The Food and Drug Administration has issued its weekly Enforcement Report for November 2, 2011 that lists the status of recalls and field corrections for food and drugs, covering both domestic and foreign firms.

The Food and Drug Administration's Michael Taylor, who is Deputy Commissioner for Foods, stated in a recent speech in China that FDA will be prioritizing the following four Food Safety Modernization Act's provisions in the coming months: preventive control standards for food and feed facilities, produce safety standards, foreign supplier verification, and accredited third-party certification. This is because together - preventive controls for facilities and farms and the requirement that importers verify that products entering the U.S. comply with the preventive controls through third party auditing and certification - establish the central core of the regulatory framework envisioned by FSMA.

On November 3, 2011, the Food and Drug Administration posted new and revised versions of the following Import Alerts on the detention without physical examination of:

On November 2, 2011, the Food and Drug Administration posted new and revised versions of the following Import Alerts on the detention without physical examination of:

On November 1, 2011, the Food and Drug Administration posted new and revised versions of the following Import Alerts on the detention without physical examination of:

The Food and Drug Administration's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN) announced that it will hold a public meeting in Washington, D.C., on November 30, 2011, on microbiological safety issues relevant to cosmetic products. The purpose of the meeting is to provide stakeholders an opportunity to present information to the agency regarding a variety of cosmetic microbiological safety issues, including microbiological testing of cosmetics; types of preservative systems and how to test their effectiveness; routes of exposure to microorganisms and the corresponding infective doses; product and packaging characteristics that affect microbial growth and risk of infection; areas where FDA guidance may be useful; etc.

The Food and Drug Administration issued a warning to consumers on October 28, 2011 not to eat Turkish pine nuts purchased from unlabeled plastic bulk containers at Wegmans Food Markets, Inc. or any food items they may have prepared using the bulk Turkish pine nuts, such as pesto, salads, or baked goods, due to salmonella concerns. Wegmans is voluntarily recalling approximately 5,000 lbs. of pine nuts imported from Turkey and distributed by Sunrise Commodities that it sold in the bulk foods department of most Wegmans stores in New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia, and Maryland between July 1 and October 18, 2011.

Due to a request, the Food and Drug Administration is reopening the comment period on its May 2011 notice requesting information and comments about preventive controls and other practices used by facilities to identify and address hazards associated with specific types of food and specific processes. The information FDA receives will inform its development of guidance required by the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) on preventive controls for facilities that manufacture, process, pack, or hold food or /feed.

On October 31, 2011, the Food and Drug Administration posted new and revised versions of the following Import Alerts on the detention without physical examination of:

The Food and Drug Administration has updated its progress report on implementation of the Food Safety Modernization Act to add the FSMA activities it undertook in September 2011. These activities included launching two product tracing pilots, one involving produce and one involving processed foods; reporting to Congress on the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN), an integrated and secure network of 172 federal, state and local laboratories; and making seven grants to build food safety capacity at universities and institutes.