The Food and Drug Administration last week released its new Strategic Policy Roadmap, an 18-page report highlighting key priorities and selected areas where FDA wants to achieve results during the next two years. Important to IDFA members, the report outlines FDA’s plans for progress on Nutrition Facts label updates, Standards of Identity, label claims and the Food Safety Modernization Act.

“We’re pleased to see many of FDA’s priorities align with areas of interest to the dairy industry,” said Cary Frye, IDFA senior vice president of regulatory affairs. “We’ve worked extensively with FDA to make our members’ voices heard on food safety and labeling actions and will continue to communicate with the regulators to help this roadmap end in success for dairy.”

Labeling and Standards

FDA said empowering consumers to make informed decisions is an important goal. It listed five priority actions that pertain to dairy:

  • Providing guidance for industry to implement the new requirements for updating the Nutrition Facts label;
  • Launching a new public education campaign to help consumers maximize the public health benefits of the Nutrition Facts label and new menu labeling provisions;
  • Revising requirements for using certain food label claims, such as “healthy,” and creating a more efficient review system for evaluating health claims on food labels;
  • Modernizing certain standards of identity to address current barriers to the development of healthier products;
  • Issuing a request for information to identify and help prioritize which potential standards of identity should be modernized based on their public health value; and
  • Advancing guidance on dietary sodium reduction.

Food Safety

FDA included the following priority actions in its goal to strengthen food safety:

  • Enact new steps to ensure that food producers and state regulators have the training needed to implement the Preventive Controls rules;
  • Expand its Genome Tracker network by building on its database to improve outbreak detection; and
  • Invest in new research to modernize toxicology testing.

FDA also expects to enhance the scientific and clinical expertise of its staff and ensure it can be more effective and efficient in helping bring innovative new products to market, while also ensuring safety.

Read FDA’s 2018 Strategic Policy Roadmap here.

For more information, contact Frye at cfrye@idfa.org.