The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) hasannounced the availability of cooperative agreements to be awarded under LimitedCompetition to facilitate long-term improvements to facilitate long-term improvements tothe national food safety system by building the capacity of state, local, tribal, andterritorial food safety agencies to undertake examinations, inspections, andinvestigations and related food safety activities under section 702 of the FD&C Act.As a state food and feed regulatory entity, the Minnesota Department of Agriculture(MDA) is eligible to apply for this Cooperative Agreement. MDA seeks to improvecapability and capacity to respond to foodborne illness outbreaks by developinginnovative strategies to manage response to investigations that require product tracingor a traceback investigation to determine the source of an outbreak. This will beaccomplished by establishing business requirements for a web-based tracebility systembased on the needs of local, state, and federal food safety entities; conducting abaseline assessment and establishing metrics for assessing a traceback and outbreakresponse; measuring and comparing the responses pre- and post-systemimplementation; developing a web-based traceback system; developing trainingmaterials for investigation management using the system; completing a data exchangebetween the system and FDA; hosting a multi-jurisdictional tabletop exercise using thesystem; and disseminating a system implementation guide, associated trainingmaterials, and best practice guidance to other food safety entities across the nation.MDA is broadly engaged in state and national efforts to improve the food safety system.It will employ these partnerships with federal, state, and local food safety entities andacademic institutions; professional associations (AFDO, IAFP, NEHA, among others);state initiatives like the Minnesota Food Safety and Defense Task Force; and nationalinitiatives, including the FDA Rapid Response Teams and Partnership for FoodProtection, to make these capability and capacity improvements and to share advancesin these areas nation-wide.
The Minnesota Department of Agriculture seeks to improve capability and capacity to respond to food products that pose a serious public health threats by developing innovative strategies to manage food product tracebacks and coordinate these types of response with other food safety entities. This will be accomplished by creating a web- based platform where local and state public health entities can voluntarily share product tracing information and data to more rapidly detect the source of a foodborne illness outbreak. The advances gained through this Cooperative Agreement will allow federal, state, and local entities to more quickly and effectively to identify the source of a foodborne illness outbreak and ensure those foods are removed from the marketplace.
