The U.S. Food and Drug Administration's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026 provides $6.8 billion for FDA, including $234.6 million to support Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) initiatives “to address the nation's chronic disease epidemic, restore trust in our food system and strengthen America's nutritional and food safety,” according to the FDA. But the budget also reflects an overall decrease of $271.0 million, or 3.9%, compared to fiscal year 2025.
To learn more about how these proposed budget cuts may impact food safety specifically, The Packer connected with the International Fresh Produce Association's Chief Science Officer Max Teplitski on the heels of IFPA's recent Washington Conference and coadjacent Supply Chain of the Future Symposium, held June 9-11 in Washington, D.C.
“It was clear that the FDA leadership is committed to programs that support produce safety,” said Teplitski, who added that several workstreams at the symposium addressed food safety, including a session titled Innovations in Food Safety that featured Samir Assar, director, division of fresh produce safety from the FDA's Office of Produce Safety Human Foods Program.
The sessions focused on aspects of ensuring and documenting food quality along the entire supply chain, shelf-life extension and data sharing, and “while these do not aim directly at food safety, they will have a measurable impact on improving produce safety,” Teplitski said.
The MAHA Human Foods Program includes $97.8 million for food safety, and the FDA says the net increase to the Human Foods Program is $65.5 million for fiscal year 2026. “This investment will ensure the safety of the U.S. food supply, invest in nutrition, prevent food safety failures, prevent infant formula contamination and shortages, and restore laboratory operations to conduct gold standard science,” according to the agency.
As recent headlines have included produce-related food safety issues such as a salmonella outbreak in cucumbers, Teplitski says IFPA used the Washington Conference as an opportunity to take its stance on advancing food safety to the Hill.
“We had multiple conversations with both the regulators as well as on the Hill, and our priorities were clear that the industry stands firm in advancing food safety,” he said. “Certainly, fully funding the state inspections was top of mind, but also working on a collaborative relationship with FDA and more openly sharing data — now fully leveraging AI for building trust and data exchanges between the industry and FDA to identify root cause analysis to identify the issues that were highlighted by some of the recent events.”
Teplitski says the conference also provided a forum for several IFPA members to showcase their food safety programs and demonstrate their commitment to food safety in tangible ways, “like designing sanitation for cleaning [and] ensuring that food safety culture penetrates through the entire organization and not just for compliance.
“It was a consensus within the industry presenters that compliance is the price of entry into the industry and going above and beyond the compliance and propagating food safety culture is not only the desired goal, but something that the industry is actively working on,” he added.
What can the fresh produce industry do to ensure it continues to bring the freshest and safest food supply to market?
“I would argue that we already do bring the freshest and safest food to the market,” said Teplitski. “Considering the billions of servings of fresh produce that our industry serves each week, the industry's food safety record is likely unmatched compared to other industries, whether in the food space or beyond.
“If we look at the investment that the fresh produce industry has made into various food safety programs, it's also unmatched in the entire industry,” he continued. “It is important to continue to propagate the food safety culture through the organization building equipment for sanitation, ensuring that the labor force is fully trained, and everyone in any organization is empowered to identify any food safety issues.”