Ralph A. Simmons has been added to the global regulatory team at Ciba Expert Services (Basel, Switzerland). He will deal with the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and international regulatory status of food-contact substances and food products. Simmons is a lawyer with over 20 years of experience advising domestic and foreign companies on compliance with the laws and regulations administered by the FDA and similar international requirements.
Simmons has taken a lead role in representing industry on many policy issues in front of the FDA and similar authorities in other countries. He also has worked with the U.S. Simmons acted as the legal counsel to SPI’s Food Drug and Cosmetic Packaging Materials Committee (FDCPMC) for 15 years. In that time, he helped establish the food-contact notification (FCN) system; secured and protected the funding for the FCN system; convinced the FDA on the applicability of the FCN system to monomers as well as polymers and additives; and successfully argued that the FDA bioterrorism rules on registration and advance notice of import need not apply to food-contact materials.
