Fred Degnan, from King & Spalding, led a very insightful presentation on “Responding to Government Investigations and Warning Letters” at the recent ACI food regulatory summit. His presentation led to an interesting discussion about FDA’s close out of investigations.
It was generally agreed that the FDA, in essence, is not notifying parties when it has decided to close out an investigation or take no further action. But, as another conference attendee pointed out, reinspection fees under FSMA section 107 may provide an opportunity to determine whether FDA has completed its investigation. If a facility is required to pay the FDA reinspection fees, it seems logical that FDA will have to inform the facility when it has closed the file and is no longer assessing fees. Whether this becomes reality has yet to be seen.