FDA Human Foods Program Leader Shares Program’s Top Priorities

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) published a letter penned by Jim Jones, Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods, that lays out his strategies as he begins to lead the Human Foods Program (HFP) and Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) moving forward.

FDA Commissioner Robert Califf first proposed creation of HFP at the end of January of this year, and Jones, who was named to the position on Aug. 23, said he is thrilled to spearhead the “bold vision”. Jones then shared that the agency would focus on three primary areas of concern to help the program protect and promote consumer health and wellness.

“We’ll start driving towards this goal by focusing our efforts on three priority areas: preventing foodborne illness, decreasing diet-related chronic disease through improved nutrition, and safeguarding the food supply through the safe use of chemicals and dietary supplements,” Jones said.

Jones proposed an Office of Critical Foods to manage the regulation of infant formula and medical foods, housed within the HFP. In addition, he said the agency was working on incentivizing resiliency and redundancy in the infant formula supply chain.

Furthermore, Jones referenced FDA’s ongoing work on a proposed rule to remove the authorization for using brominated vegetable oil as an ingredient in food, based on recently published research. Brominated vegetable oil is among the four food ingredients that the state of California recently banned.

You can read Jones’ entire letter here.