According to a press release issued by the FDA, the agency is postponing most foreign inspections through April, effective immediately, in response to the COVID-19 outbreak. Inspections outside the U.S. deemed mission-critical will still be considered on a case-by-case basis.
In an effort to allow FDA to sample water, soil and environmental conditions on USDA-regulated concentrated animal feeding operations (CAFOs), New York Sen. Kirsten E. Gillibrand introduced a bill that would provide the FDA authority to conduct microbial sampling on CAFOs as necessary for a foodborne illness outbreak investigation, determine the outbreak’s root cause or address other public health needs.
The FDA has issued final guidance to help manufacturers of packaged foods comply with the updated Nutrition Facts labeling regulations, which addresses serving sizes of foods, including single-serving foods and other foods that can reasonably be consumed at one eating occasion and require dual-column labeling.
The FDA has reopened the comment period for the proposed rule published in the Federal Register of Oct. 19, 2005, entitled “Cheeses and Related Cheese Products; Proposal to Permit the Use of Ultrafiltered Milk.”
E. coli tests of romaine fields where investigators traced contaminated lettuce did not turn up outbreak strains, so the FDA will move to an in-depth “root-cause” investigation for three outbreaks.
The USDA issued a final rule that requires California almond accepted users to dispose of inedible material within 6 months of receipt, submit public weighmaster weight certificates within 10 business days of receipt of inedible material, and submit an accepted user plan annually.
In an ongoing effort to understand sources of foodborne illness in the U.S., the Interagency Food Safety Analytics Collaboration (IFSAC) collects and analyzes outbreak data to produce an annual report with estimates of foods responsible for foodborne illnesses caused by pathogens.