On June 18, the FDA released a proposal for how it plans to prioritize food chemicals for post-market review. This proposal builds upon the FDA’s work toward developing a transparent systematic process for post-market assessment of food chemicals, which the FDA outlined in an August 2024 discussion paper and hosted a public meeting to discuss in September 2024. The FDA envisions a “systematic post-market assessment of food chemicals [that] consists of the following steps: signal detection, triage, prioritization, scoping, scientific assessment (safety, risk, and/or hazard), risk management review, and risk management action.”
The proposal is essentially a set of rubrics that subject matter experts (“Experts”) within the Human Foods Program (“HFP”) would use to score chemicals that are candidates for post-market review (the “Proposed Tool”), and the resulting overall scores would be used to rank those chemicals in order of priority to inform the FDA of how to allocate its resources.
