Food Animal Residue Avoidance databank (FARAD) Program: University of Florida Component

The Food Animal Residue Avoidance Databank (FARAD) is a collaborative university-based food safety program that is coordinated and delivered by veterinary faculty and staff at several US colleges of veterinary medicine. Throughout its 35 year existence, FARAD has continued to evolve to meet the ever changing demands of providing accurate, timely and reliable service to both the veterinary profession and stakeholders throughout the food animal industries. At present, the program is managed through a very close collaboration of personnel at the University of California-Davis (UCD), University of Florida (UF), North Carolina State University (NCSU) and Kansas State University (KSU).The core mission of FARAD is to protect the American public by promoting the production of safe, animal-derived human food products (milk, eggs, meat, honey, etc.) that are devoid of violative or potentially unsafe chemical residues, including drugs, pesticides, environmental contaminants, natural toxins and other harmful substances. In order to carry out this mission, FARAD collates, analyzes and interprets the most up-to-date information and uses that unique information repository to provide accurate and timely expert advice to assist veterinarians who are faced with situations that could cause unsafe chemical residues in human food products. In addition, FARAD maintains and provides an array of complete information resources to veterinarians, extension specialists, farmers, regulatory personnel and others who are the stewards of our nation's expansive commercial food animal industries and the growing number of small backyard livestock operations. Beyond those primary functions, FARAD has a secondary impact on the food consuming public and contributes significantly to human public health and consumer confidence by providing food animal specialists with the most up-to-date and comprehensive scientific information available today. Throughout more than three decades of delivering this program, FARAD has continued to develop increased sophistication with respect to (1) the acquisition and cataloging of pharmacokinetic data and comprehensive information resources, (2) the mechanisms for information delivery and outreach to our target audiences and (3) the complexity of quantitative tools and models for estimating safe withdrawal intervals for a wide array of chemicals in nearly all species of domestic food animals.FARAD performs a broad array of programmatic functions, but key among these are the collection, evaluation, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of information related to the depletion of drugs and other chemicals in edible products derived from food-producing animal species. The underlying activities that support these functions are carried out through multi-layered and complimentary approaches that are coordinated by the FARAD centers located at UCD, NCSU, UF and KSU. At UCD, FARAD personnel search the peer-reviewed scientific literature plus numerous other information resources for data pertaining to the depletion or elimination from food producing animals of all classes of small molecule entities. Relevant information is extracted and entered into a computer-based archival databank that is readily searchable for customized information retrieval. Because there are many factors that can influence how rapidly an animal eliminates a chemical residue; information about diet, age, gender, breed and disease status are taken into consideration.The primary goal of FARAD is to facilitate the production of safe foods derived from animals through the prevention and mitigation of risks from violative chemical residues. This goal is realized through multiple interrelated activities that entail the collection, assimilation, extraction, analysis, interpretation and dissemination of information that ultimately serves to diminish risks or mitigate potential harmful consequences associated with chemical residues in the US food supply. The types of information available through FARAD include basic veterinary drug registration information, withdrawal times, use indications, as well as complex technical information related to the pharmacokinetics, pharmacometrics and toxicokinetics of drugs and chemicals in food-producing animal species. The primary foci of activities at the UF component of FARAD were (1) continued updating, revision and expansion of Electronic Information Resources that are made available publically through the FARAD website, (2) continued updates of FARAD databases with the latest and most comprehensive regulatory information pertaining to food animal drugs, (3) expansion and validation of FARAD-generated computational pharmacokinetic estimates for incorporation into our proprietary On-Line WDI Lookup Tool and (4) continued efforts to develop smartphone Mobile Apps and further expand database accessibility by a wider array of mobile devices. The updating of regulatory information for food animal drugs was substantially greater this past year owing to the implementation of new standards and requirements for many drugs under the Veterinary Feed Directive (VFD).