A Roundtable on Moving Closer to Zero – Challenges and Opportunities for Reducing Children’s Exposures to Toxic Elements from Foods

Authors: CHOINIERE, CONRAD - Food And Drug Administration(FDA); CALLEN, CHERYL - Nestle Nutrition; CHEN, YUHUAN - Food And Drug Administration(FDA); DAVIS, DE ANN - Western Growers Family Of Companies; NELTNER, TOM - Environmental Defense Fund; Starke-Reed, Pamela; HERMANSKY, STEVEN - Food And Drug Administration(FDA)

Submitted to: Food Protection Trends
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: 12/22/2023
Publication Date: 12/22/2023
Citation: Choiniere, C., Callen, C., Chen, Y., Davis, D., Neltner, T., Starke-Reed, P.E., Hermansky, S. 2023. A Roundtable on Moving Closer to Zero – Challenges and Opportunities for Reducing Children’s Exposures to Toxic Elements from Foods. Food Protection Trends. 44(1):50-57.

Interpretive Summary: Continual improvement in the safety of the food supply should be an ongoing goal for society. In 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Closer to Zero (C2Z), an action plan to reduce exposures to lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury from foods commonly consumed by babies and young children, to the lowest extent feasible. A roundtable presented at the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) 2022 Annual Meeting brought the collective knowledge and experience of a panel from industry, consumer advocacy, and government together to discuss this complex and multifaceted initiative. Here, we summarize the panel’s perspectives on the challenges and opportunities for reducing dietary exposures, and the engaging dialogues between the audience and the panel on topics such as analytical methods, data sharing, building trust in the process, frequency of revisiting action levels, communication, and outreach, addressing misconceptions, pros and cons of economic incentives and setting different action levels for foods intended for children. Discussions included components of an iterative approach for continual improvement over time, including analytical methodology, reducing plant uptake, collecting data to better understand the distribution of toxic elements, finding common ground among all stakeholders, and communications that make a difference. The roundtable identified a number of paths forward for this effort at continual improvement.

Technical Abstract: Continual improvement in the safety of the food supply should be an ongoing goal for society. In 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced Closer to Zero (C2Z), an action plan to reduce exposures to lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury from foods commonly consumed by babies and young children, to the lowest extent feasible. A roundtable presented at the International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) 2022 Annual Meeting brought the collective knowledge and experience of a panel from industry, consumer advocacy, and government together to discuss this complex and multifaceted initiative. Here, we summarize the panel’s perspectives on the challenges and opportunities for reducing dietary exposures, and the engaging dialogues between the audience and the panel on topics such as analytical methods, data sharing, building trust in the process, frequency of revisiting action levels, communication, and outreach, addressing misconceptions, pros and cons of economic incentives and setting different action levels for foods intended for children. Discussions included components of an iterative approach for continual improvement over time, including analytical methodology, reducing plant uptake, collecting data to better understand the distribution of toxic elements, finding common ground among all stakeholders, and communications that make a difference. The roundtable identified a number of paths forward for this effort at continual improvement.