As part of the Western Growers Science team’s ongoing engagement on food safety, De Ann Davis, Senior Vice President, Science, participated in a panel discussion with other industry experts about 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.

The panel discussion, held at the 2022 International Association for Food Protection Annual Meeting, is summarized here in an article titled “A Roundtable on Moving Closer to Zero: Challenges and Opportunities for Reducing Children’s Exposures to Toxic Elements from Foods.”

This Food Protection Trends article provides, “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.”

Discussion also 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.”

Contact De Ann Davis, PhD ([email protected]) with any questions or comments.