At the Food Safety Summit in Rosemont, Ill., the annual Town Hall with leaders of several federal agencies produced updates of interest to food and beverage processors, from the development of the FDA’s Human Foods Program to highly pathogenic avian influenza (HPAI) and Salmonella in poultry, as well as labeling and claims regulations under consideration.
The town hall panel included:
- James Jones, Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods, FDA
- Sandra Eskin, Deputy Under Secretary for Food Safety, USDA-FSIS
- Robert Tauxe, Director, DFWED, NCEZID, DDID, for the CDC
- Steve Mandernach, Executive Director, Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO)
All four leaders offered a five- to 10-minute update on their agency’s work, then the panel answered questions from the audience.
Jones discussed HPAI, describing it as “all-consuming for FDA” and the other agencies on the panel, stating that he believes consumers and the media can relax a bit and not have it be so all-consuming for them at this point, as the industry has gotten its arms around the issue.
“We’re in a good place,” Jones said, adding that FDA tested all the PCR positives found in pasteurized cow milk for live viruses and all those tests came back negative, confirming that people can rest assured that pasteurized milk is safe to consume.
Eskin updated the audience on the reasoning behind the recent rule to declare Salmonella an adulterant in raw, breaded stuffed chicken products, and hinted that the big question everyone is wondering about — “what about other poultry products?” — will likely see some news around it in the coming months.
Eskin also mentioned that FSIS is working at her behest to re-evaluate safe-handling instructions on product labels, noting that they haven’t been evaluated in quite a while, but that initiative did not yet have a timeline around potential completion. Meanwhile, FSIS has done extensive work to update various animal-raising claims guidelines to better explain the substantiation behind them, with a particular focus on “no antibiotics” claims.
According to Jones, FDA has begun investing to bring more solutions around chemicals in food, specifically those that are already approved to use as certain levels — generally recognized as safe (GRAS). Right now, Jones said, there is no systematic approach to re-evaluating those chemicals that have been approved scientifically, no matter how long ago it was. Typically, FDA responded on a more ad hoc basis after public outcry or questions. As such, Jones noted, the states have stepped up and restricted some of these chemicals (see the various food additives banned in states like California, for example).
Food Processing senior editor Andy Hanacek had the opportunity to ask a question of the panel, focusing on HPAI and the future concerns around it. The audio recording of that question and the panelists’ answers are below.
