CFSAN Constituent Update - How to Work with FDA on Food Guidance Documents

Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition

Constituent Update

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How to Work with FDA on Food Guidance Documents

January 31, 2017

If you are a food industry association and want to create a guidance document to help your members meet federal standards, what’s the best way to involve the FDA in this effort? The agency drafts its own documents, called guidances, that provide the FDA’s current thinking on how best to comply with laws and regulations governing food, feed and other FDA-regulated products.

But food industry associations also draft guidance documents to capture the best practices to produce food, feed and other regulated products in a way that meets federal safety standards. For example, food industry associations may want to draft guidance documents to help their members comply with new requirements under the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA).

FDA can be involved in a number of ways, including providing technical advice, looking out for potential conflicts with federal regulations, and sharing its experience and insights. We offer five steps to help industry increase the likelihood of FDA participation in the development of such guidance documents.

For More Information

• 5 Steps Toward Working with FDA on Human and Animal Food Guidance Documents

• Case Study: Food Safety Guidelines for Cantaloupes

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