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The elemental goal of FARAD is the production of safe foods of animal origin through the prevention and mitigation of violative chemical (drug, pesticide, natural toxins, and environmental contaminant) residues in food animal products. It accomplishes this through its objectives which are to identify, extract, assemble, evaluate and distribute reviewed information about residue avoidance and mitigation to people involved in residue avoidance programs throughout the United States. <p>The types of information available through FARAD include basic veterinary drug registration information, withdrawal times, indications for use, as well as complex technical information about the pharmacokinetics and toxicokinetics of drugs and chemicals in food animals. With implementation of cooperating international residue programs through Global FARAD (gFARAD), those data are also available for evaluation and dissemination.<p> It must be stressed that the determination of withdrawal times after accidental exposure to environmental contaminants or after extra-label drug use is far from a simple exercise. Withdrawal times are a function of the disposition of low level of drugs or chemicals in tissues, a field of study totally ignored in the extensive biomedical database supporting drug use in human medicine.<p> Therefore, requests for withdrawal times for environmental contaminants or extralabel drug use cannot be provided by simply looking up data in a table. Each request is a unique situation that requires searching databases, consulting the literature and then analysis and synthesis by a professional trained in pharmacokinetics, toxicology and veterinary medicine. Collecting and assembling the relevant low-level tissue disposition data and training individuals in the requisite disciplines is a time consuming task that requires continuity in funding for this program.
Non-Technical Summary: This proposal is to fund the continued implementation of the Food Animal Residue Avoidance and Depletion (FARAD) program at the University of Florida. FARAD, which has existed since 1982 and been funded by USDA/CSREES, is a collaborative project among the colleges of veterinary medicine at North Carolina State University (NCSU), the University of California at Davis (UCD) and the University of Florida (UFL). The overarching goal of FARAD is to protect the integrity of and maintain production of safe foods of animal origin through the prevention and mitigation of violative residues of chemical agents (drugs, pesticides, environmental contaminants, etc.) in food animal products. While the principal users of FARAD are veterinarians, regulatory agencies, and extension specialists, the ultimate client is the general public who can consume foods of animal origin that are free of harmful drug or chemical residues. FARAD originated with the Residue Avoidance Program (RAP) in 1982 as a repository of residue avoidance information and educational materials. FARAD has now evolved into an expert-mediated residue avoidance decision support system, which provides timely advice and information on a wide range of drug and chemical entities. This ability has proved vital to the execution of the Animal Medicinal Drug Use Clarification Act of 1994 (AMDUCA) regulations that legalized the extra-label use of drugs by veterinarians. AMDUCA regulations require that extra-label use of drugs in food animals be based on sound principles of residue avoidance. The National Research Council acknowledged FARAD as the primary source of this information. <P> Approach: The objective of the three collaborating universities is to continue the development and delivery of FARAD, and to utilize current technologies to make changes in FARAD which will improve its usefulness and utility as a decision support system. The five primary tasks include: 1. Extraction and validation of data for incorporation into the system and support for FARAD's approved drug databases for publication in electronic format (VetGRAM) for INTERNET delivery. This includes extraction of relevant data from foreign drug compendia and gFARAD partners. 2. Operation of the Regional Access Centers (RAC's) at NCSU and UCD for provision of residue avoidance information, with access through the toll-free hotline and e-mail. 3. Data entry, pharmacokinetic analysis, maintenance, and distribution of the FARAD files. 4. Preparation of FARAD Digests for publication in the Journal of the AVMA and other publications for distribution. 5. Develop and validate methods to allow extrapolative techniques to be used in providing information and advice in situations where no direct data currently exists, the norm for mitigating environmental contaminant exposures.