**Video of Senator Murray’s Q&A with Dr. Califf AQUÍ**
Washington DC – Today, U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA), former Chair of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, questioned U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Commissioner Robert Califf and Deputy Commissioner for Human Foods Jim Jones at a HELP Committee audiencia. She asked about the agency’s progress advancing evidence-based approaches to food policy and chronic illness prevention, and implementing reforms she championed to help protect families from unsafe cosmetics products.
"Chronic diseases—we’ve been talking about heart disease, diabetes—are the leading cause of disability and death in America, and it’s all too common. We have about one in ten people in Washington state—and about one in ten Americans—who suffer from diabetes. So, we really do need evidence-based approaches to advance nutrition and to prevent and treat chronic diseases, like diabetes,” dijo el senador Murray. “How is FDA utilizing research from NIH and other federal agencies to scale up what we know about preventing and treating chronic diseases, like diabetes, and to better inform our food policy?”
In response, FDA Deputy Commissioner of the Human Foods Program Jim Jones spoke about how FDA’s new Nutrition Center of Excellence works with entities across the federal government, as well as universities, “to make sure that we are fully taking advantage of and collaborating around the research portfolio around nutrition across the country,” including the research agenda for ultra processed foods.
Last Congress, Senator Murray passed her bipartisan, landmark legislation which finally gave FDA power to regulate cosmetic products. As Senate Appropriations Chair, she secured $7 million for this work in the FY24 funding bill. At the hearing, she asked Commissioner Califf about implementation of the law, and specifically pressed for an update on when the agency would issue Good Manufacturing Practices for facilities that manufacture cosmetic products as required by the law.
“For a long time, harmful substances have made their way into makeup, lotion, hair care products, and many other products people use every day—and the FDA had no power to take any action. So, back in 2022, we passed my bipartisan Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act which empowered FDA finally with the tools it needed to better ensure cosmetic products are safe. It was the biggest change to the FDA’s authority to cosmetics since 1938,” dijo el senador Murray. “Now it’s been two years since the enactment, and I wanted to hear from you on how implementation is going and how the FDA is working to improve the safety of personal care products.”
“First of all, I want to thank you—I worked on this in 2016 and it took a long time to get the legislation and it’s much appreciated and much needed,” said Dr. Califf. “We have stood up the registration of facilities and products—some Americans may not believe this, but there was no record of what cosmetics were being put on the market before this, and we’ve now got a listing and also a complaint system that didn’t exist [previously].”
“GMP [Good Manufacturing Practices] is on the list to work on, and I know this is not a great time to talk to Congress about budgets, but the budget that was allocated to this was a small fraction of the estimates by everyone involved of what it would take to actually meet the requirements of Congress,” Dr. Califf continued. “So, this is going to need to be looked at in terms of, if we want this to get done in a timely fashion, there actually is time and material of qualified experts to get the work done. We’re doing everything we can to use internal resources, like we used the drug complaint system to register adverse events—that saved a lot of money compared to doing it de novo.”
“I’m out of time but I just want to let the committee know, I’m going to be following up on this, making sure that FDA is very aggressive implementing the law that we passed two years ago,” dijo el senador Murray.
Among other steps, the Modernization of Cosmetics Regulation Act:
- Provides FDA the authority to order mandatory recalls of cosmetic products;
- Requires manufacturers to report serious adverse events no later than 15 days after receiving the report;
- Requires FDA to establish good manufacturing practice regulations;
- Requires manufacturers to register facilities with FDA;
- Requiere que las etiquetas de los productos incluyan información de contacto para informar eventos adversos e identificar alérgenos de fragancias en la etiqueta (y proponer una regulación que los identifique dentro de un año de su promulgación);
- Requires FDA to propose regulations to establish testing methods for detecting asbestos in talc-containing products not later than one year after enactment;
- Requires FDA to assess the use of PFAS in cosmetics (and publish on its website no later than two years after enactment its assessment).
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