Today the FDA released its Activities to Enhance the Safety of Imported Produce, which provides an overview of the work underway to advance the safety of produce imported into the United States. This overview follows the 2019 release of the Strategy for the Safety of Imported Food (Import Strategy) which described the agency’s comprehensive approach to enhancing the safety of food imported into the United States.
The success of FDA’s imported food safety efforts relies in large part on the safety of produce, since fresh fruit and vegetables represent a significant volume of imported food. Today, the U.S. imports roughly 32% of our fresh vegetables and 55% of our fresh fruit. This latest document, Activities to Enhance the Safety of Imported Produce, describes how the work to help ensure the safety of these commodities is a critical component of the New Era of Smarter Food Safety in building on the preventive standards established by the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).
The FDA has long recognized the need to ensure the safety of both imported and domestic produce to meet the agency’s public health mission. This overview is intended to help stakeholders better understand the many tools that are employed to ensure parity of oversight between domestic and foreign-grown produce, and ultimately to ensure safe produce is reaching U.S. consumers.
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