Deputy commissioner stresses importance of education along with regulation at FDA

Frank Yiannas, deputy commissioner for food policy and response at the Food and Drug Administration, spoke Feb. 16 about the challenges Americans face at the hybrid National Association of State Departments of Agriculture Winter Policy Conference in Arlington, Virginia.

Yiannas remarked about how challenging recent times have been in people’s lives, communities and elsewhere.

“They certainly have been challenging in the work that we do together to ensure consumers have access to safe and affordable food,” he said. “Over the past two years, I like to say that we’ve just seen the biggest test on the U.S. food system probably in 100 years.”

And “we’ve passed that test,” according to Yiannas. Despite challenges with the supply chain resilience, consumers can still walk into their favorite grocery store and find tens of thousands of products.

“Granted, there are some headwinds with inflation, energy costs and labor,” he said. “But I truly believe that we’re going to get through this, and we’ll be able to create together a safer and more resilient food system.”

Yiannas said he remembers a time growing up where people rallied around food and the slogan—hot dogs, apple pies, baseball and Chevrolet.

“As I was growing up food brought the family together. Food brought our community together. And food brought our nation together,” he said. “In recent times, I feel like food is increasingly dividing us.”

Not to be political, but Yiannas said society is pretty polarized and he sensed the feeling during the past few years creeping into food. And it troubles him.

“Food is now sometimes dividing us. We hear people say I’m all for local food. And some people say I’m OK with national or global food,” Yiannas said. “I love local, strongly support local from the corner of northwest Arkansas. But you know what, I also enjoy coffee. They don’t grow coffee in northwest Arkansas.”

During 2021 Yiannas said the FDA had several noteworthy accomplishments and he started off with water. One of the key achievements was proposing the new Ag Water Standard. It was long awaited by many, and it will revise certain quality and testing requirements for pre-harvest ag water.

“The proposed rule if finalized is going to be nothing short, in my view, of a game changer for food safety,” he said. “We all know the important role that water plays in human health, right? This idea goes back since antiquity. We also know that all of food production has a water link.

The proposed rule would require farms to conduct comprehensive assessments to help them identify and mitigate hazards in pre-harvest water used to grow produce. Yiannas has gotten many questions regarding this, most often why it’s taken FDA so long to revise the ag water standard.

“I understand it’s been a long time. But I will tell you that I think the time that we took to get this right was worth it, and needed,” he said. “After all, we heard from you that the original proposal was a one size fits all. It wasn’t diverse enough to take into account the wide variety of applications that exist in this country.”

He believes the system-based approach is flexible enough to accommodate different water systems that many use and is practical, but at the same time remains “extremely protective” to public health. Officials are also developing an online tool that farmers can use to help them assess factors that might lead to contamination and what mitigation tools they might want to use.

Next, Yiannas discussed food traceability.

“I think traceability is critical for the 21st century for a variety of reasons,” he said. “It’s not just to respond to an outbreak and be able to pinpoint where the contaminated product came from, pull product quickly, limit the size of the outbreak.”

The key features of the food traceability rule are ones FDA believes are key data elements and critical tracking events.

Although the rule doesn’t require traceability records be kept electronically, Yiannas believes standardization around key data elements is critical when it comes to tracing. The rule also proposes the types of foods that would require this additional record keeping.

The rule also helps bolster the FDA’s foodborne outbreak response and improvement plan.

Quicker response times—being fast and correct, and making sure lessons learned through outbreak investigations can prevent similar instances from happening again. They’ve worked with researchers to better understand why outbreaks happen.

“We’ve put together an action plan on how we plan to further strengthen our ability to respond to outbreaks,” he said.

FDA also updated its leafy green action plan on Shiga toxin-producing E. coli.

“There’s been a lot of work done over the past couple of years since then we’re making continued progress,” he said. “We’ve really put a spotlight on the importance of addressing land use, and adjacent land use in particular, I think it’s critical.”

Yiannas said FDA’s partners—State of California, California Department of Food and Ag—have assembled these ecosystems where produces are grown and created what they call the California good agricultural neighbors work group.

“Really an impressive way how they’ve brought together leafy green growers, cattlemen, then yard growers, compost operations to voluntarily work together to say, how do we solve these ecosystem challenges that are unique to the geography because the problems aren’t the same everywhere in the United States,” he said.

Bottom line—the safety of fresh leafy greens need to remain a priority for the nation.

In the year ahead Yiannas expects to remain busy with food traceability and expects help on ag water.

“But it’s worth repeating today, we’re going to stay true to this idea that we’re committed to education before and while we regulate,” he said.

For more information about NASDA visit www.nasda.org.

Kylene Scott can be reached at 620-227-1804 or [email protected].