AFIA calls for FDA revision of Reportable Food Registry

The American Feed Industry Association (AFIA) called on the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to revise its Draft Guidance for Industry on its Reportable Food Registry to ensure the registry legally recognizes standard commercial feed industry practices for ensuring the safety of its ingredients. Further, AFIA said FDA must establish regulations for when actions taken to ensure human food safety should be applied to animal feeds.
Under current requirements of FDA Amendments Act of 2007, the Reportable Food Registry requires the reporting of any food, feed, ingredient or petfood deemed reasonably likely to cause serious adverse health effects or death in humans or animals. AFIA asked FDA to revise its draft guidance to include the following: “No reportable food report is required if a load of incoming product has been sampled, but legal transfer has not occurred, provided the trailer is on the premises of your facility only for as long as is necessary to sample, test and reject the shipment, and no longer. Your facility has not ‘held’ the reportable food. Therefore, you are not a ‘responsible party’ with regard to such food.”
AFIA Vice President Richard Sellers also asked for clarification of FDA’s definition of “reportable food.” The phrase, “…will cause serious adverse health consequences to humans or animals” in the current definition and FDA attempts to explain it, “leave many questions unanswered and may be subject to misinterpretation,” said Sellers.