Despite having different realms of jurisdiction over regulation of food production, the United States Department of Agriculture and the Food and Drug Administration have signed a formal agreement to streamline their work in public health-related areas, the FDA announced Tuesday.
The outlined agreement between the FDA and the USDA emphasizes collaboration on common interests to improve food safety and to provide more information to Americans on products they purchase from store shelves.
Secretary of Agriculture Sonny Perdue and FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb announced the agreement, emphasizing their aim to create greater efficiency in food production and to increase safety in manufacturing.
“Over the last several months, [we’ve] worked closely and identified several areas where we can strengthen our collaboration to make our processes more efficient, predictable, and potentially lower cost to industry; while also strengthening our efforts to ensure food safety,” Gottlieb said in the press release.
While the USDA oversees the safety of most meat-related products, as well as poultry and certain egg products, the FDA works with all other food products, dairy products, produce, and packaged foods. This agreement will offer more guidelines for overlapped authority overseeing these products, as well as overseeing improvements in biotechnology efforts.
