News
FDA Launches New Website on Animal Feed Safety System
Topic: Animal Feed Safety Program
Date: 4/10/2006
Company: Feed Management Systems
Link: http://www.fda.gov/cvm/AFSS.htm
The Food and Drug Administration’s Center for Veterinary Medicine (FDA/CVM) has launched a new website to convey information regarding the continuing development of its animal feed safety system project. The project, initiated in September 2003, is designed to develop a comprehensive, preventive and risk-based approach to animal feed safety. The initial stages of the project have been devoted to developing a framework for a comprehensive, risk-based approach to future feed safety regulation, as well as in identifying so-called “gaps” in existing governmental feed safety efforts (including identifying biological, chemical and physical feed safety “hazards that present the greatest risks to animal and human health”) and industry sectors (such as non-medicated feed ingredient suppliers, transporters and on-farm mixer-feeders) that currently are not subject to current good manufacturing practice regulations implemented by the agency.
In the first project update posted to the new website, FDA/CVM makes it clear that the animal feed safety system will become the new umbrella under which all of its feed safety-related activities operate, including previous and existing efforts to address feed and feed ingredients containing salmonella or industrial contaminants, sampling programs to determine background levels of dioxins in feed, and the agency’s BSE-prevention feed regulations and inspections. The current animal feed safety system draft framework – an updated version is to be unveiled soon – divides the agency’s feed safety activities into the following four operational components:
- Ensuring feed ingredients and additives are safe for their intended use
- Ensuring “poisonous and deleterious” substances are not present in feed at levels that pose risks to human or animal health
- Ensuring that the manufacture, distribution and use of feed and feed ingredients “result in safe feed products”
- Developing programs and procedures for conducting regulatory oversight
FDA said its internal animal feed safety team, which includes two state feed regulatory officials, already has decided to recommend development of a compliance policy guide to formalize FDA’s recognition of the feed ingredient definition process developed by the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), which includes a safety review by FDA. The agency said the team still is developing its recommended regulatory approach for making oversight of various feed industry sectors more comprehensive. As previously reported by the NGFA, FDA also said it plans to host a public meeting to unveil a computer modeling project designed to rank feed hazards by their relative risks to human and animal health. FDA officials have told the NGFA that they hope to convene such a public meeting sometime this summer.
Click on the above link to access FDA/CVM’s new animal feed safety system website, which also includes other information, as well as presentations and transcripts of two public meetings conducted by FDA in 2003 and 2005.
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