Advancing Retail Program Standards Conformance Through Sustainable Technology, Continuing Education and Community Connection in Delaware

The State of Delaware Office of Food Protection (OFP) is a public service office that was created to identifyfoodborne illness risk factors and develop strategies to reduce their occurrence, all while providing citizens ahealthy, regulated and safe means to enjoy food establishments in the State of Delaware. The US Food andDrug Administration (FDA) operates in like cadence and has created the Voluntary National Retail FoodRegulatory Program Standards (Retail Program Standards) as a model of standards by which retail foodregulatory programs may uniformly develop and administer a program through continuous processimprovements. Enrollment in and conformance with these Retail Program Standards will foster a program thatworks to eliminate the occurrence of illness and death from foods produced at retail food establishments. Anassessment of OFP's program against the Retail Program Standards identified conformance with only onestandard, Standard 1(Regulatory Foundation). To achieve greater conformance with these Standards ourproject proposes to accomplish the following goals: 1) attain an Information Technology (IT) solution to addressprogrammatic needs (Standard 8 - Support and Resources), 2) provide continuing education to regulatory staff(Standard 2 - Trained Regulatory Staff) and 3) increase outreach to retail food community and industry(Standard 7 - Industry and Community Relations). With an IT solution (database)- efficient, accurate andtimely input and tracking of retail food establishment permitting information, violations (risk factors) andcompliance history ultimately lends way to the ability to complete a trend analysis and may be used to identifyrecurring foodborne illness risk factors. Increasing the education threshold of our regulatory staff and sharingfood safety information through community and industry collaborations and outreach will minimize theoccurrence of such risk factors. By meeting these goals OFP will be well on the way to achieving conformancewith all other Retail Program Standards. The database alone sets the groundwork for advancement to meetStandards 3 (Inspection program based on HACCP Principles), 4 (Uniform Inspection Program), 5 (FoodborneIllness and Food Defense Preparedness and Response) and 6 (Compliance and Enforcement). Standard 9 isthe Program Assessment which will occur once conformance with Standards 1 through 8 is achieved. Thisopportunity will bring the state of Delaware in to conformance with all 9 Retail Program Standards within five(5) years, providing patrons of Delaware retail food establishments peace of mind that the places in which theydine are regulated by a program that holds itself to the highest Standards.