On January 11, 2018, the Food and Drug Administration issued its 2018 Strategic Policy Roadmap (the Roadmap) in an effort to provide transparency about the FDA’s policy undertakings. The Roadmap outlines key priorities that the Agency will pursue in 2018 to advance its public health mission. The Roadmap covers all FDA-regulated product areas and includes the following priorities related to food:
- Empower consumers to make better and more informed decisions about their diets and health; and expand the opportunities to use nutrition to reduce morbidity and mortality from disease
- Strengthen FDA’s scientific workforce and its tools for efficient risk management
FDA notes that there are areas of overlap both between all priorities mentioned as well as with other aspects of work at FDA. Importantly, for food regulation, FDA outlined how it will continue to focus on implementing the new Nutrition Facts Panel and menu labeling regulations and associated guidance, as well as continuing to implement FSMA and the associated field realignment that now
has a dedicated cadre of food (and feed) inspectors. Other noteworthy inclusions on the nutrition and labeling side are revisions to the “healthy” claims regulations, updating food standards to promote public health, providing new opportunities to make ingredient information more helpful to consumers, and advancing guidance on dietary sodium reduction. On the food safety side, FDA will
continue to build its pathogen database networks and, under FSMA, implement preventive controls rules and pay particular attention to implementing the produce safety rule through increased training and collaboration with the states.
We provide an overview of FDA’s priority areas, and the corresponding goals and action items, most relevant to food policy.