A new tool on chemical contaminants in human and animal foods is available at the FDA.
The Chemical contamination Transparency tool is the last effort of the secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. From health and human services to ‘make America healthy again’. The tool is designed for industry, but can also be used by consumers.
“HHS strives for radical transparency to give Americans authentic, informed permission about what they eat,” said Kennedy when announcing the tool. “This new transparency tool for chemical contaminants is a crucial step for industry to make America healthy again.”
The online, searchable database offers a list of pollution levels and regulations – including tolerances, promotional levels and guidance levels – that are used to evaluate potential health risks of contaminants in food and animal foods. Chemical contaminants include a series of chemicals that may be present in food and that have the potential to cause damage.
To protect public health and to help market products that are safe for American consumers, says and uses Food and Drug Administration Tolerances, promotional levels and guidance levels for some contamination in food. These are levels above which the agency notices that a food may be unsafe, but does not represent permissible levels of contamination. The FDA uses these levels to minimize or prevent chemical dangers in food.
“Ideally, there would be no contaminants in our food supply, but chemical contaminants can occur in food when they are present in the growing, storage or processing environments,” said Acting FDA commissioner Sara Brenner.
“Because many of the most nutritious foods can also contain contaminants, consumers must eat a variety of nutrient-sealed food over and within the most important food groups of vegetables, fruit, grains, dairy products and proteins to help protect against possible exposure effects.”
The new online database, which offers contamination levels at one location for the convenience of searching, is one of the results of the FDA initiative to modernize the chemical safety of food in some foods. The consolidated list contains the name of the contamination, raw material, the type of pollution level including action level, target level, level earth and references such as the Code of Federal Regulations and FDA guidelines for industry.
The FDA will continue to follow the food supply by testing food through various programs.
The new tool contains information for Aldrin, Diveldrin, Afbatoxins and 3-Monochloroproan-1.2-Diol (3-MCPD), in different combinations, in:
- Bottle water
- Some “Asian style” sauces
- Certain notes
- Various fruit and vegetables
- Egg
- “Food”
- And some animal feed and hay
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