FDA Self-Assesses Its Reportable Food Registry

In late July, FDA held a teleconference highlighting the agency’s first seven months of experience using its new Reportable Food Registry. The Reportable Food Registry is an online portal that enables food manufacturers and other bodies to submit online reports of adverse events.

So far, FDA states that close to 125 of what it considers “primary” adverse-events reports were received out of more than 1800 total reports submitted. Of those, one resulted in a recall. “All the others had the potential, but did not result in [a recall],” said Kathy Gombas, acting deputy directory of FDA’s Office of Food Defense Communication and Emergency Response.

“We know that even as we build a stronger prevention system to minimize contamination incidents, we will get incidents and we will get problems occurring,” commented Ira Allen of FDA’s public affairs office. “So, part of the prevention system is to be able to obtain rapidly and share between government and industry information on these incidents so we can act quickly to keep the products from reaching consumers.”

In assessing the registry’s role in motivating more-efficient adverse-event reporting, Allen said, “It’s a very important complement because it doesn’t rely on us being at a facility or sampling the product ourselves to detect problems… [and] it is a complement to a number of ways in which we learn about problems.”