FDA issues tools to improve cosmetics and food safety practices

WASHINGTON The Food and Drug Administration has announced the release of new tools to further improve the security of food and cosmetics.

“The tools FDA is providing will help members of the food and cosmetic industry identify opportunities to better guard against intentional contamination of their products,” stated David Acheson, acting director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition.

The tools are companion pieces designed to make previously issued industry guidance documents more user-friendly and practical. In 2003, the FDA issued the Food and Cosmetic Security Preventive Measures Guidance documents. These documents are aimed at operators of food and cosmetic establishments, as well as businesses that produce, process, store, repack, relabel, distribute, sell or transport foods, food ingredients and cosmetics, to help minimize the risk of malicious, criminal or terrorist actions involving products under their control.

The FDA has repackaged the information found in the guidance documents and created a corresponding self-assessment tool for each document. By using the tools, industry members can get a quick and detailed assessment of the measures they currently have in place. The idea is it makes it easy to see where meaningful improvements to their current practices can be made.

How it works: the tool asks the participant to mark the presence of a variety of protection measures with a Y (Yes), N (No), N/A (Not Applicable) or Don’t Know for each item.