FDA awards millions for food and feed safety 02 Oct 2008

These grants will fund major cooperative agreements in 4 major areas. The FDA awarded a combined US$5.2 mln in these 1-year grants to various state and local regulatory agencies.

"These cooperative agreements support and enhance local food protection efforts consistent with our Food Protection Plan," said Michael Chappell, the FDA's acting associate commissioner for regulatory affairs. "The grants represent an important step in the FDA¹s continued efforts to integrate and improve the effectiveness of food safety systems at the federal, state and local levels."

The grants for Food Safety and Security Monitoring provide funding to Food Emergency Response Network chemistry laboratories, laboratories essential to intervention efforts. The grants may be used for facility upgrades, training in current food testing methodologies, and increased laboratory sample analysis capacity, among other activities. In the event of a large-scale chemical terrorism event affecting food or food products, the recipient may be required to perform selected chemical analyses of food samples collected by the FDA or provided by other government agencies through the FDA. The states receiving these grants were Colorado, California and Ohio and were given up to $350,000.

The Innovative Food Defence grants will generate novel solutions and outreach to address gaps in, or provide enhancement to, food defence nationwide -- for example, implementing the food defence programs in food establishments called the Assure, Look, Employees, Reports, and Threat or ALERT, and Employees Follow, Inspect, Recognize, Secure, and Tell or FIRST.

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