The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on July 14, 2025, that it is extending the public comment period on its proposed method for ranking chemicals in the food supply by 30 days, to August 18, 2025. As reported in our July 8, 2025, blog item, FDA proposes to use Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to determine a score for each chemical based on evaluating the information about a chemical against a pre-determined set of criteria. FDA notes that this method is similar in approach and criteria to one used by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) for prioritizing chemicals, but FDA’s method takes into account factors specific to exposure from food and uses a scoring method similar to FDA’s Risk Ranking Model for Traceability. In FDA’s MCDA method, the higher the total score, the higher the priority of that chemical for post-market assessment. FDA states that it is extending the deadline in response to requests to provide additional time for stakeholders to review the proposed method and submit comprehensive feedback. FDA encourages the public to respond to the questions listed in Section 4 of the document. FDA notes that stakeholder input “is critical to help inform the FDA’s proposed method and the agency’s overall approach to post-market assessments of chemicals in the food supply.” FDA states that after the new public comment period closes, it will submit the proposed method and public comments “for further evaluation by external scientific experts in line with the requirements of the Information Quality Act.”
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