The U.S. Congress enacted the Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA) in 1996. In so doing, Congress revolutionized the fundamental principles of food safety and ushered in a new regulatory and legal framework for addressing food safety issues. The legal, regulatory, and scientific challenges posed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA's) and other federal agencies' implementation of the FQPA poses unprecedented opportunities and pitfalls for the legal practitioner and toxicologist.

This Article introduces the FQPA, and describes chemical substances for which testing could be conducted under the FQPA, chemical testing that could be required, persons required to conduct the tests, procedures that have been considered for selecting test chemicals, and associated legal challenges.