Following multiple reports of troubles in the management of food safety concerns within the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) (FPF reported, also here), the US Congress tasked the Government Accountability Office (GAO) with investigating how the FDA could improve “oversight of substances used in manufacturing, packaging, and transporting food.” GAO published their findings along with two recommendations for change on November 8, 2022.
In short, the GAO recommends the FDA to (i) “request from Congress specific legal authority to compel companies to provide the information needed to reassess the safety of substances and (ii) track the dates of the last reviews for all food contact substances to allow FDA to readily identify substances that may warrant postmarket review.” As of publication of the report, FDA agreed to pursue the second recommendation but has yet to agree or disagree with the first.
According to the report, “FDA does not have specific legal authority to compel companies to provide information and data on substances’ safety and extent of use” particularly when already on the market. Without that critical information, the agency cannot prioritize well when a chemical needs to be reassessed. And while the date of when a chemical or chemical group was approved is available for FDA employees to look up, there is no system to inform the agency when a review might be needed. There are some food contact chemicals that received FDA approval prior to 1958, when rules changed and are therefore “exempt from the requirement for authorization as a food additive.”
The FDA updated its food contact notification system in January 2022 to try and make it easier to remove some substances that are no longer used on the US market (FPF reported), but that change did not affect the process for assessing chemical safety. Since 2000, the report explains that the FDA has revoked the allowed use of some substances due to safety concerns including specific long chain and short chain per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) and the rubber additive diphenyl ketone. The FDA agreed in June 2022 to review the safety of bisphenol A (BPA, CAS 80-05-7) in food contact (FPF reported) but denied a petition from civil society organizations to ban phthalates (FPF reported).
The Food Packaging Forum was one of the stakeholders GAO interviewed while preparing its report.
Reference
US Government Accountability Office (November 8, 2022). “Food safety: FDA oversight of substances used in manufacturing, packaging, and transporting food could be strengthened.”
