Concept in Definition ABC

The food, medicines and cosmetic products that we consume every day are controlled by organisms public. The purpose of this control is evident: to prevent diseases and epidemics to guarantee the health of the citizenship.

In the United States the institution Responsible for ensuring public health is a state agency and is known by its acronym FDA (in English it corresponds to Food and Drug Administration and in Spanish it translates as Administration of Medicines and Food).

In the context of the European Union, there are other similar bodies, such as the European Medicines Agency (EMA) or the European Authority for Safety Food (EFSA)

What actions are carried out in the FDA?

This body oversees that food labels contain reliable information for the consumer. At the same time, a whole series of aspects are regulated:

1) what exact ingredients each product should incorporate,

2) how the ingredient names should be declared,

3) in what order the ingredients should be presented on the labeling,

4) what should be the label size and product wrapping size and

5) what effects a product has on people's health.

The supervision of the FDA is also oriented towards the control of the additives and colorants used. (for example, if a substance is not officially recognized as a colorant, it can be disallowed its commercialization). In short, this type of controls and regulations are applied to all those substances that may be consumed by people, including nutritional supplements, natural products, tobacco, or creams cosmetics.

The FDA safeguards the public health of the American population

All measures and regulations promoted by this body are based on proven scientific criteria. The FDA is a federal agency dating back to 1906 when a law on the purity of foods and medicines.

Regarding its internal organization, there are several specialized departments on all kinds of aspects: toxicology food, applied nutrition, veterinary medicine, radiological health, tobacco production research, etc.

To make the FDA guidelines available to everyone, informational manuals are periodically presented that can be consulted by manufacturing companies and consumers.

In short, all products that have an effect on human health must guarantee their safety. In other words, the FDA has the responsibility to control that no product is potentially harmful to health.

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