Food Advisory Committee Meeting

Risk Ranking and Risk Prioritization

Chemical Contaminants

September 29-30, 2014

Nega Beru, Ph.D.Director, Office of Food SafetyFDA/Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition

Charge to the FAC

• The FAC is requested to provide FDA input into the development of the characteristics for data collection and risk ranking/prioritization models.

• The characteristics would be useful in framing the fundamental elements needed to design or evaluate these programs

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Questions to the FAC

• What factors, considerations or criteria need to be considered when selecting which food/contaminant pair to sample and test?

• In the development of models to identify and rank priorities, what factors/criteria need to be considered when “aggregating” or binning foods? Chemical contaminants?

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Questions to the FAC• When using a risk scoring process, what

factors/criteria should be considered in deciding where to draw the line – higher vs lower risk?

• What factors should be considered when establishing the frequency and duration of testing certain chemical compounds?

• What factors should be considered in deciding to continue vs end testing?

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Questions for the FAC

• What factors should be considered where (geographic location or farm to fork food supply continuum) samples should be taken for testing?

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FDA Compliance Programs• Pesticides and industrial chemicals in

domestic and imported foods• Toxic elements in imported and domestic

food and foodware• Mycotoxins in domestic and imported

foods• Chemotherapeutics in seafood

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Other Surveillance Programs

• FDA Total Diet Study– Ongoing program surveillance program for

various contaminants and nutrients in foods• USDA/FSIS National Residue Program

– Current focus on veterinary drugs and pesticides in meat, poultry and egg products – plan to expand program to other chemical hazards

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Models

• Model developed for determining the most significant foodborne contaminants – FSMA Section 104: Performance Standards

• High risk foods model – FSMA Section 204: designation of high risk foods

• Logit model to rank chemicals and group in “bins”

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