Vision for the Next Century

• Ensuring Food Defense and Food Safety

• Improving Nutrition

• Improving Dietary Supplement Safety

• Ensuring Cosmetics and Color Additive Safety

The food industry and the technologies used in food production and packaging are constantly evolving. And although the U.S. food supply is among the world's safest, new trends in food production, transportation, storage and consumption have brought with them new public health concerns.

CFSAN continues to consider the effects of increased demand for fresh foods . . . foods traveling long distances . . . Americans eating outside the home more frequently . . . and new kinds of food contaminants. What's more, sources of food contamination are almost as numerous and varied as the contaminants themselves. These include everything from pre-harvest conditions to contamination introduced during processing, packaging, transportation, and preparation.

And so, CFSAN enters its next hundred years, its focus is on five principal areas:

Food Defense

Food Safety

Nutrition

Dietary Supplements

Cosmetic Safety

In addition to staying on the cutting edge of science and consumer concerns and regulatory responsibilities related to these ever-evolving concerns, CFSAN continues to consider how other societal and regulatory trends will impact their mission today and for the future:

Obesity. This growing crisis is associated with increased risk of serious illness and death. With accurate and useful food labeling being a key CFSAN objective, the Center will be looking at ways to enhance the food label. In addition, CFSAN will increase consumer education efforts toward reducing obesity and overweight and increasing health and nutrition overall.

Continued Food Safety Efforts. With more foods from more sources, CFSAN will continue to monitor the food supply to ensure safe standards.

Ensuring that genetically modified foods are safe.

Good manufacturing practices for dietary supplements. This will ensure that consumers are protected from products that are not pure or don't contain what is claimed on the label.

Food Allergen Labeling. All domestically manufactured and imported packaged food products that are labeled on or after January 1, 2006, are required to identify in plain English any ingredient that is, or contains protein from, any of the eight major food allergens: milk, eggs, fish, Crustacean shellfish, tree nuts, peanuts, wheat, or soybeans. CFSAN is working on standards for use of the term "gluten-free" on food labels and will continue to monitor emerging food allergen issues.

Working with industry to enhance food safety systems for preventing food terrorism and enabling rapid response and containment. Overall, these proactive prevention efforts will also prepare CFSAN to respond to new food safety issues as they arise.¬Ý