FDA Awards $17.5 Million in Grants to Further Food and Feed Safety

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has awarded 83 grants in FY2009 totaling $17.5 million to state and local regulatory agencies to boost food and feed safety initiatives among federal, state, and local partners.

The grants, which fund major cooperative agreements in response, intervention, innovation and prevention, include:

Response. The Food Protection Rapid Response Team (RRT) and Program Infrastructure Improvement Prototype Project cooperative agreements will develop, implement, exercise, and integrate an all-hazards food and foodborne illness response capability to more rapidly react to potential threats to our food supply. The RRT, designed to operate in conjunction with other food and feed agencies within state programs, other state RRTs, FDA district offices, and state emergency operations centers, responds to food hazard incidents in the farm-to-table continuum of food production and delivery by using an incident command structure response protocol, which is a formalized crisis management system. Each recipient received up to $500,000 to exercise its response team, conduct a program assessment, purchase additional equipment and supplies, fund personnel, and train and share information and data as appropriate.

States funded in FY2009 include Virginia, Texas, and Washington. Those states join six other states already receiving funds under the program.

Intervention. The grants for Food Safety and Security Monitoring provide funding to Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) laboratories. FERN laboratories provide additional capacity for analyzing food samples in food-borne disease outbreaks or other large-scale food emergency events. These samples could be foods and/or environmental samples related to foods, and will be collected by federal, state, or local agencies.  Numbers of samples and scheduling of samples will be done by the FERN National Program Office in coordination with state/local laboratory authorities. Federal or state surveillance assignments will also be a source of samples for lab analysis. Selected laboratories received up to $350,000 in grant funds. The grants are for microbiological, chemical, or radiological analysis capacity.

The FY2009 microbiology program grants of  up to $250,000 were made to: Colorado, Florida, Hawaii, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Texas, Virginia and Washington. Arkansas, Nebraska, and Wisconsin received chemistry program grants in FY2009 joining 10 other states with existing grants. Five states with existing radiological program grants received continued funding.

Innovation. The Innovative Food Defense Projects grants are awarded to generate products that complement, develop, or improve State and local food defense programs. These products could then be applied to food defense programs nationwide. One example is the food defense program in food establishments called the Assure, Look, Employees, Reports, and Threat (ALERT); and, Employees Follow, Inspect, Recognize, Secure, and Tell (FIRST). Each recipient received up to $62,500.

The funded counties were Riverside County (California) Department of Environmental Health and Westchester County (New York) Department of Health. States receiving funds included Wisconsin and North Carolina.

Prevention. The Food Protection Task Force Conference program supports meetings that foster communication, cooperation, and collaboration among state, local, and tribal food protection, public health, agriculture, and regulatory agencies. The meetings are designed to provide a forum for all the stakeholders of the food protection system; assist in adopting or implementing the Food Code and other food protection regulations; promote the integration of an efficient statewide food protection/defense system that maximizes the protection of the public health through prevention, intervention and response; and detect and contain of foodborne illness early.

Pennsylvania and New Hampshire were selected to receive awards up to $5,000 in FY2009. These two states join 22 other states and the District of Columbia with existing grants.

More information is available at FDA