Consumer Reports is calling on the FDA to take action on five critical food safety issues in 2025:
- Ensure availability of adequate resources and personnel. An under-resourced and under-staffed FDA could restrict its ability to perform essential regulatory functions that are critical for maintaining a safe, accessible, and affordable food supply. It also could constrain the development and updating of food safety standards, and prevent a well-trained federal-state inspection force.
- Reduce toxic food additives, chemicals and dyes. The FDA should establish a transparent and scientifically-credible chemical reassessment process; and close the loophole in federal law (known as the Secret GRAS process) that allows food and chemical manufacturers to self-certify that a chemical is safe to add to foods.
- Limit heavy metals in food. There are currently no regulatory limits on the amount of heavy metals, such as lead, allowed in foods. Clearly, more needs to be done to limit exposure and protect babies and young children.
- Implement prevention strategies. The FDA needs to shift its focus to developing prevention strategies that would reduce foodborne illness rates and the prevalence of deadly pathogens such as coli, Salmonella and Listeria. As part of this effort, the agency should support and facilitate efforts to reduce contamination in fresh produce products. Prevention also includes modernizing the recall process so that it’s accessible and transparent.
- Ensure availability of healthy, and nutritious foods. The FDA should develop policies that would increase consumption of safe, healthy and nutritious foods, and reduce the consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs), which have been linked to an increased risk of several health problems, such as obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.