FDA releases revised compliance policy guide for food laws

17 Aug 2004

The United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have issued a revised compliance policy guide (CPG) that describes their strategy for enforcing the requirements of the prior notice interim final rule (IFR) while maintaining an uninterrupted flow of food imports.

The FDA and CBP also announced a corresponding three month delay in their projected date for issuing the prior notice final rule from March 2005 to June 2005.  This will allow FDA and CBP to retain the three month assessment period to determine whether the prior notice time frames can be reached further as they develop the prior notice final rule.

The agencies also announced the issuance of an updated prior notice compliance summary, and a new "Guidance for Industry: Prior Notice of Imported Food Contingency Plan for System Outages."  The compliance summary states that since increased enforcement began in June, entries submitted to the FDA and CBP with no prior notice have been almost eliminated.  Although some problems still exist, only a small percent of companies are failing to submit any prior notice information.  The FDA did note however that amongst the prior notice data submitted, the completion of registration numbers and the bill of lading is lower than the completion of most other data elements.

More detailed information is available at the FDA web site on The Bioterrorism Act of 2002 under the heading "Recent Activities" located at http://www.fda.gov/oc/bioterrorism/bioact.html