With the Food Safety Modernization Act compliance underway, what next steps can industry expect from the Food and Drug Administration? Will regulators at FDA and the Department of Agriculture be able to work together to align compliance dates for revisions to the Nutrition Facts label and the disclosure standard for bioengineered foods?  Will there be additional sampling assignments in 2017? 

These are just a few of the questions that Stephen Ostroff, M.D., FDA deputy commissioner of food and veterinary medicine, is expected to address when he joins Dairy Forum 2017 attendees for breakfast on Tuesday, Jan. 31 in Orlando, Fla.  

“We all want the same thing – a safe, nutritious and abundant food supply,” Ostroff told members at an IDFA-sponsored meeting in June. He added that it’s important to work together, especially on the implementation phase of FSMA’s seven foundational rules. Maximum food safety protection will only occur if the rules work and compliance is high, he said.

About Stephen Ostroff

Stephen Ostroff, M.D., became deputy commissioner in June. He previously led FDA as acting commissioner until Robert Califf, M.D., was confirmed as commissioner this spring. Before that, Ostroff was the agency’s chief scientist responsible for leading and coordinating FDA’s scientific and public health efforts. He joined FDA in 2013 as chief medical officer in the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition and senior public health advisor to Mike Taylor, his predecessor.

Before coming to FDA, Ostroff served as deputy director of the National Center for Infectious Diseases at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and as director of the Bureau of Epidemiology and acting physician general at the Pennsylvania Department of Health. He is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine and completed residencies in internal medicine at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center and in preventive medicine at the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.