FDA Announces Enhanced Efforts to Ensure Food Safety

WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, about 32% of fresh vegetables, 55% of fresh fruit and 94% of seafood consumed in the U.S. are imported from other countries. And the Food and Drug Administration says it’s doing a better job of predicting problems and ensuring the safety of imported foods, according to a report in USA Today.

It’s all part of the FDA’s newly announced efforts to ensure the safety of imported food by leveraging leverage different authorities and tools to create a multi-layered, data-driven approach to imported food safety.  This includes predictive risk modeling to identify whether shipments of imported foods need to be tested or stopped at the border.

An estimated 15 million shipments of imported food are expected to enter the U.S. this year. The FDA is working to ensure that imported food receives onsite inspections overseas, that importers get accredited to enable their goods to enter the country faster, to educate foreign food suppliers about U.S. food safety regulations and to test food at the border.

In addition, the FDA has arranged with the governments of Canada, Australia and New Zealand to rely on each other’s food safety program. It’s also working to secure a similar agreement with the European Union.

The FDA screens all food electronically before it’s allowed into the country, but of the more than 13.4 million shipments of human food that headed to the U.S. in 2018, less than 1% was examined. Observers say that it’s unlikely the FDA will ever have the resources to inspect more than a fraction of the annual food imports to the U.S.