Minnesota Department of Agriculture; Food and Feed Safety Divisions Response to Application Rfa-fd-17-007; Advancing Conformance With The Vnrfrps

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), Office of Regulatory Affairs (ORA), Office ofPartnership (OP), is announcing the availability of cooperative agreements to be awarded underLimited Competition to State, local, territorial, or tribal retail food regulatory programs. Theintended outcome of this FOA is to advance efforts for a nationally integrated food safetysystem through the conformance with and advancement of the Voluntary National Retail FoodRegulatory Program Standards (VNRFRPS or Retail Program Standards). The VNRFRPS applyto the operation and management of a retail food regulatory program that is focused on the reduction of risk factors known to contribute to foodborne illness and the promotion of industryaction to achieve active managerial control of these risk factors.The Minnesota Department of Agriculture (MDA) Food and Feed Safety Division (FFSD)licenses and inspects approximately 8,900 food facilities including 7,000 retail foodestablishments in Minnesota and delegates and oversees retail food inspection authority toseven local health agencies in the state. The seven local health agencies license and inspectapproximately 2,200 retail facilities under a delegation agreement with MDA. The FFSD has adedicated Retail Food Program responsible for retail food licensing, compliance, and inspectionactivities. The Retail Food Program has twenty-eight staff members including a programmanager, four food supervisors, and twenty-three field inspectors. Eighteen of the twenty-threefield inspection staff have been hired into the program since November 2015. FFSD has anadditional twenty staff that fully or partially support the Retail Food Program in administrativecapacities.The MDA, as part of this application, will create a comprehensive Strategic Plan that outlinesthe milestones and goals needed to conduct educational sessions on Standards 2,3,4,6 and 8along with assessments for the local health agencies with delegated authority to conduct retailinspections from MDA to promote and support conformance with the standards. Other goals ofthe strategic plan include standardization of field inspection staff as required by Standard 2 andactive participation in the Conference for Food Protection (CFP).