Conformance With Manufactured Food Regulatory Program Standards

SC DHEC - MFRPS Project Abstract South Carolina Department of Health & Environmental Control (SC DHEC) plans toutilize this cooperative agreement to provide staff and resources necessary for SCDHEC to achieve conformance with the Manufactured Foods Regulatory ProgramStandards by the end of Year 3. Specifically, by hiring one full time EnvironmentalHealth Manager tasked with records management, communicating and educatingindustry stakeholders, assisting with audit and enforcement support. Additionally a 50%Applications Analyst will be hired to create automated systems to track and improveefficiency of record keeping associated with inspections, complaints and enforcement toenhance standards sustainability. Also, a 25% foodborne epidemiologist will besupported in order to improve food complaint data, traceback/traceforward efforts andfoodborne disease investigation.This agreement will provide travel funding for program staff to attend and participate innational committees and the annual meeting. During Years 4 & 5 SC DHEC plans toconduct an educational assessment and outreach to manufacturers as well as 2tabletop exercises for manufacturers to increase involvement and understanding of corepublic health and food safety goals. Achieving this purpose will help SC DHEC ensurethat national standardized food safety objectives are met and that SC DHEC has staffand resources to both enforce and advance these objectives.In the past, SC DHEC has not had the dedicated personnel to address the remaininggaps to full conformance. Currently, these responsibilities fall on inspection staff. Thiscooperative agreement provides personnel that can be specifically dedicated to thesegoals and greatly improve efforts to achieve conformance. This dedicated staff will betasked with developing programs and systems to automate data needs related toconformance. Once SC DHEC achieves conformance with personnel, systems andequipment needs outlined in this proposal, maintaining it will be significantly lessburdensome. At the conclusion of the project period existing inspection staff will be ableto utilize the systems created to audit, verify and maintain conformance to programstandards.