New Hampshire Laboratory Flexible Funding Model for Food Safety (LFFM)(U19)

New Hampshire Public Health Laboratories - Project Summary/Abstract
The Food Safety Modernization Act Outlines a new approach to food safety that is risk-informed
and preventive in focus. The New Hampshire Public Health laboratories (NH PHL) recognize that
sample testing can play a greater role in helping the FDA and regulatory partners prevent
contaminated products from reaching consumers. In order to develop prevention-based systems,
the NH PHL will collect data and other information to help identify and address food safety
hazards. Different types of sample analysis will be the focus of this project. Emergency response
and emerging issue testing will be conducted to identify intentional contamination of food with
microbiological pathogens, chemical poisons/toxins and/or harmful radionuclides. This testing will
be conducted in response to outbreaks of foodborne illness to help identify the source of the
contaminant. The NH PHL will expand routine food and environmental surveillance testing to
remove adulterated food from commerce and aide regulatory inspection programs in conducting
investigations. The surveillance testing will include animal food product testing for microbial
pathogens and for chemical contaminants with the goal to remove adulterated animal food from
commerce and aide regulatory inspection programs in conducting investigations. Food and animal
product microbial pathogens will be analyzed using emergent technology such as whole genome
sequencing to understand evolving genomic diversity and enhance public national genomic
databases. The NH PHL will build additional capability and expand national capacity in select
areas of microbiology, chemistry and radiochemistry including developing testing for cyclospora
in food and environmental samples as well as allergen and radionuclide detection in human and
animal food. The NH PHL will produce large quantities of data and sample outputs which will drive
a risk-based and prevention focused food safety system that the State of New Hampshire and the
FDA can utilize for tracking and trending, early identification of emerging issues, and evaluation
for future areas of focus in support of an integrated food safety system.