Implementation of U.S. Food Safety Modernization Act - Identifying; Researching; and Implementing Alternative Methods to Expand the Reach across the Global Supply Chain

Project Abstract - IICAWith this current proposal, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) seeks tobuild on previous successes and implement high-impact interventions that directly reduce risksassociated with importing food into the United States. Specifically, we propose to develop and testalternative technologies to greatly augment the availability of high-quality training opportunities usingthe existing Produce Safety Alliance (PSA) curriculum and other training materials, such as the On-FarmReadiness Review (OFRR), in support of the FSMA Produce Safety Rule (PSR). We will leverage the wideavailability of mobile telephones throughout the Americas and develop web- and application-basedtraining materials that not only incorporate requisite training per the curriculum but also provide easylinks to relevant portions of the rule and other important documents so that the user can refresh theirknowledge as needed. While a variety of training materials are available in English, we propose tostrengthen the reach and impact of existing and new materials by making them available in Spanish aswell. This approach will take advantage of the prevalence of access to mobile technology throughout theAmericas to create a group of tools that address the needs of adult learners and non-traditionalstudents. We will use well-tested approaches and learning techniques to ensure sustainable knowledgebuilding and understanding around FSMA implementation.Working with partners in academia, we will design controlled experiments to test the efficacy ofalternative training materials against in-person training techniques to better understand what is andwhat may be possible to achieve through alternative approaches. Using an iterative process, we willdevelop alternative training materials, package them into new delivery methods, and test and validatedboth the materials and delivery approaches through pilot projects. Based on the results of these pilotprojects, we will modify and further test our approaches, with the goal of releasing final, validatedproducts to a large, hemispheric audience. These ?final? products will then be evaluated over the life ofthe project to ensure their continued efficacy and provide inputs for corrective actions.IICA is the specialized agency for agriculture within the Inter-American System. Counting on overseventy-five years of experience and a network of over thirty offices across the Americas, IICA is an idealpartner to support FDA to address technical capacity needs around FSMA implementation by foreigngovernments and their industries in Latin America. IICA is and has been a strong U.S. governmentpartner in Latin America and the Caribbean for many years and has the demonstrated capacity toimplement FSMA training in the region.