Food and Drug Administration has launched a new transparency policy for the declaration of surveys on the epidemic of food diseases.
As part of the initiative, the public, the stakeholders in the industry and other entities will have access to two new resources once an epidemic survey will be completed:
- Summary of incidents (EIS) summary for closed surveys on food diseases; And
- Presentation of the epidemal for food reports (food)
“The EIS summaries will allow stakeholders to better understand the results of each survey. Food reports are a more robust retrospective examination focused on repeated event data and will be published when there is enough data to support their development. The continuous version of these types of information should better equip the FDA, our partners in surveys and industry to maintain a secure supply, ”according to the FDA announces.
The agency claims that the EIS summaries reflect an effort to complete the existing FDA tools and are intended to share as much information as possible on surveys on food diseases as soon as possible. However, the FDA did not say what constitutes “as soon as possible”.
The summaries will be written after the end of each epidemic or investigation into adverse events linked to a human food product regulated by the FDA, when the response phase is finished and there is no longer any continuous risk for the public.
Such investigations are mainly managed by the FDA coordinated response and evaluation network (Core) with additional coordination with FDA field offices, FDA experts, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Food Security and Inspection Service of the United States of the Department of Agriculture, and national and local partners.
EIS summaries are designed to provide post-response information and often include a high-level overview of trace, laboratory and epidemiological information collected during an investigation, according to the FDA.
The summaries will be reduced to protect confidential commercial information (CCI), including the law on trade secrets, personally identifiable information and other information which is exempt from public disclosure under the law on freedom of information. The summaries are accessible on the Basic Investigation Table of the FDA, which includes all the epidemics managed by a basic response team or on the new EIS destination page.
Presentation of the epidemal for food reports (food)
Food reports will provide information for industry and consumers on pairs of pathogenic products that have been linked to repeated epidemics of food diseases. The reports will include the protruding facts of historical epidemiological data, laboratory analyzes, traces and investigation results and post-response prevention activities taken by the FDA, industry, academics and other federal, local, tribal and territorial stakeholders.
Food reports have been developed to provide information that may be useful for preventing future foods of food origin, and which can be used in food security communication, training and identification of research needs.
There will be no food relationship for each epidemic. On the contrary, food reports will summarize the data and results of certain epidemic emissions linked to a pair of specific pathogens linked to epidemics of food.
The first two food reports, published on September 24, provide summaries of hepatitis epidemics has linked to Salmonella berries and epidemics linked to Tahini. Reports cover epidemics in other countries as well as those in the United States.
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