April 13, 2023, 2-3 PM ET
It is no secret that the FDA has been under scrutiny for multiple reasons related to the authorization of safer nicotine alternative products. Last Summer the agency was heavily criticised by Senators Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine).
The failures of the federal Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have been in plain view since at least early 2022.
At that point the public saw the FDA’s scandalous neglect of Abbott Nutrition’s contaminated infant formula — which was reported to it five months before Abbott recalled the product — and Politico’s detailed exposé of the agency’s incompetence, which extends back through several presidential administrations.
In September 2022, an independent expert panel facilitated by the Reagan-Udall Foundation began an operational evaluation of the Center for Tobacco Products (CTP) at the request of Food and Drug Administration Commissioner, Dr. Robert Califf. The final report was issued on Dec. 19, 2022, and included 15 recommendations across a number of areas.
New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman once wrote; “Everything really important happens the morning after the morning after…”
In short, focus on what really changes, not what is said will change.
That is a good lesson for the White House and Congress to remember with the proposed “reforms” of the Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) foods programs. Commissioner Robert Califf has promised that the structural, political, and cultural obstacles that have made FDA’s assurance of food safety ring hollow will be changed.
Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced that it has begun a national search for a new Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods and is providing an update on last month’s proposed restructuring of the agency’s Human Foods Program and Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) to enhance coordination, prevention and response activities.
Even as FDA kicks off a search for a deputy commissioner for its proposed Human Foods Program who it says will have a “clear line of authority over” all human food safety and nutrition programs, industry stakeholders worry agency is choosing a “business as usual” approach to the reorganization that relies on a “matrix management” structure.
On Friday, the US Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Tobacco Products announced steps it would take to do a better job regulating tobacco products.
