The National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA in Portuguese) published two reports on Monday, May 4, presenting the results of the food sector. The first document provides an overview of the main achievements in 2025, while the second presents a detailed assessment of the implementation of food-related topics in the Regulatory Agenda (RA) 2024-2025.

The Food Management Activity Report presents a summary of the main results achieved by the area in 2025, with special emphasis on risk and safety assessment processes, food and packaging regulation, the definition of regulatory standards, and actions related to customer service, transparency, and communication.

In the introduction of the document, the General Directorate of Food (GGALI in Portuguese) highlights the most relevant positive impacts of the work developed throughout the year, among which the following stand out:

The advances in the process of evaluating the safety and efficacy of substances and materials have resulted in a shorter average processing time for submitted applications.
Efforts to reorganize the regulatory process for food and packaging, including the structuring of electronic notification, while maintaining the average processing times for registration and post-registration applications; and
The overall results achieved in the implementation of the 2024-2025 Regulatory Agenda.

One of the highlights of the 2nd Public Meeting of the Collegiate Council (DICOL in Portuguese) of 2025 was the proposal of a Normative Instruction (NI) to establish the conditions of the optimized procedure for the analysis of evaluation requests in the area of ​​Food by admitting supporting documentation issued by an Equivalent Foreign Regulatory Authority, an agenda item approved unanimously, due to its positive impact.

Optimized analysis
According to the technical presentation presented by the head of the Directorate General for Food (GGALI in Portuguese), Patrícia Castilho, the proposal covers issues related to risk assessment, the possibility of optimizing the analysis process and the criteria and procedures for the admission of new documents issued by the Foreign Regulatory Authority Equivalent (AREE in Portuguese). This means that all issues involved in risk assessment, including packaging materials and technologies, food additives, processing aids, new foods and ingredients and veterinary medicines, can benefit from an optimized analysis.

Improved management
Director Daniel Pereira, rapporteur of the proposal, stressed that the measure will allow for better management of Anvisa’s human and financial resources, expanding its capacity to respond to the market and to society as a whole.
In this regard, for an increasingly efficient and proportional regulatory action by the Agency, capable of reconciling health security with the creation of an environment favourable to the development of the country, the director stressed the importance of integration with global dynamics and the adoption of innovative forms of collaboration as fundamental elements for the continuous improvement of regulatory practices.