Food Safety

Newly confirmed CMS chief Seena Verma and FDA chief-nominee Scott Gottlieb, if confirmed, face immediate orders from the White House to craft plans to reorganize their agencies to improve efficiency, shift functions to the states or local governments, and merge or shut down any functions for which costs aren't justified by public benefits or are redundant with work of other agencies.

Congress' investigative arm is calling on the Trump White House to develop a national strategy to coordinate food safety oversight, which now spans across 16 federal agencies and 30 federal laws, saying in a recent report that a similar request made six years ago to the Obama White House fell flat.

President Donald Trump put heads of executive departments and agencies on notice that no new rules or guidances should be sent to the Office of the Federal Register (OFR) until a Trump-appointed or designated agency head reviews and approves them, potentially putting controversial FDA draft guidances and notices on such hot-button issues as off-label use, new dietary ingredients, compounding and biosimilars on hold.

House Republicans are planning to vote on a set of bills this week that would increase Congress' ability to roll back rules passed in the final 60 legislative days of President Barrack Obama's administration, and pledged to dedicate much of the next two months toward overturning administrative rules finalized by the Obama administration.

The Justice Department's recent $2.2 million settlement with dietary supplement retail giant GNC Holdings Inc. should send a “wake-up call” to the industry not to engage in illegal activity, DOJ told Inside Health Policy.

The Council for Responsible Nutrition (CRN) put FDA on notice it has legal concerns with the agency's tentative decision to ban vinpocetine as a dietary ingredient.

A food safety advocate worries a new draft FDA guidance outlining how food suppliers should disclose when specific hazards have not been controlled in food may put public health at risk, as suppliers can make a general disclosure for microbial hazards rather than detailing a specific hazard.

FDA is gathering input on how to redefine "healthy" for food labeling claims in a move that could lead to a broader overhaul of food claim regulations. The agency is easing up on its enforcement as it gathers input on how to redefine "healthy" in response to a citizen petition from KIND requesting the claim be aligned with proposals from the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee and the 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans.

FDA food inspections, user fees and regulations governing food production hygiene, packaging and temperatures are overkill and should be eliminated, according to a now-deleted fact sheet published by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump's campaign Thursday (Sept. 15).