Despite the unprecedented challenges we’ve all faced during the COVID-19 pandemic, 2021 was another important year for the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s Foods Program.

I’d like to highlight some of the strides we made last year in protecting the safety of human foods, which we will continue building on this year. They reflect on the work done by the dedicated teams in the FDA’s Office of Food Policy and Response, the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, and the Office of Regulatory Affairs.

January 2021 marked the 10-year anniversary of FSMA being signed into law. Congress’ mandate then is still true today: It’s not enough to respond to outbreaks of foodborne illness, we must prevent them from happening in the first place. We continue to answer that call.

Most significantly, in December we published a much-anticipated proposed rule to establish revised standards for agricultural water to further strengthen the safety of produce. It would require certain farms to conduct annual assessments and, if necessary, implement measures to minimize potential risks. I believe this could be a game-changer for food safety because agricultural water has often been a factor in produce-related outbreaks.