Context: Heavy metals, other chemicals in food, a radically new FDA and a war on salmonella: Those appear to be the food safety priorities for 2023.Now that we can put Covid, at least as a pandemic, behind us, food safety has pretty much returned to the old normal. Do credit the pandemic for some permanent changes – for example, more automation, more space for plant-floor workers and more use of remote technologies.But if 2022 news foretells actions in 2023, those four items in the first paragraph seem to be at the top of the lists for the food safety agencies … and consequently should be atop the list of any food or beverage processor.Radical changes at FDA?For as long as most of us can remember, there has been talk about overhauling the FDA. Whether it’s to separate food oversight from that for drugs, separating health and nutrition from food safety or combining the FDA’s food programs with that of USDA, there have been many suggestions for changing the agency with the goal of improving food safety.But perhaps there never has been as much pressure to rewrite the FDA as there was in 2022. Last April, Politico revealed a months-long investigation that trashed the agency, quoting past FDA employees, even former commissioners. It criticized the agency's slow pace and pointed to the split of food responsibilities—Frank Yiannas as deputy commissioner for food policy and response and Susan Mayne as the director of the Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition—as part of the problem. The report also acknowledged the FDA has two huge areas of responsibility, and drugs have become a priority of late; plus the entire agency is not a cabinet-level department but a subset of the Dept. of Health and Human Services (HHS).In the wake of that story, Consumer Brands Assn. and 27 other organizations signed a letter asking FDA Commissioner Robert Califf to revamp the agency and to consider a single deputy commissioner overseeing all things relating to food.Midsummer saw Congressional hearings on the matter. Representatives in both houses introduced a joint bill to remove responsibility for food safety from the FDA and create a new agency under HHS that would perform the functions of the FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition, Center for Veterinary Medicine and the Office of Regulatory Affairs.Great theater, but the bill went nowhere.Commissioner Califf reacted by asking the Reagan-Udall Foundation, an independent policy organization, for a report. By year end, the group suggested many of the same ideas: split food off from FDA and name a single person in charge of food related issues.“My take is there wasn't a lot in that report that hadn't been said in the past but I think it pulls a lot together and focuses it,” says David Acheson, a former FDA associate commissioner for foods and founder and CEO of The Acheson Group, a consulting firm with a focus on food safety and risk management.The Reagan-Udall report “was requested by the commissioner, and t