FDA Seeks $7.2 Billion to Protect and Advance Public Health by Enhancing Food Safety and More

SILVER SPRING, Md. — The U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it is requesting $7.2 billion as part of the president’s fiscal year (FY) 2024 budget. This funding will allow the agency to continue to leverage new and emerging technologies, recruit and support a highly skilled workforce and adapt oversight to new production and business models. This is work that will have an immediate impact on food, tobacco and medical product safety in this country while also preparing the agency to address rapid innovation across the food and medical products fields. The request includes an increase of $372 million in budget authority — or 10% above the FY 2023 Enacted Level — and a $150 million increase in user fees.

“This year’s funding request builds on our accomplishments and lessons learned over the past year and adds new funding to continue modernizing the FDA and its capabilities for the future. We continue to deliver on a wide range of priorities and have strategically focused our request to ensure our program areas have the funding they need to operate with the highest success for the good of public health,” said FDA Commissioner Robert M. Califf, M.D. “Our investments to strengthen medical product safety and availability, along with funding for vital oversight of tobacco products continue to be a central focus. The budget also provides a historic investment to strengthen the FDA’s food safety and nutrition capacity—especially for infants and young children, demonstrating the Administration’s ongoing commitment to these responsibilities. As always, our foremost focus is on the well-being of patients and consumers, and we look forward to continuing our work with Congress to help meet the critical public health challenges ahead.”

The FY 2024 request, which covers the period from Oct. 1, 2023, through Sept. 30, 2024, includes new efforts for high priority program areas. Highlights of the agency’s request include:

Enhancing Food Safety, Nutrition and Cosmetics

$128.2 million in investments in food safety and nutrition modernization, including food labeling and animal food safety oversight. While the agency is in the process of defining its future vision for the Human Foods Program, there is significant need for additional resources to strengthen its foundational food safety and nutrition capacity. The budget seeks to strengthen consumer protection and implement lasting solutions for more efficient operations through continued investments in the New Era of Smarter Food Safety. Building on lessons learned from the infant formula supply chain response, the budget includes funding to modernize infant formula oversight and strengthen efforts to respond to shortages of critical foods, empower consumers to make healthier food choices and reduce exposure to toxic chemicals in the food supply. The budget will also help position the FDA to keep pace with innovative and novel technologies being used to develop animal food ingredients while addressing foundational gaps in the oversight of the animal food industry as these ingredients are combined, packaged, and sold as animal food.

$5 million toward modernizing oversight of cosmetics. The budget includes new funding for the development of regulations, compliance policies, product registration and listing platforms, adverse event reporting and other activities to start to implement new authorities recently signed into law related to the safety and proper labeling of cosmetic products.

Reigniting Cancer Moonshot and Strengthening Public Health and Mission Support Capacity.

To complement the funding requests, the agency’s budget proposal also includes a package of legislative proposals designed to bolster the FDA’s authorities to further its mission to protect and promote public health. Notable proposals include efforts to:

• Require animal drug sponsors to make post-approval safety-related labeling changes based on new data; develop programs for safe use of certain products; and require post-approval studies based on new safety information that becomes available after approval.

• Provide the FDA the ability to exclude certain products or classes of products that the FDA and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) agree are more appropriately regulated by the EPA as pesticides; and facilitate an orderly transfer of regulatory responsibility from the EPA to the FDA of specified products that are currently registered as pesticides that the two agencies agree are more appropriately regulated by the FDA as animal drugs. The proposed changes would remove regulatory uncertainty and provide clarity to sponsors about which agency intends to regulate a given product or type of products.

• Expand the drug shortage notification requirements to include situations when a drug manufacturer is unlikely to be able to meet an increased demand. Currently, the FDA generally does not receive notice or adequate information from drug manufacturers regarding increases in demand that would position the agency to assist in preventing or mitigating drug shortages.

• Broaden the FDA’s authority to request records or other information in advance of or in lieu of inspections to include all FDA-regulated product areas, explicitly to include food, tobacco products and cosmetic establishments. Currently remote regulatory inspections are limited to drug, device and biomedical research, with only drug assessments requiring mandatory participation. This proposal will promote regulatory compliance and help facilitate certain oversight activities prior to arriving for or instead of an inspection.

• Remove limitations that require manufacturers to notify the FDA about interruptions or discontinuances in the manufacture of certain medical devices only during or in advance of a Public Health Emergency (PHE). Medical device shortages occur in many situations that fall outside of or are unrelated to PHEs, including natural or human-made disasters, recalls, geopolitical conflicts, production shutdowns and cybersecurity incidents. These events can lead to device shortages that significantly impact patient care and jeopardize healthcare worker safety. Therefore, the FDA is seeking the requirement for manufacture notifications at all times, as well as the authority to require and review risk management plans to help ensure that manufacturers are prepared for situations where their ability to manufacture product may be disrupted or may be insufficient to meet demand.

• Expand the FDA’s mandatory recall authority to cover all human and animal drugs. The agency currently has authority to order the recall of controlled substances, biological products, medical devices, tobacco products, cosmetics and foods. The agency lacks mandatory recall authority for other human and animal drugs.

• Enhance tools to help reduce exposure to toxic elements in the food supply, including food consumed by infants and young children. The FDA is seeking new authority to establish binding contamination limits in food and efficiently update such limits as new scientific information becomes available.

• Require industry to test final food products marketed for consumption by infants and children for toxic elements and allow FDA access to those records. This new authority would help the FDA better understand levels of toxic elements in these products, allow the FDA to monitor industry progress in reducing levels of these toxic elements over time and identify where the FDA should devote more time and resources.