Pure Food and Drug Act
The 1906 Act paved the way for the eventual creation of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and is generally considered to be that agency's founding date, though the agency existed before the law was passed and was not named FDA until later. "While the Food and Drug act remains a foundational law of the FDA mission, it's not the law that created the FDA. [Initially,] the Bureau of Chemistry (the precursor to the FDA) regulated food safety. In 1927, the Bureau was reorganized into the Food, Drug, and Insecticide Administration and the Bureau of Chemistry and Soils. The FDIA was renamed the FDA in 1930."
Global Harmonization Task Force
The Global Harmonization Task Force (GHTF) was “a voluntary group of representatives from national medical device regulatory authorities (such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)) and the members of the medical device industry” whose goal was the standardization of medical device regulation across the world. The representatives from its five founding members (the European Union, the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia) were divided into three geographical areas: Europe, Asia-Pacific and North America, each of which actively regulates medical devices using their own unique regulatory framework. Founded in 1992, the GHTF was created in “an effort to respond to the growing need for international harmonization in the regulation of medical devices."