Expansion of Fern Activities At The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station (caes)

EXPANSION OF FERN ACTIVITIES AT THE CONNECTICUT AGRICULTURAL EXPERIMENTSTATION (CAES)Contamination of the food supply from chemical terrorism or adulteration is an issue of greatconcern and the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) was established in direct responseto this threat. The FERN goals are Prevention, Preparedness, Response, and Recovery with respectto any incident involving a threat to the safety and integrity of the national food supply. The FDAFERN seeks to directly enhance the capacity and capability of State, Local, and Tribalgovernment's food testing laboratories to establish an Integrated Food Safety System. Specifically,there needs to be trained personnel with the expertise, supplies and instrumentation necessary tohandle the redundancy and laboratory surge capacity that will be required to respond to incidencesof food supply contamination. The CAES Department of Analytical Chemistry has a 120 yearhistory of food safety research, including ten years as a cCAP laboratory. Our performance incCAP has directly addressed FERN goals and helped strengthen the network in several ways. Wehave built on and developed expertise in each FERN Chemistry Project Area, excelled at methodevaluation, provided accurate and quick response to proficiency testing and surveillance samples,provided analytical insight that has enhanced existing FERN methods, communicated well withother state and federal laboratories, presented frequently at national and technical meetings onprogram work, extended the number of threat agents and pesticides that can be analyzed using theexisting methodology and developed methods to determine additional threat agents and pesticides.The current proposal is divided into four distinct Project Areas, all of which are inherently flexibledepending on Forensic Chemistry Center (FCC) and FERN National Program Office (NPO) input: (1) The use of GC-MS analysis for the screening and identification of poisons, toxicsubstances, and unknown compounds in foods. In this Project Area, we will expand our workwith this methodology by validating FERN-CHE.0006.00 on the newly deployed FERN 5977Aplatform, investigate the new deconvolution reporting software (DRS) on this instrument, assistFDA in surveillance assignments, examine new toxins and poisons, investigate new matrices suchas powdered alcohol and seafood, and continue teaching the FDA GC-MS LB508 course. (2) The use of LC-MS analysis for the screening and identification of poisons, toxicsubstances, and unknown compounds in foods. Here, we propose to validate TO22 on the newlydeployed Q-Exactive High Resolution (HR) LC-MS, to explore the use of HR LC-MS (Q-Exactive, Exactive) for the analysis of pesticides/mycotoxins/chemotherapeutics in food, toexamine new toxins and poisons, to investigate new chromatographic columns, to assist FDA insurveillance assignments, and to use HR LC-MS to investigate biomarkers for ricin and abrin. (3) The use of ICP-MS for the screening and identification of heavy metals and toxicelements in foods. We propose to complete the method validation of EAM 4.7, to investigateelemental contamination of new matrices, to assist FDA in surveillance assignments, to expandthe use of LC-ICP-MS for arsenic speciation in foods, and to validate single particle ICP-MS as amethod for nanoparticle detection in food. (4) The use of ELISA and other antibody-based analyses for the screening andidentification of unknown toxins in foods. We propose to extend ELISA to new contaminantsand matrices of concern, to evaluate new kits and platforms for toxins, to assist FDA in surveillanceassignments and to investigate ricin and abrin stability in foods under different conditions. The explicit goal of this opportunity is to enable the analysis of food for the FDA in support ofa Nationally Integrated Food Safety System. The CAES Department of Analytical Chemistry hasconsistently demonstrated the expertise, capability, and adaptability to fully meet and exceed theseprogram needs and this funding opportunity will expand and optimize this collaboration.