A Roundtable on Moving Closer to Zero: Challenges and Opportunities for Reducing Children’s Exposures to Toxic Elements from Foods

Continual improvement in the safety of the food supply should be an ongoing goal for society. In 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced Closer to Zero, an action plan to reduce exposures to lead, arsenic, cadmium, and mercury from foods commonly consumed by babies and young children to the lowest extent feasible. A roundtable presented at the International Association for Food Protection 2022 Annual Meeting brought together the collective knowledge and experience of panelists from industry, consumer advocacy, and government to discuss this complex and multifaceted initiative. Here, we summarize the panel’s perspectives on the challenges and opportunities for reducing dietary exposures and the engaging dialogues between the audience and the panel on topics such as analytical methods, data sharing, building trust in the process, frequency of revisiting action levels, communication and outreach, addressing misconceptions, pros and cons of economic incentives, and setting different action levels for foods intended for children. Discussions included components of an iterative approach for continual improvement over time, including analytical methodology, reducing plant uptake, collecting data to better understand the distribution of toxic elements, finding common ground among all stakeholders, and communications that make a difference. The roundtable identified several paths forward for this effort at continual improvement.