The second phase of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Artificial Intelligence (AI) Imported Seafood Pilot program launched on 1 February and will run through 31 July, the agency announced this month.
Designed to improve and further the FDA’s ability “to quickly and efficiently identify imported seafood products that may pose a threat to public health,” the pilot isn’t expected to cause any significant service interruptions for seafood import processors, the agency said in a press release.
The FDA introduced the first phase of its AI Imported Seafood Pilot program in 2019, in an effort to “examine the use of Machine Learning (ML) to target violative seafood shipments,” it said. An analytical proof of concept, the first phase showed how AI could be used to assist the agency in helping it to ensure that the U.S. food supply was secure and safe.
“Machine learning is a type of AI that makes it possible to rapidly analyze data, automatically identifying connections and patterns in data that people or even the agency’s current rules-based screening system cannot see,” the FDA said.
The latest pilot aligns with the FDA’s New Era of Smarter Food Safety initiative, which involves leveraging the use of AI-based technologies to achieve its food safety goals. Data gathered from the second-phase pilot will be studied and evaluated to determine “the utility of AI in support of import targeting, which may ultimately help implement an AI model to target high-risk seafood products,” the FDA said.
“The pilot program will help the agency not only gain valuable experience with new powerful AI-enabled technology but also add to the tools used to determine compliance with regulatory requirements and speed up detection of public health threats,” the agency said. “Following completion of the pilot, FDA will communicate on our findings to promote transparency and facilitate dialogue on how new and emerging technologies can be harnessed to solve complex public health challenges.”
Expanding its use of new smarter technologies and approaches will help to inform the FDA’s “oversight of foods and help ensure a strong and resilient food system,” it said.
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