The Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumers Services, Division of Food Safety, haspositioned itself to continue implementation of a rapid response capability to measure andevaluate our various food safety programs to increase our prevention of the number offoodborne illnesses in the state of Florida, thereby improving the health of Floridians and ourmany visitors and exports. In March 2010, a report by the Produce Safety Project, an initiative ofthe Pew Charitable Trusts, ranked Florida fourth in the nation for number of foodborneillnesses. Data from the Centers for Disease Control and Preventions, states the number offoodborne illness cases are 82 million a year in the United States of which 4.9 million cases areattributed to Florida. The average medical cost of treating a foodborne illness in Florida isestimated at $1,984, the second highest in the nation. The economic impact of contaminatedfood sickens Floridians to nearly $10 billion a year in medical and other losses, according to anew food safety analysis. With the funds awarded from this cooperative agreement, we would continue ourimprovement of our rapid response infrastructure to evaluate our practices and methods toensure effectiveness, then develop and implement our improvement plan and have adequatetechnology and knowledgeable staff to validate our goal to reduce the number of foodborneillnesses. We would continue to rebuild our Information Technology system in order to trackand evaluate our strategies being effective, both in our food inspection and laboratory systems;this task would be assigned to qualified individuals in the field of system rebuild. The rebuildwould allow tracking capabilities of our activities and be able to handle external interfaces withour food safety partners in Florida which include our Department of Health, Department ofBusiness and Professional Regulations-Division of Hotels and Restaurants, the Food and DrugAdministration and the US Department of Agriculture as well as other agencies involved inprotecting the food supply in Florida. We would dedicate staff to oversee this endeavor withverifiable, documented results. We currently have adopted the FDA's Retail National ProgramStandards and Manufactured Food Regulatory Program Standards and with this award we cancontinue to work towards implementation of the standards by increasing the knowledge of ourworkforce by applicable training and by supplying staff with current electronic technology tochart our activities and to respond rapidly to an adverse event to lessen the negative health andeconomic impact on the Florida community.
By the award of this cooperative agreement, Florida, in partnership with all state, federal and local food/feed stakeholders will have the infrastructure to respond rapidly and effectively to any food/feed situation. Having pre-established, integrated working relationships will allow an optimum response. The health of the public will be improved by our joint efforts to prevent and minimize adverse events, intentional or unintentional.
