Food Ingredients and Sources of Radiation Listed or Approved for Use in the Production of Meat and Poultry Products

The Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) is amending the Federal meat and poultry products inspection regulations to harmonize and improve the efficiency of the procedures used by FSIS and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for reviewing and listing or approving the use of food ingredients and sources of radiation in the production of meat and poultry products. Except in very limited circumstances, FDA will list in its regulations in title 21 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR) food ingredients and sources of radiation that are safe for use in the production of meat and poultry products. Requests for approval to use food ingredients and sources of radiation not currently permitted under title 9 or title 21 of the CFR in the production of meat and poultry products will have to be submitted to FDA. This action will eliminate the need for separate FSIS rulemakings. FSIS will limit substance-specific rulemakings under the authority of the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA) or the Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA) to those necessary to establish specific prohibitions or limitations on the use of food ingredients and sources of radiation in the production of meat or poultry products. Such rulemakings might be necessary where a standard of identity or composition prohibits or limits the use of an ingredient, when use of the ingredient is not expected in the product, e.g., adding milk to hamburger, or use of the ingredient would result in the product being adulterated or misbranded. FSIS is also consolidating various existing regulations on food ingredients and sources of radiation into a single, new part, 9 CFR Part 424, applicable to both meat and poultry establishments. This will include combining the separate listings of food ingredients approved for use in meat and poultry products into a single table (9 CFR 424.22(c)) and eliminating unnecessary differences in the listings. FSIS has not made any substantive changes in the consolidated language.