The 2025 American Chemical Society’s Agrochemicals (AGRO) Division Fall meeting hosted the symposium “Pesticide Regulation, Global Trade: U.S. Leadership in Food Security”. Focusing on the data session, this Viewpoint highlights that a safe, plentiful food supply requires robust data systems and innovative regulatory modernization. The United States builds a secure, efficient, and interconnected global food system through scientific excellence and data-driven pesticide science.
The blueprint covers these main areas
- U.S. Leadership in Global Food Safety
- Robust Data and Monitoring Programs
- Innovative Exposure Assessment: Data Integration and Modeling
- Challenges of Global Data Interpretation and Divergence
- Pesticide Residue Modeling Advances
- Global Data Harmonization and Trade
- Path Forward: Data-Driven Food Security
The future of food security hinges on smart, science-backed decisions driven by robust data systems. This AGRO Division Fall 2025 symposium highlighted that the United States is actively building this future, ensuring food is safe, plentiful, and accessible globally through data management. This involves the following:
- Smarter science for safer food: Improving food safety understanding via advanced data and technology for precise risk assessment, protecting vulnerable populations.
- Modernizing regulations: Using digital tools and innovative data to streamline food safety rules, accelerating safe product market entry and reducing costs.
- International collaboration: Collaborating globally to establish consistent scientific data standards, reducing trade disputes, and enabling free movement of safe food, supported by interoperable data systems. By focusing on these areas, the United States sets a global example, creating a resilient, efficient, and fair food system to reliably and safely feed the world for generations.
In conclusion, the 2025 ACS AGRO symposium affirmed U.S. leadership in global food security, underpinned by sophisticated data systems and innovative regulatory modernization and updating. The symposium highlighted the critical role of robust data management, digital transformation, and international collaboration, emphasizing data access, strategic integration, and harmonized standards to dismantle trade barriers. This systematic approach is crucial for modernizing global agricultural regulations and ensuring food security. The U.S. approach, balancing innovation with safety and efficiency, serves as a blueprint for a global food safety system, driven by scientific excellence and data-driven, risk-based regulation.
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With thanks to the following speakers and sessions.
| data session presentations | speaker/organization |
|---|---|
| Monitoring food pesticide residues in support of pesticide regulation and global trade | Sitra Abubeker, Chemist/Monitoring Program Division, USDA AMS |
| Overview of the FDA pesticide residue monitoring program and recent findings | Sara McGrath, Research Chemist/U.S. FDA |
| U.S. FDA’s total diet study and total diet exposures using FDA’s food disaggregation database | Dana Hoffman-Pennesi, Chemist/U.S. FDA |
| Semiautomated approach to updating the food commodity intake database (FCID) | Daniel Hoer, Physical Scientist/U.S. EPA Office of Pesticide Programs |
| Comparative analysis of dietary risk assessment models across global regulatory frameworks | Mengyuan Wang, Human Safety Manager/Bayer Crop Science |
| Hazard versus risk: Comparative analysis of global food safety assessment approaches | Maresha Charles, Risk Assessment & Toxicology/The Coca-Cola Company |
| Approach to cumulative risk in EPA’s pesticide human health risk | Janet Camp,a Senior Chemist/U.S. EPA Office of Pesticide Programs |
| Predictive residue models: Optimizing pesticide use for compliance with international food standards | Jeremy Barnekow,a Global Residue & Nutrition Leader/Corteva |
| Capturing and degrading sulfuryl fluoride fumigant using an electrochemical reagent generation system | William Mitch,b Professor/Stanford University |
