Maintenance and Enhancement of Iso/iec 17025 Accreditation and Whole Genome Sequencing For State Food Testing Laboratories

FDA (U18) GRANT PROPOSAL FOR FOA # RFA-FD-17-010Abstract/SummaryThis grant proposal from the Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) is in response to FundingOpportunity Announcement # RFA-FD-17-010 from the Food and Drug Administration's (FDA)Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA) and Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (CFSAN).Its purpose is to advance our nation's food safety system through enhancement of state foodlaboratory activities. The goal is to create a National Integrated Food Safety System andsupport the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act. This application covers Competition A and B.The Competition A Application addresses the following three areas: 1. Ensure that chemical and microbiological food analyses performed for the state manufactured food regulatory program is conducted according to ISO 17025 standards; 2. Strengthen the collaboration between our laboratory and the state food regulatory program, and; 3. Increase the number of state surveillance samples collected and analyzed annually.The Competition B Application addresses the following three areas: 1. Strengthening the collaboration between the laboratories and State manufactured food regulatory programs; 2. Increasing the number of State samples collected and analyzed for surveillance purposes annually; and 3. Developing a stronger international rapid surveillance system for pathogen trace back through the GenomeTrackr network using a minimum set of metadata fields for all food and environmental isolates.ODA's Laboratories Quality Management Practices (ISO 17025 accredited) provide a high levelof confidence in the reliability of results for all existing programs. The laboratory has a provenability to perform large numbers of chemical and microbiological analyses with excellent turn-around-time for reporting results.The ODA has a history of active participation in national food safety surveillance programs andin the investigation of significant chemical and microbiological emergencies in the US. The ODAlaboratories have an excellent inventory of relevant instruments and equipment that could alsobe utilized during food emergency conditions or in the case of large scale testing needs.