating with a spectrum of partners to handle everything from outbreak response to enforcement actions, Prager said. Priority deliverables have included a joint FDA-Purdue University study of Salmonella in cantaloupes, an agreement with the Mexican government focused on the safety of food imported across the southern border, and a memorandum of understanding with the Western Growers Association to boost data sharing—using anonymized, aggregated data to build trust, he said.

As the landscape of food safety changes rapidly, with supply chains becoming more complex, consumer expectations increasing, and the volume of data growing exponentially, artificial intelligence and machine learning will be vital in helping to sift through the “mountains of data” to build predictive models, Prager said.

“We can use data and analytics to address safety and empower consumers to make good choices. Consumers are more focused on the food supply, and what’s in their food,” he said. “We have a tremendous amount of data and information that we’re synthesizing. Five years ago, we were swimming in a sea of data. Being able to connect the dots could show where a source of contamination might be. Now, with quantitative analytical techniques, we’re looking at large datasets, and we’re able to connect those dots better than we ever could before.”

Industry also sits on a voluminous amount of data, and initiatives like the partnership with the Western Growers Association are intended to forge models for sharing that data with government in ways that are less “challenging to share … with your regulator,” he added.

Other initiatives underway include a review of the “generally recognized as safe” (GRAS) standard to strengthen the government’s oversight of ingredients and additives through a more proactive, transparent process, as requested by Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Prager said.

“The landscape has evolved quite rapidly. In recent years, we’ve seen international regulators and even our own states take an interest in substances in our food supply,” he said. “We recognize that, and we recognize the challenges when individual states advance some of those policies.” He encouraged IFT members to become involved in commenting processes in this arena and others.

And while the FDA has no plan to ban so-called “ultra-processed” foods, efforts are in motion to update nutrition labels to ensure data like calories and added sugar are more prominently featured, Prager said. “We’re also working on ways in which we can help consumers identify more quickly key nutrition information at the point of purchase,” he said. “We believe firmly that clear science-based labeling informs choice.”

Finding an agreed-upon definition of “ultra-processed” would be tricky, Prager added, but “just because it’s a tough challenge, and it’s multifaceted, doesn’t mean it’s something we should shy away from.”

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