The FDA and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) are partnering to promote supply chain traceability and improve the government’s visibility into imports by focusing on Global Business Identifiers (GBI), unique numbers that capture information about legal business entities and their functions within the supply chain.

“Traceability is key to the FDA’s mission,” said FDA Assistant Commissioner for Import Operations Dan Solis. “It enables us to leverage verifiable information at the supply chain level to identify risk and make admissibility decisions — ensuring the food, medicine and other FDA-regulated goods entering the United States are safe and get to those who need them as quickly as possible.”

A CBP official said the two agencies will work jointly to explore how identifiers could be leveraged to enable coordination and harmonized decisionmaking across the U.S. government, thus enhancing predictability, lowering costs and creating an opportunity for additional trade compliance benefits.

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