FDA-TRACK: Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition
Relevant Links:
FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) administers the Foods Program. CFSAN ensures the safety of the human food supply, dietary supplements, and cosmetics as well as the proper labeling of foods and cosmetics. The Foods Program is responsible for a safe food supply and ensuring FDA regulations and guidance provide clear and reliable direction and assistance to industry, both inside and outside the United States, with a goal to obtain high rates of compliance with standards necessary to protect public health and meet consumer and stakeholder expectations.
FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) administers the Foods Program. CFSAN ensures the safety of the human food supply, dietary supplements, and cosmetics as well as the proper labeling of foods and cosmetics. The Foods Program is responsible for a safe food supply and ensuring FDA regulations and guidance provide clear and reliable direction and assistance to industry, both inside and outside the United States, with a goal to obtain high rates of compliance with standards necessary to protect public health and meet consumer and stakeholder expectations.
CFSAN’s performance measures reported in the FDA-TRACK Program align to four broad Food Safety categories. Each activity is briefly described below with links to visualizations and dashboards. Explore the progress CFSAN is making to ensure the safety of the human food supply.
Compliance and Enforcement
FDA monitors domestic and foreign firms and the foods that they produce. FDA protects consumers from unsafe food through research and development, inspection, voluntary destruction, sampling, recall, seizure, injunction, and criminal prosecution.
Pre-market Review
FDA conducts premarket activities to ensure substances added to the food supply are safe, including reviews of food and color additive petitions, Generally Recognized as Safe (GRAS) ingredients, and new food contact substances, materials, and packaging. These activities are backed by the field-based surveillance, inspection, and compliance activities carried out to oversee imports, respond to foodborne illness outbreaks, and remove harmful products from the market.
Education and Outreach
Dramatic improvements in reducing the burden of foodborne illness cannot be made without doing more to influence the beliefs, attitudes, and, most importantly, the behaviors of people and the actions of organizations. FDA protects and promotes public health through outreach and education by increasing public awareness about FDA’s food programs and policies and providing advice on preventing foodborne illness and making healthful food choices.
Regulatory Science
The FDA conducts research that advances regulatory science, the science of developing tools, standards, and approaches to assess the safety, efficacy, quality, and performance of FDA-regulated products. Regulatory science facilitates evaluation or development of FDA-regulated products and supports regulatory decision-making and policy development. It also enables the FDA to understand and assess risk, prepare for, and respond to, public health emergencies, and help ensure the safety or reduce the harm of products used or consumed by patients and consumers.
