U.S. Food and Drug Administration

A Special Report

Pathway to Global Product

Safety and Quality
1

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

We live in a nation that increasingly relies on other countries to produce the food, drugs, 

cosmetics, and devices we use in our daily lives. Between 10% and 15% of all food 

consumed by United States (U.S.) households is imported from abroad. Nearly twothirds of the fruits and vegetables--and 80% of seafood--eaten domestically come from 

outside the U.S. Half of all medical devices used in this country are imported, while 80 

percent of the active pharmaceutical ingredients in medications sold here are 

manufactured elsewhere.

At the center of this global bazaar is the FDA. Today, nearly 25 cents of every dollar 

spent by Americans are on products regulated by the agency. FDA-regulated products 

account for about 10% of all imports into the U.S., arriving from more than 300,000 

facilities in 150 different countries.

The growth in imports has been rapid—and promises to accelerate. Just a decade ago, 6 

million shipments of FDA-regulated goods passed through the nation’s 300 ports of 

entry. This year the number will quadruple to 24 million shipments. Each year over the 

last seven years, food imports have grown by an average of 10%, while imports of 

pharmaceutical products have increased at nearly 13% and devices have grown at over 

10%. Between 2007 and 2015, it is estimated that imports of FDA-regulated products 

will triple, corresponding to a 15% growth rate.

In the decade ahead, the world economy will be shaped by several distinct forces: the rise 

of emerging markets, the scarcity of natural resources, and the increased flow of capital, 

information and goods across borders. The cumulative effect of these trends means not 

only phenomenal growth in the import sector but increasing complexity for regulators, as 

the distinction between foreign and domestic products continues to blur.

The manufacturers and producers that FDA regulates face intense pressure to lower costs 

and improve productivity, fueling a cycle in which the quest for efficiency leads to 

increased production abroad and higher volumes of imported products to regulate. Goods 

entering the U.S. will come from new and different markets, flowing through long, multistep processes to convert globally-sourced materials into finished goods. The shift in 

global product flows will make it difficult to identify the “source” of a product and to 

ensure that all players along the supply chain meet their safety and quality 

responsibilities. And it is not just legal activity that poses challenges for the FDA. 

Increasingly, the agency must contend with ever more sophisticated threats of fraud, 

product adulteration, and even terrorism.

In short, globalization has fundamentally altered the economic and security landscape and 

demands a major change in the way FDA fulfills its mission to promote and protect the 
2

health of the American people. Just as public health leaders have long recognized that 

disease knows no borders, FDA in crafting its vision for the next decade knows that 

product safety and quality no longer begin or end at the border.

This rapidly changing environment, and a desire to move from a posture of intercepting 

harmful products to anticipating and preventing the arrival of such goods, has prompted 

FDA leadership to develop this “Pathway to Global Product Safety and Quality.”

Throughout history, FDA’s primary tools for product safety and quality have been 

inspections at production facilities and ports of entry. Over time the agency has 

developed additional methods for protecting the public, including laboratory sample 

analyses for select product categories (e.g., foods) and product safety reporting systems.

Yet the safety of America’s food and medical products remains under serious threat. 

Imported vegetable protein contaminated with melamine has sickened and killed 

American pets, and milk tainted with melamine killed and injured children in China. 

Contaminated heparin, diverted and counterfeit glucose monitor test strips, glycerin 

contaminated with diethylene glycol (DEG), and low quality titanium destined for 

medical implants have all raised public health concerns. Peppers, eggs, peanut butter, 

pistachios, spinach, and cookie dough have all been associated with serious disease 

outbreaks in recent years. Many of the crises were due to, or exacerbated by, the 

regulatory challenges of globalization.

In response to increasing globalization, FDA has expanded its capabilities and regulatory 

authority. The PREDICT system, for instance, uses novel data analytics from the entire 

life cycle of a product to better identify and target high-risk products before they enter the 

country. Armed with better intelligence, FDA regulators can both speed admissibility of 

safe products and focus their investigative energies on the goods most likely to harm the 

public.

The agency has opened additional offices in key international locations and materially 

increased the number of certain types of foreign inspections. Inspections of overseas 

drug manufacturing plants, for example, increased from 333 in 2007 to 424 in 2009.

FDA has also collaborated with its counterparts in the U.S. and Australia on drug 

inspections, engaged in harmonization of drug regulation via the International 

Conference on Harmonization, and joined the Pharmaceutical Inspection 

Cooperation/Scheme (PIC/S) which is an informal organization of the drug 

manufacturing inspectorates from 39 countries. For devices, FDA and other global 

leaders are creating an expanded global regulators’ forum for medical devices under the 

auspices of the Global Harmonization Task Force (GHTF). 
3

In addition, under the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) enacted in 2011, 

FDA has been granted new authorities that allow the agency to better ensure the safety of 

food. Under the law, FDA has a new legislative mandate to require comprehensive, 

prevention-based controls across the food supply and new tools to hold all players in the 

supply chain accountable. The law represents a paradigm shift in the area of imports. 

For the first time, importers will have explicit responsibility to verify that their foreign 

supplies have adequate preventive controls in place and that the food they ship to the U.S. 

is otherwise safe. The agency also has the power to establish a third-party program for 

certifying that foreign food facilities comply with U.S. food safety standards, to require 

certification as a condition of entry for certain high risk foods, and to reject entry of food 

if the foreign facility or country refuses an inspection by FDA or its designee. 

Significantly, FSMA also explicitly encourages arrangements with foreign governments 

to leverage resources, provide for mutual recognition and capacity building.

Despite such recent improvements, FDA does not—nor will it—have the resources to 

adequately keep pace with the pressures of globalization. In 2008 the Government 

Accountability Office (“GAO”),1 recommended that FDA increase inspections of foreign 

drug establishments and improve information it receives to manage overseas inspections. 

But at current rates, it would take an estimated nine years for FDA to inspect every highpriority pharmaceutical facility just once.

The same holds for food products. FSMA directs the agency to inspect at least 600 

foreign food facilities within the next year and double those inspections every year for the 

next five. While the goal may be attainable in the first year, it would be impossible for 

FDA to complete 19,200 foreign food inspections in year six without a substantial 

increase in resources or a complete overhaul in the way it operates.

For decades, FDA has been a recognized world leader in product safety standards. But as 

the agency looks to the future, it can no longer rely on the historical tools, activities and 

strategies to regulate products. The reality facing FDA is that its mission will become 

ever more difficult to fulfill given the breadth and complexity of industries that it 

regulates during a time of constrained federal resources.

In order to cope with the magnitude of the fundamental shifts on the horizon, the agency 

is committed to substantially and fundamentally revising its approach to global product 

safety and quality. Over the next decade, FDA will transform itself from a domestic 

agency operating in a globalized world to a truly global agency fully prepared for a 

regulatory environment in which product safety and quality know no borders.
4

To achieve this transformation, FDA is developing an international operating model that 

relies on enhanced intelligence, information sharing, data-driven risk analytics, and the 

smart allocation of resources through partnerships. The new approach rests on four core 

building blocks:

1) FDA, in close partnership with its foreign counterparts, will assemble global 

coalitions of regulators dedicated to building and strengthening the product safety 

net around the world.

2) With these coalitions, FDA intends to develop a global data information system 

and network in which regulators worldwide can regularly and proactively share 

real-time information and resources across markets.

3) FDA will continue to expand its capabilities in intelligence gathering and use, 

with an increased focus on risk analytics and thoroughly modernized IT 

capabilities. 

4) FDA will effectively allocate agency resources based on risk, leveraging the 

combined efforts of government, industry, and public- and private-sector third 

parties.

The essence of this strategy marries creative international coalitions with cutting-edge 

investigative tools to continue to provide the consistently high level of safety and quality 

assurance the public expects—and deserves. FDA will continue to partner with other 

federal agencies, the states, and nations across the world. It will also look to Congress to 

modernize its antiquated authorities so that FDA’s legal tools keep pace with 

globalization. 

To meet these ambitious goals and achieve a true and lasting paradigm shift, FDA will 

engage all stakeholders in a process that will unfold over several years. Success will 

require boldness, creativity, and patience. It will not be easy, but it is imperative. Global 

supply chains, international trade, foreign sourcing, and terrorism remind us daily that the 

rest of the world will not stop and wait for regulators to catch up. It is incumbent upon 

FDA to engage its international counterparts, industry, and stakeholders worldwide to 

blaze the Pathway to Global Product Safety and Quality. 
5
6

I. TEN YEARS FROM NOW, THE WORLD WILL BE VERY 

DIFFERENT THAN IT IS TODAY

There is a series of macro trends at work that are impacting global commerce as much as 

they are affecting daily life. The cumulative effect of these trends will ensure that 10 

years in the future, the world will be very different than it is today, with a dramatic 

increase in the global flow of goods, including increases in imports to the U.S., 

governments playing an increasingly influential role in the healthcare of their citizens, 

and increased competition for global resources. Therefore, to understand the future of the 

food and medical products industries, it is imperative to first have a clear understanding 

and perspective on these trends.2

a. The great rebalancing. 

The vibrancy of emerging-market growth will not be the only major disruption reshaping 

the global economy in the next decade, but it may prove to be the most profound. This 

decade marks the tipping point in a fundamental long term economic rebalancing that 

will likely leave traditional Western economies with a lower share of GDP in 2050 than 

they had in 1700. 

Two cycles are at play. The first is declining dependency ratios, reflecting an increase in 

the overall proportion of a population that is working-age. Virtually all major emerging 

markets are undergoing demographic shifts well-proven to unleash an economic shift:

simultaneous labor force growth and rapidly declining birth rates. The second is the 

largest urban migration in history. Nearly one-and-a-half-million people move to cities 

each week, almost all in developing markets. The resulting economic impact is a rapid 

increase in output per worker as people move off subsistence farms and into urban jobs.

China and India are seeing labor productivity grow at more than five times the rate of 

most Western countries as traditionally agrarian economies become manufacturing and 

service powerhouses. 

b. The productivity imperative.

Emerging markets are riding a virtuous growth cycle, propelled by larger and younger 

working populations. In the rich nations of the developed world, by contrast, low birth 

rates and graying workforces will make it enormously difficult to maintain what 

economist Adam Smith called “the natural progress of opulence.” These countries’ best 

hope for keeping the wealth creation engine stoked is improved productivity—producing 

more with fewer resources. 
7

Paradoxically, doing that well across an economy is also the only way to generate lasting 

employment gains. The great tension here arises at the level of politics. Over time, the 

world’s rebalancing demands greater consumption and lower savings among the large 

developing countries, even as developed ones—the U.S. foremost among them—save, 

invest, and export more. Fostering policies that raise productivity, and avoiding or 

altering policies that impede it, will help ensure a smooth transition. 

To eke out even modest GDP increases, Organization for Economic Co-operation and 

Development (OECD) nations must achieve large productivity gains. In the 1970s, the

U.S. could rely on labor force growth to generate roughly 80 cents of every $1 gain in 

GDP. During the next decade, this ratio will roughly invert. Accordingly, OECD nations 

are going to need to look for all sources of increased productivity. This will lead to 

greater levels of imports, changes to manufacturing processes, and increased pressure to 

reinvent the manufacturing process.

c. The global grid

The last two decades have witnessed the rise of networks of unimaginable density and 

complexity. Money, goods, data, and people now cross borders in huge volumes and at 

unprecedented velocity. Since 1990, trade flows have grown 1.5 times faster than global 

GDP. Cross-border capital flows have expanded at three times the rate of GDP growth. 

Information flows have increased exponentially. The breakneck growth of these 

networks has resulted in a massive global communications and information grid that 

enables high volumes of rich and regular real-time interactions.

These days, a typical manufacturing company relies on more than 35 different contract 

manufacturers around the world. Auto and airplane manufacturers rely on tens of 

thousands. Trade in intermediate goods as a percentage of total trade has doubled. 

Meanwhile, dense links are being formed in a host of new directions. Trade flows 

between China and Africa, for example, have been growing by 30 percent annually, 

creating robust commercial networks that barely existed a few years ago. Similarly, Asia 

has supplanted North America and Europe as the Middle East’s largest trading partner.

Emerging-market-to-emerging-market transactions are on the rise. 

d. Pricing the planet. 

The tension between rapidly rising resource consumption and environmental 

sustainability is sure to prove one of the next decade’s critical pressure points. Natural 

resources and commodities account for roughly 10 percent of global GDP and underpin 

every single sector in the economy. No one will sit on the sidelines in this debate. The 
8

interplay of three powerful forces -- growing demand, constrained supply, and increased 

regulatory and social scrutiny -- will determine what resources we use, how we use them, 

and what we pay for them.

Demand will grow – even the most conservative projections for global growth over the 

next decade suggest that the demand for oil, coal, iron ore, and other natural resources 

will rise by at least a third. Supply will be constrained and will come from harder-toaccess, more costly and more politically unstable environments. We have already begun 

to see the impact from this as evidenced by rising commodity costs that have led to global 

food inflation. 

Finally, there will be increased regulatory and political scrutiny. Around the world, 

political leaders, regulators, scientific experts, and consumers are gravitating to a new 

consensus based on fostering environmental sustainability. For businesses, this new 

sensibility will present itself in three ways: stricter environmental regulations, increasing 

demand from consumers, and employees that demand greater environmental 

responsibility by their employers. This increased scrutiny and regulation will force 

manufacturers and producers to adopt new processes and employ emerging technologies 

to meet the needs of their consumers and broader stakeholder groups. 

e. Government and the marketplace

While we expect the steady advance of market capitalism to continue, government is 

likely to play an ever-larger role over the next decade for three reasons. First, even 

before the financial crisis hit, governments everywhere found themselves increasingly 

called upon to mitigate the sometimes negative impact of globalization on individual 

citizens. Second, the crisis itself has prompted large-scale direct government 

intervention, both through fiscal stimulus and movement toward increased regulation. 

That tilt in the power balance has been reinforced in much of the world by the perceived 

failings of the free-market model and the success so far of a Chinese model that, while 

market-oriented, assumes that the state will continue to play a leading role. 

Third, the spread and dispersal of economic power around the world is making it harder 

to reach consensus on multilateral approaches to setting the rules of global interactions

and fostering more bilateral and regional deal making. These more local arrangements 

remain largely market-based. Yet for business, the continuing shift away from a single 

set of rules will inevitably make seizing opportunities globally more challenging. It will 

also require companies to engage across many fronts with many critical regional and 

national government actions.
9

II. THE COMING CHANGES WILL MAKE FDA’S PRODUCT 

SAFETY AND QUALITY RESPONSIBILITIES FORMIDABLE 

AND MORE GLOBAL IN THE YEARS AHEAD

Because the changes shaping the world of the future will be so large and so 

fundamental, FDA must substantially evolve its product safety and quality model in 

order to keep ahead of the coming risks. Import growth will accelerate at the same 

time that highly-sensitive production processes are moving to new geographies. 

Increased access to the global marketplace will increase the specter of harm to 

consumers from economic or other intentional adulteration, fraud, and counterfeiting. 

FDA has already begun working diligently to build relationships with global and 

domestic partners, pushing for strong global safety standards. However, the 

magnitude of the challenge will require faster progress towards closer cooperation 

than has happened in the past. 

Global changes will have significant implications for the manufacturers 

and products that FDA regulates

The global trends in the coming decade will have major implications for FDA. The 

manufacturers and producers that FDA regulates will face intense pressure to lower costs 

and increase worker productivity. Government agencies, meanwhile, will become even 

more active and influential stakeholders in the global market. These pressures will 

continue to drive more, as well as more complex, production abroad, dramatically 

increasing the already high volume of FDA-regulated products that are imported into the 

U.S. Products entering the U.S. will come from new and different markets and will flow 

through long, multi-step processes to convert globally sourced materials into finished 

goods. As global product flows change, many individuals will encounter the growing 

dangers of fraud and economic or other intentional adulteration of both foods and 

medical products. In order to cope with the magnitude of the fundamental global shifts 

on the horizon, FDA must substantially revise its approach to global product safety and 

quality.

a. Increasing pressure to reduce costs and increase productivity.

The push to drive down production costs will be a pervasive influence on many countries 

across a range of industries, particularly those regulated by FDA. Growth in the 

prescription drug market has flattened in recent years and the rate of return on 

biopharmaceutical investments has dropped to just above the cost of capital.

3

 Exhibit 1 

shows a steady and significant increase in spending on R&D in the pharmaceutical 

industry, even as the number of NME approvals has dropped dramatically in the last 10 

years.
10

On the demand side, cost-conscious patients and payors will continue to insist on access 

to lower-cost medical products and services. Together with the low sales growth shown 

in Exhibit 2, this has placed a heavy strain on profit margins for pharmaceutical 

companies.

Exhibit 1 – R&D productivity declining

1 Lagging 5 year average, includes NCEs and BLAs. BLAs included 1986 onward; biologics approvals in prior years assumed negligible

Source: NME data for 1966-1971 from Peltzman, S. (1973) J. of Political Economy 81, no. 5: 1049–91. NME data for 1972-1979 as reported in Hutt, P.B. 

(1982) Health Affairs 1(2) 6-24. NME Data for 1980-2007 from Parexel’s Pharma R&D Statistical Sourcebook 2009/2010, FDA, and PhRMA. Industry 

R&D spend data from PhRMA Annual Membership Survey, 2008 and Parexel 2009/2010

R&D productivity has dropped significantly from its peak FDA NME approvals1

(number)

Lagging 5 year ave

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

1970 1975 1980 1985 1990 1995 2000 2005

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

40

45

50

55

Industry R&D spend 

$ Billions Number of NME approvals
11

Exhibit 2 – Cost pressures facing pharmaceutical companies

Source: EvaluatePharma April 2009; team analysis

Worldwide total prescription drug sales 2000-14

Pharmacos revenues are under pressure and unlikely to regain historical 

levels of growth

707 691 663 674

637 616 612

572

521

441

398

345 315 290

8.0

9.0 9.0

15.0

9.0

7.0

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

700

800

-2

0

2

4

6

8

10

12

14

16

11 12

Sales 

growth

$ Billions +2.9% CAGR Percent

2009-14

09 10 13 2014

-0.7

07 08

10.0

05 06

479

04

11.0

02 03

10.0

2000 01

Analyst 

forecasts

4.0 4.0

2.0 3.0 2.0

Off-patent 

share 

$ Billions

1 Evaluatepharma focuses on manufacturer’s selling price for Top 500 pharma and biotech companies (IMS traditionally higher since it includes all 

retail/wholesale invoices and excludes rebates)

2 Majority of industry estimates more conservative in early 2009; IMS revised in late 2009 to project 4-7% CAGR growth through 2013

7 11 15 22 25 29 36 41 48 47 53 56 60 64 69

The pressure for cost savings will be similarly intense for food and consumer goods 

companies. Consolidation among retailers has already given a few powerful, global 

players tremendous leverage to negotiate down prices as they compete for cost conscious 

shoppers. Upstream, four players control nearly 50% of the global seed market.4 This, 

coupled with increased scarcity in a number of source materials, means producers will be 

paying more to their suppliers at the same time they are bringing in less revenue from 

retailers. Adding to the struggle for name-brand consumer goods manufacturers, price 

sensitive consumers are turning to private label goods, increasing the market share of 

those products (food and personal care products) to an estimated 24% by 2016. Retailers 

have tried to reinforce this trend by using more sophisticated branding as a source of 

differentiation from other retailers.5

Coping with these increased cost pressures, the healthcare industry in particular will have 

to find ways to increase labor productivity. Over the past 15 years, employment in this 

sector has grown approximately 3% with little substantial increase in employee 

productivity.6 This workforce will need to find ways to become more efficient and 

productive in the years ahead to meet growing demands without adding to already 

stretched costs. As a result of these influences, managers will look to identify cost-
12

savings opportunities at every stage of production and will continue to challenge 

requirements that add expense to the manufacturing process.

b. Greater government influence in healthcare markets.

Officials managing the skyrocketing costs of growing public health programs in all parts 

of the world are becoming more proactive in seeking to control costs and improve 

quality. Government spending on healthcare has been on the rise since at least 1990 in 

the G7 economies, as seen in Exhibit 3.7 In the U.S., Medicare expenditures are 

projected to reach nearly $900 billion by 2018.8 Between 2000 and 2025, experts predict 

that the Medicare population will grow at four times the rate of the “employed” 

population between ages 18 and 64.9 The sum of all non-private hospital expenditures is 

likely to reach over $1 trillion by 2015.10 To cope with the growing public burden, 

countries like the U.K. and Australia are becoming more proactive in managing the costs 

of healthcare products and services, including deeper engagement with providers and 

more strategic contracting. The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services already 

requires that hospitals report quality information in order to receive full 

reimbursements,11 and a wave of new regulations in connection with the 2010 Affordable 

Care Act carry significant implications for all players in the healthcare sector. 

Like the consumer demand for low cost and high quality, governments will play an 

increasingly active role in shaping the dynamics of the healthcare market. Successful 

manufacturers will account not only for the preferences and habits of individual 

customers and providers, but also the needs of an increasingly strained public healthcare 

system. Like the private manufacturers, FDA will find other U.S. government agencies 

to be significantly more important and potentially more influential stakeholders in their 

work than ever before. 
13

Exhibit 3 – Increase in government healthcare spending

Most countries are seeing increases in

healthcare spending

02 03

8.5

8.0

99 2000

7.5

6.0

7.0

5.0

6.5

0

01

5.5

05 06 2007

9.0

1990 91 92 93 94 95 96 97 98 04

Source: OECD Health Data 2009

Government spending on healthcare 

Percent of GDP

U.S.

U.K.

Germany

Japan

France

Italy

Canada

c. Growing globalization of production of FDA-regulated products leading to growth in 

imports.

One of the most important consequences of the pressure to reduce costs and increase 

productivity will be that companies continue to move manufacturing activities to new and 

different locations, looking to global supply chains to reduce production costs. Some 

estimates predict that by the end of 2010, more than 40% of the final assembly in the 

consumer goods and life sciences industries will be performed outside of the producer’s 

home country, due largely to the lower cost of production.12 In pharmaceutical 

production in particular, the cost of formulation of an Active Pharmaceutical Ingredient 

(API) can range from 15% to 40% less to produce in India as compared with the U.S.13 

Just as cost pressures will only become more severe over time, companies will continue 

the movement of manufacturing and production activities to low cost countries for the 

foreseeable future.
14

Exhibit 4 – Growth in FDA imports

Increases in global trade are increasing the exposure of U.S. consumers 

to foreign products and source materials

The volume of imported FDA-regulated 

products has grown dramatically...

...along with growth in foreign sourcing of materials 

used in FDA-regulated products

Foreign imports of FDA regulated products1

USD Billions; percent

1 IHS Global Insight industry categories were used to compute these figures; categories do not exactly match FDA-regulated products

Source: IHS Global Insight, Frost & Sullivan, GAO: Improvements Needed in the Foreign Drug Inspection Program

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

2000 01 02 03 04 05 06 07 08 09 2010

67

75

0

108

121

133

151

169

186

175

184

50

100

150

200

90

Percent of total imports

Imports of FDA

regulated products

Origin of APIs for drugs in the U.S. market, 1998 Est

Volume; percent

Foreign-produced

80

As a result of the increase in the globalization of production, more food and medical 

products are entering the U.S. than ever before, and the growth in imports will only 

accelerate in the future. Since 2002, imports of FDA-regulated products have grown 

almost three-fold from 7.9 million import lines per year to 18.5 million lines per year in 

2009, shown in Exhibit 5.14 This amounts to a 13% annual growth rate across FDAregulated products, with imports of medical devices and radiation-emitting consumer 

products quadrupling during the period 2002-2010. In fact, FDA-regulated products now 

account for approximately 10% of all imports to the U.S. and already an estimated 16% 

of U.S. consumer spending on these items is spent on imported goods.15 While foods and 

medical devices have seen the largest volume of imports, all of FDA’s product groups 

have seen substantial import growth and will likely experience more. 
15

Exhibit 5 – Import lines of FDA-regulated products

9

8

7

6

5

4

3

2

19

18

17

16

15

14

13

12

11

10

1

0

2002 03 04 05 06 07 08 09

Import shipments of FDA-regulated products have been growing at 

13 percent per year

Imported lines1 (millions)

Total = 7.9 MM in 2002; total = 18.5 MM in 2009

13% p.a.

1 An import line represents the portion of a shipment listed as a separate item on an entry document. The number of units can vary

Source: FDA

CAGR

2002-09 Explanation of center’s products

Drugs 12.9% • Prescription and OTC drugs for human

9.5% • Food products for human, animal, pet use, 

except meat and poultry

• Articles for cleansing, beautifying, promoting 

attractiveness of body

Foods

20.8% • Medical devices for human use

• Products that emit radiation (e.g., microwaves, 

lasers, x-ray machines)

Devices

15.8% • Blood products, vaccines, and tissues for 

transplantation 

Biologics

6.7% • Drugs, devices, and food additives for animals 

and pets 

Veterinary 

products

Food products, representing the largest share by volume of import lines,16 have grown by 

an average of nearly 10% each year for at least seven years.

17 This growth led to an 

increase in the volume of food import lines from 5.6 million in 2002 to 10.7 million by 

2009, with seafood and spices among the most imported food items.18 Currently, 

between 10% and 15% of all food consumed each year by U.S. households is imported 

from abroad.19 Factoring in the use of foreign-produced spices, the proportion of 

American diets impacted by imports is even higher. In some food categories, more food 

is imported than produced domestically. For example, 60% of fruits and vegetables and 

80% of seafood are produced outside the U.S.20 

Imports of pharmaceutical products have also grown rapidly, at approximately 13% per 

year, over the past seven years and accounted for more than 350,000 import lines in 

2009.21 This volume accounted for approximately 30% by value of pharmaceutical 

products used annually.22 The rise in imports has contributed to a growing trade deficit in 

pharmaceutical products. In 2000, the U.S. imported $1.7 billion more in pharmaceutical 

products than it exported.23 By 2008, that discrepancy had grown ten-fold to $18 billion. 

Even more than finished medications, the U.S. is increasingly relying on foreign 

producers for key components. For example, approximately 80% of active ingredients 

found in pharmaceutical products on U.S. store shelves come from overseas,

24 growing 

from $2.8 billion in 2000 to nearly $4.6 billion just seven years later.25 
16

As with foods and drugs, medical device imports have been growing steadily. The 

number of medical device import lines has risen an average of 10% per year between 

1998 and 2008,26 and now stands at 7.1 million lines per year. Importation of medical 

devices is broad-based, spanning all major device types. Today, imports represent more 

than 35% of the U.S. medical equipment market.27

Table 1 – Proportion of FDA-regulated products that are imported28

Number of import lines in 

(2009)

Proportion of total spend 

met through imports 

(2010)

Food 10.7 million 10 - 15

Medical Devices 7.1 million 52

Drugs 0.35 million 28

Source: FDA Import Data, IHS Global Insights

With the expected growth in foreign manufacturing in the coming years, the U.S. will 

likely continue to increase the volume of FDA-regulated products that it imports, though 

estimates of the growth rate of imported products vary. On the low end, some expect a 5-

8% projected growth rate, slightly lower than the 10% growth rate of the past decade. On 

the high end, there have been estimates that imports of FDA-regulated products will triple 

between 2007 and 2015, corresponding to a 15% growth rate.29 In either scenario, the 

growth in imported products is expected to outpace the growth of domestic products, 

leading to an even higher proportion of food and medical products coming from overseas.

d. Changing nature of risk in global supply chains.

Companies will not only be producing more FDA-regulated products abroad, but the 

products will follow complex paths through multi-step supply chains to reach the U.S. 

One example of this complexity is an increased number of processing steps and number 

of entities touching a given product. The market for contract manufacturing outsourcing 

in pharmaceutical production is evidence of this trend, growing to an estimated $46 

billion in 2010, more than double the size of the market nine years ago, as seen in Exhibit 

6.30
17

Exhibit 6 – Market for Contract Manufacturing Outsourcing

Increased fragmentation of regulated producers adds a new challenge to the 

FDA’s safety assurance efforts both domestically and abroad

Source: Frost & Sullivan

Pharmaceutical contract manufacturing outsourcing market

USD Billions

+10% p.a.

2010E

46

09

41

08

37

07

33

06

30

2005

27

04

25

03

23

02

20

2001

19

Asia

Europe

North 

America

Increased manufacturing 

outsourcing means more 

parties involved in end-toend production and 

distribution of a single 

product

One stark illustration is the multi-stage path that a single commodity, canned tuna, takes 

from the time the fish is caught in East Asia to the time the finished product reaches store 

shelves in the U.S., shown in Exhibit 7.
18

Exhibit 7 – Illustrative supply chain for canned tuna

Products often traverse complex global supply chains to 

reach U.S. consumers

Source: http://www.ilo.org/public/english/dialogue/sector/techmeet/tmfce07/tmfce-r.pdf

1

2

3

5 4

Processed into 

frozen pieces

Pre-canning 

processing

Canning

Distribution

US consumption

Example path

Supply chain for canned tuna

A growing number of the products regulated by FDA will follow similarly complex paths 

before they reach American consumers. With so much movement across such large 

distances, businesses and regulators face a difficult challenge maintaining visibility into 

the end-to-end process. It will also become increasingly difficult to prevent and detect 

the intentional efforts by some importers to manipulate the system and avoid scrutiny.31 

As supply chains become more global and complex, they will also carry an increasing 

number of complicated, high-risk products to the U.S. from abroad. Between 2000 and 

2007, the U.S. quadrupled its importation of “high risk” medical products, such as 

vaccines.32 For foods, between 70 and 85% of the import refusals of produce and 

seafood,33 the two largest categories of food imports, were for potentially dangerous 

violations including the presence of pathogens, chemical contamination, and “other 

sanitary violations.”34 For medical devices, complex products, which were once 

primarily manufactured domestically, are increasingly being manufactured overseas and 

imported.35 As a consequence, it will become more difficult to distinguish the risk and 

complexity of a product based on where it is produced.

Compounding the difficulty of evaluating such risks, FDA needs to fully understand the 

dynamics of a new set of foreign trading partners that will be important sources of FDAregulated products. While a large portion of U.S. medical product imports have 
19

historically come from Western Europe, there are indications of a shift. Import lines from 

emerging markets, including Mexico, India, China, and Thailand, increased faster 

between 2002 and 2009 than lines from developed markets, and this disparity is likely to 

continue. China and India are each expected to see a more than 400% increase in their 

product exports between now and 2020, with China accounting for nearly 20% of all 

global product exports by that time.36

Exhibit 8 – Increase in total foreign exports from developing countries

A significant portion of the increase in foreign products will come from 

developing countries

Source: McKinsey Global Insights

Share of global product exports, 2020F

Percent

595 +159%

865 +465%

6,321

200910 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

+426%

Forecasted growth in product exports

USD, Billions

Mexico

India

China

9

1

2

10

9

19

3

2

China

United 

States

India

Mexico

2009

2020F

This export growth will have a direct impact on FDA’s product safety efforts, as seen in 

Exhibit 9. The value of local pharmaceutical production in 2012 in India and China will 

likely be 2.5 times what it was in 2006. China already has the largest number of foreign, 

FDA-registered drug manufacturing establishments, followed by India.37 The picture is 

similar for foods and medical devices as well. China and India are each expected to see 

9% annual growth in food exports between 2010 and 2020,38 and China has the fourthhighest volume of imports to the U.S. of medical equipment and is the leading supplier of 

sutures, sterile, surgical, and dental goods as well as mechano-therapy apparatus.39 In 

fact, China has the highest number of FDA-registered class II or class III medical device 

manufacturing establishments of any country in the world outside the U.S.40 
20

Exhibit 9 – Growing exports of FDA-regulated products from emerging economies

Food 

products1

Emerging economies are expected to grow their exports of FDA regulated 

products faster than the worldwide growth in exports

1 Categories based on IHS Global Insight do not perfectly mirror FDA regulated products and centers

Source: IHS Global Insight

Tobacco 

products1

Drugs and 

medicines1

Medical 

equipment1

5

6

9

9

World

Eastern 

Europe

India

China

Forecast growth in worldwide exports and exports from China, India, Eastern Europe, 2010-20

Percent; CAGR

-1

3

5

4

6

8

12

13

8

8

13

12

The expected cost pressure confronting global businesses may be the most influential 

factor driving a higher volume of production to developing markets. Both India and 

China offer a number of cost advantages, most notably the cost of skilled labor. India in

particular trains six times the number of chemists annually than the U.S. produces and 

companies can access this talent for 10% of the cost of the same talent in America.41 In 

total, estimates indicate that bulk manufacturing in India can reduce costs for U.S. and 

European companies by 30 to 40%.42 

The cost advantage of skilled labor in India and China has also increased the number of 

drugs developed in Asia. Together, India and China have more than 30% of the world’s 

drug master files (DMF), and the number has been growing due in part to the abundant 

supply of trained scientists and a significant cost differential for product development. 

The cost of developing a DMF in India is one-quarter the cost in the U.S.43 At the same 

time, China has tripled its annual R&D investment over the past 15 years and will likely 

have the largest R&D workforce in the world by 2015.44

In addition to new geographies, imports of FDA-regulated products are coming from a 

wide and diverse range of producers. Almost half of all imports to the U.S. are the only 

shipment that the exporter sends in a given year.45 Fully 80% of imports come from 
21

companies that send 11 or fewer total export shipments each year.46 This means that 

public safety will require effective supervision of a high number of small producers and 

importers.

The anticipated shift in global production will mean new and different challenges for 

FDA. A recent survey of retailers in Asia revealed their greatest sources of safety 

concern to be residual chemicals, contamination and spoilage, veterinary and plant 

diseases, and intentional poisoning.47 Mexico and China already account for a high 

percentage of food imports and a higher percentage of import refusals, while India 

accounts for 2% of food imports and more than 10% of import refusals. As these 

countries account for an increasing proportion of U.S. food and drug imports, FDA must 

first study past non-compliance issues and then take an integrated global view of product 

safety risk and align its resources with the greatest sources of future risk. 

e. Increased risk of counterfeiting and other fraud.

Perhaps the most serious challenge on the horizon for FDA is that growing access to the 

global marketplace will also expose Americans to a set of economically-motivated harms 

including counterfeiting, fraud, and other intentional adulterations. Recent, highly-public 

incidents involving adulterated heparin and melamine-tainted baby formula underscore 

how serious the potential danger can be and the daily collection of unsolicited email that 

the average American receives regarding pharmaceutical products sold via the Internet is 

a stark reminder of the prevalence. They also serve as a reminder that there are 

manufacturers around the world for whom the temptation of economic gain is greater 

than any concern for risk to human and animal health. Asian retailers already rate 

intentional poisoning as one of their top concerns.48 The profits to be earned through 

fraud or adulteration will only increase as pure source materials become scarcer and more 

expensive. 

The U.S. has seen a steady increase in the number of counterfeiting incidents. The World 

Health Organization estimated that between 5 and 8% of all of pharmaceuticals 

worldwide were counterfeit in 2003.49 Americans’ increased willingness to purchase 

pharmaceuticals online to be shipped directly to their homes from around the country and 

world makes them even more vulnerable. Even substances that are not by themselves 

harmful can be life-threatening if fraudulently substituted for critical treatments. As 

criminals find new incentives and new opportunities to manipulate the contents of FDAregulated products and easy access to distribution channels via the Internet, the agency 

must remain vigilant and proactive.
22

III. FDA MUST SUBSTANTIALLY CHANGE ITS OPERATING 

MODEL TO ADDRESS THE CHALLENGES OF THE FUTURE 

FDA is one of the world’s oldest food and drug regulators with a reputation and proven 

track record for being a leader in product safety and quality. As it looks to the future, the 

agency can no longer rely solely on its historical tools and activities to regulate products. 

A part of this transition will include realignment and refocusing of existing global safety 

resources as well as a more strategic engagement with foreign counterparts to emphasize 

tangible steps to improve product safety and quality. The reality facing FDA is that its 

mission will become ever more difficult to fulfill given the breadth of industries that it 

regulates combined with available resources. It is imperative, therefore, that FDA finds 

the most effective way to revise the approaches and tools at its disposal and leverage 

relationships beyond the agency to other federal departments, the states, foreign 

governments, and industry.

a. There has been little change to the fundamental operating model for regulators over 

the past several decades.

When Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, the precursor to the 

legislation creating FDA, the industry that FDA regulated was predominately local, the 

volume of imported products was low, and even the movement of goods across country 

was minimal. Public concern about a lack of oversight of U.S.-produced goods for 

domestic consumption and for export was the driving force behind the legislation. 

Therefore, the authority granted under this legislation was sufficient to ensure the safety 

and quality of products at that time. This authority allowed FDA to visually inspect 

regulated products presented at the border for import and to refuse entry to goods that 

appeared not to conform to the relevant safety requirements.50

Since then, innovations in refrigeration, transportation, and communication have enabled 

consolidation and globalization, particularly in food production, contributing to the rise in 

food imports. Likewise, the transport of drugs, medical devices, and biologics over long 

distances while maintaining stability and product integrity has become commonplace, 

leading to increased levels of importation. While high-profile domestic incidents have 

provided stark reminders of the important role that FDA plays in regulating U.S. 

companies, the trend toward globalization has increased public awareness about the 

safety risks of foreign imports. These public health concerns represent a marked shift 

from the oversight issues that had been the focus in the past.

Recognizing these trends, FDA has made changes to its approach. For example, the 

agency has, in the last several years, started moving toward an approach which takes into 

account the risks across the product’s life cycle, from production abroad to consumption 
23

in the U.S. FDA has developed the PREDICT system, which uses risk based data and 

analytics from the entire life cycle of the product to make entry admissibility decisions, 

rather than just relying on border inspections. FDA has also taken many other steps such 

as increasing its collaboration and information-exchange with its foreign counterparts, 

employing sophisticated risk models, developing advanced handheld testing for use at the 

border, and educating industry about how to minimize risks to products and supply 

chains.

Despite these incremental improvements, FDA’s underlying approach to import safety 

has remained relatively unchanged. Throughout its existence, the agency’s primary tools 

for global product safety and quality have been facilities inspections and border 

inspections and remain so today. This has been supplemented over time with additional 

tools such as laboratory sample analyses for select product categories (e.g., foods) and 

product safety reporting systems. 

One might suppose that, given that FDA’s operating model has served it well over the 

years, one option to meet the challenge of assuring product safety and quality in a 

globalized world is to scale the current model. However, achieving a comparable 

average inspection frequency of foreign facilities would require a significant increase in 

resource levels as shown in Exhibit 10 below. An alternative approach that relies on 

enhanced intelligence and data-driven risk analytics and allocation of resources achieved 

through partnerships has the potential to achieve greater levels of assurance of product 

safety and quality and do so with fewer resources. 
24

Exhibit 10 – Cost and coverage of foreign inspections

The average cost of foreign inspections is two times the cost of a 

domestic inspection but there is a significant gap in foreign inspection 

coverage

Pre- and post-market facility 

inspections

Inspection costs 

1 FDA entry reviewers conduct document reviews on nearly all import lines. A subset of those lines that are reviewed are also sampled

2 Food inspections calculated from 2001 through 2007

Source: FDA Enforcement Story; FY 2011 Congressional Budget, GAO 08-909T, GAO 10-699T, GAO 08-428T, GAO 08-701T

89

11

79

21

Foreign

Domestic

Average cost of 

domestic inspection:

~$23,000

Average cost of 

foreign inspection:

~$52,000

Foreign inspection coverage 

between 2002 and 20072

46 54

30

70

1

99

Inspected

Non-inspected

Drug 

manufacturing 

facilities

Medical device 

manufacturing 

facilities (Class II 

or Class III)

Foreign food 

firms

Foreign

Domestic

Traditionally, and with very few exceptions, FDA has used its own employees to perform 

all oversight activities. Alternative approaches including third-party inspection programs 

and international cooperation have not been the primary focus. Given the significant 

change that will be required to cope with future trends in global product safety, FDA will 

need to continue to identify ways to innovate in its oversight efforts and work with its 

federal partners to develop the necessary tools and authorities. 

For food products in particular, the recent passage of the FDA Food Safety 

Modernization Act (FSMA) offers many opportunities to move toward a system that 

focuses on ensuring the safety of products prior to arrival at the border. FSMA, signed 

into law by President Obama on January 4, 2011, gave FDA important new tools to hold 

imported foods to the same standards as domestic foods and directs FDA to build an 

integrated national food safety system in partnership with state and local authorities. 

Under the new law, FDA will have several new mandates with respect to food produced 

outside the U.S. Importers will face increased accountability; for the first time they will 

have an explicit responsibility to verify that foreign suppliers have adequate preventive 

controls in place to ensure that the food they produce is safe. The agency now has 

explicit authority to refuse entry into the U.S. of food from a foreign facility if FDA (or 

other individuals duly designated by FDA) is denied access by the facility or the country 

in which the facility is located. Finally, the FSMA establishes a program through which 
25

qualified third parties can certify that foreign food facilities comply with U.S. food safety 

standards.

b. Current international efforts at addressing these challenges are not sufficient.

Despite significant effort and investment of resources, FDA’s successes in engaging 

foreign partners have not helped the agency substantially increase the coverage of its 

safety and quality assurance activities. To date, FDA has taken a range of different 

approaches to international collaboration ranging from training and capability building, to 

harmonization of highly technical safety standards, to its recent admission into the

Pharmaceutical Inspection Convention and Pharmaceutical Inspection Co-operation 

Scheme (PIC/S system) of information sharing regarding pharmaceutical facility 

inspections. These interactions have been immensely helpful in building positive 

relationships with counterparts and enhancing skills in a number of different countries 

and have given FDA valuable insight into the challenges that others have been facing. 

However, the more complex, globalized environment anticipated in the near future 

requires FDA to make faster progress toward meaningful collaboration and impactful 

output than some of the current programs are on pace to produce. Some programs have 

begun to move the world toward strong, common safety standards, but FDA has only 

used these as an acceptable alternative to its own standards in limited circumstances. For 

example, at the current rate of progress and through the current mechanisms, it would 

take decades to reach a comprehensive set of common standards that could form the basis 

for FDA to leverage the work of public and private third parties both domestically and 

abroad. This is due to extensive negotiations and careful consideration that is exerted by 

participants, including FDA, in these international programs. Yet serious global safety 

risks loom on the horizon and warrant near-term, tangible activities that cannot wait for 

existing programs alone to run their course. 

c. Several of FDA’s foreign counterparts have begun to implement innovative solutions to 

address the global safety challenges facing FDA.

Like FDA, food and medical product regulators around the world have begun efforts to 

become more effective and efficient at global product safety and quality oversight. Some 

regulators in Asia have made the strategic decision to rely on the determinations of 

certain trusted foreign counterparts, directing their own resources instead to facilities and 

jurisdictions that are not already covered by these trusted parties to help expand capacity 

by reducing duplicity of effort. Similarly, Mexico recently announced that it would treat 

device reviews conducted by FDA as equivalent to reviews conducted by Mexican 

regulators and Costa Rica has announced its intention to do the same. In Europe, each 

drug manufacturer is constantly supervised by a qualified person employed by that 

manufacturer but responsible to the government for ensuring the safety and quality of all 

batches of the approved product, regardless of where it was produced. More recently, a 
26

sub-set of the PIC/S participating countries have established a work-sharing program 

founded on the standardized inspection information-sharing developed through PIC/S. 

Other jurisdictions have also created a tiered approach to facility inspections, adjusting 

the length and depth of the inspection based on the degree of risk associated with the 

particular facility, enabling those countries to quickly conduct a large number of 

inspections of low-risk sites.

New and innovative approaches to enhance regulatory effectiveness, including the 

PREDICT system and the opening of foreign offices, have been met with some success. 

However, there is a need to move beyond these efforts and to think strategically across 

FDA and a network of regulators worldwide about what is needed to effect a substantial 

enhancement of global product safety.
27

IV. FDA IS PURSUING A STRATEGY WITH FOUR PRIMARY 

COMPONENTS TO ADDRESS THE COMING CHALLENGES

In order to cope with the magnitude of the fundamental shifts on the horizon, FDA is 

committed to substantially and fundamentally revising its approach to global product 

safety and quality. Over the next decade, FDA will transform itself from a domestic 

agency operating in a globalized world to a truly global agency fully prepared for a 

regulatory environment in which product safety and quality knows no borders.

To achieve this transformation, the agency is developing an international operating model 

that relies on enhanced intelligence, information sharing, data-driven risk analytics, and 

the smart allocation of resources through partnerships. The new approach rests on four 

core building blocks:

1) FDA, in close partnership with its foreign counterparts, will assemble global 

coalitions of regulators dedicated to building and strengthening the product safety 

net around the world.

2) With these coalitions, FDA intends to develop a global data information system 

and network in which regulators worldwide can regularly and proactively share 

real-time information and resources across markets.

3) FDA will continue to expand its capabilities in intelligence gathering and use, 

with an increased focus on risk analytics and thoroughly modernized IT 

capabilities. 

4) FDA will effectively allocate agency resources based on risk, leveraging the 

combined efforts of government, industry and public- and private-sector third 

parties.

FDA and its partners around the world have already taken steps to set the foundation for 

the work ahead. Bilateral relationships with regulatory counterparts and collaborative 

workplans exist with several countries. Interactions with foreign counterparts in the 

development of common standards and capabilities have been immensely helpful in 

building positive working relationships with a number of different countries. 

Engagement in these discussions has also given FDA valuable insight into the challenges 

that others have been facing. The lessons and successes from its involvement in 

programs like the Codex Alimentarius Commission, International Conference on 

Harmonisation (ICH), PIC/S, and Global Harmonization Task Force (GHTF) are critical 

building blocks for the collaboration envisioned in this strategy for global product safety. 

In addition, there is urgency to effect change that enhances global product safety and 

quality given the major shifts already well underway.
28

A. FDA will partner with foreign counterparts to create global coalitions

of regulators focused on ensuring and improving global product safety

Increasingly, national borders no longer define the challenges of ensuring product safety 

and quality. FDA and its foreign counterparts have acknowledged this reality and 

undertaken efforts to increase collaboration among regulators and standardization of 

manufacturing requirements and inspection procedures. As the agency moves forward, 

FDA envisions a much deeper engagement, beginning with a core group of partners. The 

primary aim of this effort would be to develop procedures for more comprehensive and 

systematic information sharing and coordinated deployment of resources. This would be 

achieved in a timely manner by focusing on comparability--elements or features of a 

regulatory system that give confidence it will produce comparable safety outcomes to the 

benchmark system. Focusing on comparability will be faster and likely more effective 

than harmonization, in which a regulator only recognizes the similarities of a peer 

system.

Traditionally FDA has had close cooperation with a series of regulatory partners via bilateral agreements. While FDA has built strong relationships with its counterparts, a 

broader and more comprehensive model is required going forward to achieve the change 

required. Global coalitions are not new and there are several models operating today that 

successfully govern global commerce. For example, the International Civil Aviation 

Organization (ICAO) was formed to promote global cooperation and common standards 

to ensure safe, secure, and efficient civil air traffic. ICAO has successfully operated for 

over 60 years and now has more than 190 members.

In the medical products context, several models exist today. For example, PIC/S was 

formed in 1970 to strengthen cooperation in the field of inspections with a view to 

maintaining mutual confidence and promoting quality assurance. PIC/S has grown 

significantly since formation and now has over 35 members (including the U.S. as of 

January 2011). Similarly, earlier this year, senior leaders of the GHTF decided to create 

an expanded global regulators’ forum for medical devices. The forum’s objective is to 

promote convergence across global device safety activities. This will extend GHTF’s 

traditional role of developing and leveraging guidance documents to engagement with 

countries that are, or are likely to become, influential in medical device manufacturing 

and regulation.

Based on a review of existing governance models there are several key principles that 

must be established for a successful global coalition. First, the coalition needs an 

overarching organizing body to facilitate regulation and promote key functions. Second, 

sovereignty should be maintained and respected, and nations should maintain control of 

their own borders, markets, and standards. Third, the coalition should rely on common 
29

science-based standards as a baseline for judging the other members’ effectiveness at 

product quality and safety assurance. Fourth, the coalition should focus on comparability 

and not equivalence, as public health impact and outcomes are more important than 

identical standards. Finally, it will be essential to establish clear membership standards 

supported by an effective auditing process to ensure member compliance.

The building of global coalitions is consistent with the direction of FSMA. The new law 

explicitly recognizes that all food safety agencies, domestic and foreign, need to work 

together in an integrated way to achieve our public health goals. The law directs FDA to 

develop a comprehensive plan to expand the capacity of foreign governments and their 

industries, including training of foreign governments and food producers on U.S. food 

safety requirements. FDA is explicitly authorized to rely on inspections of other Federal, 

State, and local agencies to meet its increased inspection mandate for domestic facilities. 

FSMA also allows FDA to enter into interagency agreements to leverage resources with 

respect to the inspection of seafood facilities, both domestic and foreign, as well as 

seafood imports.

B. FDA will work to build a global data-information system and network 

and proactively share data with peers 

It will be essential to FDA’s quality and safety efforts that the agency be able to 

aggregate and utilize multiple sources of information as inputs to intelligence and 

regulatory analysis to identify potential threats. This is a key enabler of more 

sophisticated risk assessments and models than are currently possible. In order to share 

information efficiently within the agency as well as with domestic and foreign 

counterparts, FDA will develop or locate systems capabilities and processes to manage 

the secure, smooth exchange of information. As a first step, the agency will work with

coalition partners to identify critical data elements needed to inform risk models and 

standardize the reporting of this information to allow for the seamless and automated 

flow of data. Internally, it will work to make necessary changes and build new 

capabilities that enable the agency to transmit information to and receive information 

from a wide variety of sources. Through the development of robust global coalitions, 

FDA will work with its partners to craft a process for regular, systematic information 

exchange that will provide an ongoing input into FDA’s risk modeling, various analyses, 

and, ultimately, the deployment of agency resources to achieve greater public health 

impact.

The most effective global coalitions have built sophisticated systems to share data across 

markets. Interpol, the International Criminal Police Organization, has developed 

sophisticated data systems that allow broad, timely intelligence sharing to facilitate law 

enforcement across participating agencies worldwide. Interpol has also successfully 

developed systems that facilitate information exchange between members of varying 
30

technological expertise. The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has established 

tightly managed data standards to ensure quality and homogeneity through non-real time 

data assessments. Global product safety coalitions of the future must possess similar 

capabilities. While FDA may be hindered by legal restrictions on its ability to share data 

in the absence of a legislative change, a global data-information system will be a critical 

enabler to building effective and empowered global coalitions.

C. FDA will expand its capabilities in intelligence gathering and use, with 

an increased focus on risk analytics and thoroughly modernized IT 

capabilities

With an ever-growing roster of manufacturers and producers to monitor, FDA plans to 

build deeper capabilities in intelligence gathering and risk analytics. Scaling the current 

model for regulatory operations is simply not viable from a resource utilization 

standpoint. Intelligence capabilities will give FDA a more sophisticated understanding of 

the potential threats facing U.S. consumers with the ultimate goal of detecting and 

addressing risks before they materialize into public health harms. FDA must first identify 

the signals and warnings of potential risks that it will monitor and then focus the 

organization on gathering the intelligence that will monitor the signals. 

In addition, analytics capabilities will allow FDA to interpret and act on the intelligence 

gathered. To enhance its analytics capabilities, the agency will work to provide advanced 

training to current analytics experts as well as bring in new employees with significant 

analytical talent and experience to complement and fill needs not met by current staff. To 

build the necessary support infrastructure, FDA will focus on creating or identifying IT 

tools that allow experts to quickly access and analyze data across the various information 

resources available. At the heart of FDA’s effort to be a smarter, more proactive safety 

agency lies the analytical horsepower to make timely, effective decisions. 

D. FDA will effectively allocate agency resources based on risk, leveraging 

the combined efforts of government, industry, and public- and privatesector third parties

One of the most fundamental changes that FDA will undertake is a more effective 

deployment of its own global safety resources. The agency will continue executing the 

broad range of surveillance, intervention, and enforcement activities that are currently its 

primary tools for preventing product-related harms. As FDA evolves and continues to 

become a more agile, forward-looking, intelligence-driven organization, these activities 

will be more directly aligned against a robust set of risk-based priorities, with agency 

staff spending a more significant share of their energies on the products and producers 

around the globe that represent the greatest potential harm to public health. At the same 

time, FDA will maintain broad-based oversight of the entire range of products within its 

purview by developing compliance and inspection programs that contemplate enlisting 
31

public and private third parties to conduct audits and other oversight activities on behalf 

of FDA.

FDA intends to establish a review and audit infrastructure to verify the integrity of the 

information that it receives from public and private third parties and to ensure that the 

agency can rapidly take follow-up enforcement measures or actions where needed. In 

addition, industry’s own safety monitoring efforts will also be a critical support for more 

comprehensive oversight. By balancing its own resources with the additional capacity 

afforded by leveraging these public and private third parties, FDA will achieve greater 

coverage of the public health risks that exist and create the flexibility to quickly shift its 

attention to the most pressing dangers as they arise.

Increased reliance on audits conducted by public and private third parties aligns with 

FDA efforts to enhance oversight of medical devices. Soon after passage in 2002 of the 

Medical Device User Fee Modernization Act, FDA launched a program to permit 

agency-accredited third parties to inspect device manufacturers. A 2006 FDA-Health 

Canada pilot program authorized accredited third parties to conduct facility inspections 

that meet FDA and Health Canada regulatory requirements. And more recently, FDA 

published a draft guidance allowing manufacturers to submit third-party reports of 

inspections conducted under International Organization for Standardization 13485:2003. 

FDA is currently building on these efforts to create a single audit program for medical 

devices.

The increased use of public and private third parties is also consistent with the spirit of 

the recently passed FSMA, which directs FDA to establish a program through which 

qualified third parties can certify that compliance with U.S. food safety standards. This 

certification may be used to facilitate the entry of imports. (The audits performed under 

this section will however not be considered inspections under section 704 of FDA’s Act.) 
32

V. IMPLEMENTING THE PATHWAY TO GLOBAL PRODUCT 

SAFETY AND QUALITY

Implementing the pathway will require a concerted effort involving all parts of FDA and 

multiple external stakeholders (global regulators, industry, states, White House, etc). For 

implementation of the strategy to be successful, FDA will undergo a paradigm shift to 

become a global agency. Implementing an effort of this nature will be complex and take 

multiple years; however, it is important to establish early momentum and support for the 

effort, to ensure that it launches with a critical mass of resources and attention from key 

stakeholders. To achieve this, FDA will focus on two areas in the coming year. 

A. Establishing the framework and approach for broader data sharing and 

use of third parties

It will be essential for FDA’s broader product safety efforts that the agency be able to 

aggregate multiple sources of information as inputs to intelligence analysis to proactively 

identify threats. In order to share information efficiently with both domestic and foreign 

counterparts, the agency needs to develop or identify systems, capabilities, and processes 

to manage this exchange. Building the appropriate IT infrastructure will be critical.

Furthermore, scaling the current model for regulatory operations is simply not viable 

from a resource standpoint. FDA instead must shift to a model which more aggressively 

utilizes reliable public and private third parties to conduct inspections and other oversight 

activities.

While making this shift will be a multi-year effort for FDA, it will be essential to quickly 

establish the framework and approach for capturing this opportunity. 

B. Establishing the Global Coalitions of Regulators

Over the next 12 months FDA aims to partner with foreign counterparts to create global 

coalitions of regulators. Effective and well-functioning coalitions are critical to the 

successful implementation of the Pathway to Global Product Safety and Quality. Key 

activities will include:

• Determining the governance structure for the coalitions (roles, mandates, 

operating model, funding mechanism, etc.)

• Identifying initial partners, with a goal of expanding over time

• Conducting discussions with key emerging economies that may not be part of the 

initial group 

• Identifying early high priority topics for agreement 
33

CONCLUSION

FDA is committed to addressing its challenges and those of the future by implementing a 

strategy to enhance global product safety and quality, and in doing so more effectively 

fulfill its mission. 

The essence of this strategy marries creative international coalitions with cutting-edge 

investigative tools to continue to provide the consistently high level of safety and quality 

assurance the public expects—and deserves. FDA will continue to partner with other 

federal agencies, the states, and nations around the world. It will also look to Congress to 

modernize its antiquated authorities so that FDA’s legal tools keep pace with 

globalization. 

To meet these ambitious goals and achieve a true and lasting paradigm shift, FDA will 

engage all stakeholders in a process that will unfold over several years. Success will 

require boldness, creativity, and patience. It will not be easy, but it is imperative. Global 

supply chains, international trade, foreign sourcing, and terrorism remind us daily that the 

rest of the world will not stop and wait for regulators to catch up. It is incumbent upon 

FDA to engage its international counterparts, industry, and stakeholders worldwide to 

blaze the Pathway to Global Product Safety and Quality. 

 
34

 

1 GAO – 10-961, September 2010, FDA has conducted more foreign inspections and begun to improve its 

information but more progress is needed

2 What Happens Next? Five crucibles that will shape the coming decade, McKinsey & Company, 2010. 

This is the source for multiple facts throughout the report.

3 Project team analysis

4 ISAAA; Phillips McDougall; Context Network

5 GMA 2007 Private Label report

6 Bureau of Economic Analysis; Haver Analytics; project team analysis

7 OECD Health Data 2009

8 The 2009 Annual Report of the Board of Trustees of the Federal Hospital Insurance and Federal 

Supplementary Medical Insurance Trust Funds

9 U.S. Census Bureau; project team analysis

10 Christine Borger, Sheila Smith, Christopher Truffer, Sean Keehan, Andrea Sisko, John Poisal and M. 

Kent Clemens, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, Office of the Actuary, Health Spending

Projections Through 2015: Changes On The Horizon, Health Affairs, 25, no.2 (2006):w61-w73, (published 

online February 22, 2006; 10.1377/hlthaff.25.w61) 

11 Section 501(b) of the Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003

12 Global Supply Chain Trends 2008 – 2010: Driving Global Supply Chain Flexibility through Innovation, 

PRTM Management Consultants

13 Project team analysis

14 FDA import data

15 IHS Global Insight

16 In 2007, 9.5 million out of a total 16 million FDA import lines were associated with food-shipments. 

The U.S. Food Import System: Issues, Processes and Proposals, Mary L. Nucci et. Al., March 2008

17 FDA import data

18 FDA import data

19 FDA Could Strengthen Oversight of Imported Food by Improving Enforcement and Seeking Additional 

Authorities, GAO, May 2010

20 FDA Could Strengthen Oversight of Imported Food by Improving Enforcement and Seeking Additional 

Authorities, GAO, May 2010

21 FDA import data

22 IHS Global Insight
35

 

23 World Pharmaceutical Markets, Market Analysis, Q2: 2010, Espicom Business Intelligence

24 Improvements Needed in the Foreign Drug Inspection Program, GAO, March 1998

25 Market Analysis, Espicom Business Intelligence, Quarter 2, 2010

26 USA Medical Device Market Intelligence Report, Quarter III, 2010, Espicom Business Intelligence

27 USA Medical Device Market Intelligence Report, Quarter III, 2010, Espicom Business Intelligence

28 FDA import data; IHS global insights

29 Statement of Randall Lutter, Committee on Energy and Commerce, Subcommittee on Health, Sept. 26, 

2007

30 Global Pharmaceutical Contract Manufacturing Markets, 2005, Frost & Sullivan

31 A Congressional Subcommittee observed that seafood importers purposely directed shipments to ports 

that they believed were staffed by inexperienced reviewers. The U.S. Food Import System: Issues, 

Processes and Proposals, Mary L. Nucci et. Al., March 2008

32 World Pharmaceutical Markets, Market Analysis, Q2: 2010, Espicom Business Intelligence

33 Food Safety and Imports: An Analysis of Food-Related FDA Import Refusal Reports (Economic 

Research Service)

34 Food Safety and Imports: An Analysis of Food-Related FDA Import Refusal Reports (Economic 

Research Service) 

35 Between 2007 and 2008 alone, imports of orthopedic and implantable products rose by 25%. Medical 

Outlook, QIII: 2010, Espicom Business Intelligence. 

36 McKinsey Global Insights

37 Medical Devices: Challenges for FDA in Conducting Manufacturing Inspections, GAO, Jan. 29, 2008

38 IHS Global Insight

39 USA Medical Device Market Intelligence Report, Quarter III, 2010, Espicom Business Intelligence

40 Medical Devices: Challenges for FDA in Conducting Manufacturing Inspections, GAO, Jan. 29, 2008

41 The Division of Science Resources Statistics (SRS) of the National Science Foundation; U.S. Institute of 

Applied Manpower Research, India

42 Project team analysis

43 The Division of Science Resources Statistics (SRS) of the National Science Foundation; U.S. Institute of 

Applied Manpower Research, India; Eurostat; McKinsey analysis

44 WIPO; Fortune; OECD Science, Technology and Industry Outlook 2008
36

 

45 Protecting American consumers every step of the way: A strategic framework for continual improvement 

in import safety. Interagency Working Group on Import Safety,Safet, 2007, available at 

http://archive.hhs.gov/importsafety/report/report.pdf (accessed on Feb. 13, 2011)

46 Protecting American consumers every step of the way: A strategic framework for continual improvement 

in import safety. Interagency Working Group on Import Safet, 2007, available at 

http://archive.hhs.gov/importsafety/report/report.pdf (accessed on Feb. 13, 2011)

47 Safer Fresh Foods in Asia, Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council Asia

48 Safer Fresh Foods in Asia, Coca-Cola Retailing Research Council Asia

49 WHO estimate; IMS: global drug market size, ex-manufacturer prices

50 Pure Food and Drug Act, 1906