Enhancing Human and Animal Food Testing in North Carolina in Support of an Integrated Food Safety System

Research & Related Other Project InformationProject Summary/AbstractComponent: OverallThe Food & Drug Protection Division (FDPD) within the North Carolina Department of Agriculture &Consumer Services (NCDA&CS) will support a nationally integrated and prevention-focused food andfeed safety system by increasing sample testing activities, making data available to state and federalpartners, and building and deploying new analytical capabilities. The FDPD Laboratory has partneredwith FDPD?s regulatory program offices (the FDPD Food Program and FDPD Feed Program) to identifycommodity-hazard pairs of national and state significance and developed surveillance programs tobetter characterize the risks these commodity-hazard pairs pose to public health and consumerconfidence. Because the FDPD Food and Feed Programs have fully implemented the relevant regulatoryprogram standards (Manufactured Food Regulatory Program Standards and Animal Feed RegulatoryProgram Standards) and all proposed laboratory analyses are included in FDPD Laboratory?s scope of ISO17025 accreditation, FDPD is confident that all data submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration(FDA) will be accurate, precise, and actionable. In addition to expanding sample testing, FDPD will workwith FDA to develop testing capabilities in order to increase national testing capacity. FDPD proposesdevelopment of whole genome sequencing capabilities in year 1 and participation in methoddevelopment and validation activities in later years.