FDA’s Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition Grant: Strengthening Local Health Departments in Retail Food Safety Regulation

National organization/associations whose membership includes, but is not necessarily limited to, State, local, territorial, and/or tribal retail food safety regulators.

Competition is limited to these national organizations/associations for the following reasons:

1. National organizations and associations with membership that includes, but is not necessarily limited to, State, local, territorial, and/or tribal retail food regulatory jurisdictions will have the relationships and communication systems to effectively promote and support the mentorship program and research needed under this cooperative agreement. Therefore, a strong communications platform to both educate potential applicants and receive feedback will be critical to the success of this project.

2. These national organizations and associations have a vested interest in retail food safety and share FDA’s visions to advance the FDA’s Food Code and Retail Program Standards and improve public health at the retail level. They are also knowledgeable of the Retail Program Standards and the requirements to achieve conformance. These national organizations can best collaborate with FDA on the mentorship program and conduct needed research projects to increase FDA’s knowledge and understanding on other retail food safety-related areas.

3. These national organizations and associations can provide a platform for sharing information about the implementation of the retail food safety projects pursued by the mentorship participants and the additional research projects through national and regional meetings, web site, listervs, and other communications to retail food regulatory programs. Most national associations/organizations also have committees that may further advance the projects conducted under this cooperative agreement.

CFSAN’s Office of Food Safety (OFS) shall work cooperatively with a national organization/association to increase partnerships and collaboration with our regulatory partners at local health departments, as well as state health and agriculture departments that represent city and county health departments. We endeavor to identify best practices and innovative approaches used to implement the FDA Food Code and Voluntary National Retail Food Regulatory Program Standards (Retail Program Standards) and continue to examine the impact they have on the reduction of foodborne illness risk factors. The organization must have:

1. The expertise needed to conduct research;

2. The expertise to manage complex projects;

3. The expertise to provide expert advice and recommendations to FDA that can be shared and used by multiple local health departments, as well as state health and agriculture departments, to help reduce the risk of foodborne illness in retail and food service settings; and

4. The expertise to identify best practices and highlight them through different media formats (e.g., recorded webinars, podcasts, vodcasts, infographics) such that retail food regulatory programs can learn from this information and apply it in their jurisdiction.

5. The expertise to manage a peer mentorship program for retail food regulatory programs.

6. The expertise to answer questions from retail food regulatory programs about the relationship between the Retail Program Standards and Public Health Accreditation

This cooperative agreement will address information gaps experienced by FDA, enhance enrollment and implementation of the Retail Program Standards, enhance adoption and implementation of the Food Code and enhance the effectiveness / ability of retail food regulatory programs. Possible areas for research and collaboration with FDA including the following objectives and activities:

Objective 1: Collaborate with an organization to enhance and expand an existing peer mentoring program that pairs local health department officials who have experience successfully implementing the Retail Program Standards with those who have experienced difficulty implementing the standards or are just beginning to implement the Retail Program Standards. This Cooperative Agreement will also enable FDA to explore and implement other models of mentorship that may assist enrolled jurisdictions achieve conformance with the Retail Program Standards, such as mentorship for state health and state agriculture retail food regulatory programs, and mentorship between state and local retail food regulatory programs. Findings from the mentorship program can also be used to identify opportunities to provide or facilitate additional training opportunities and share best practices for the Retail Program Standards.

Objective 2: Conduct research on how regulatory authority is exercised at the local level (e.g., identify regulatory programs that exercise regulatory authority directly and / or via delegation or contractual agreements.)

Objective 3: Conduct research on how retail food regulatory programs categorize / inspect establishments by risk (e.g., identify different approaches that retail food regulatory programs are using to categorize establishments, learn more about inspection frequency employed in local health departments, and share best practices).

Objective 4: Conduct research to learn more about how the Retail Program Standards are used as a tool for interacting with and fostering continuous improvement among local health departments and state agencies. From this research, identify and share best practices.

Objective 5: Conduct research to learn more about the roles local health departments are playing on regulatory policy issues such as menu labeling regulations, food defense, food donations, food banks, cottage foods and how food safety interfaces with these issues. From this research, identify best practices to share with local health departments.

The cooperative agreement will provide resources to the organization needed to manage and support the mentorship program, conduct additional research projects among local and state health departments, to participate in meetings with the local health departments that participate in this project, analyze data and findings, and produce reports on findings and recommendations from research projects, including disseminating and making findings and recommendations available to local health departments, and convene, at a minimum, bi-weekly calls with the FDA project officer to ensure regular communication and elicit input and feedback on the work conducted under the cooperative agreement.

CFSAN regulates $417 billion worth of domestic food, $49 billion worth of imported foods, and over $60 billion worth of cosmetics sold across state lines. This regulation takes place at any point from the products’ point of U.S. entry or processing to their point of sale. There are over 377,000 registered food facilities (including approximately 154,000 domestic facilities and 223,000 foreign facilities) that manufacture, process, pack, or hold food consumed by humans or animals in the United States and several thousand cosmetic firms. However, these figures do not include restaurants, institutional food service establishments, or supermarkets, grocery stores, and other food outlets over which FDA has jurisdiction but which are traditionally primarily regulated by almost 3,000 state, local, and tribal agencies. FDA strives to promote the application of science-based food safety principles in retail and food service settings to minimize the incidence of foodborne illness. FDA assists regulatory agencies and the industries they regulate by providing a model Food Code, Retail Program Standards, scientifically-based guidance, training, program evaluation, and technical assistance. This cooperative agreement will further FDA’s ability to work collaboratively with a national organization to strengthen and promote the role of the agencies responsible for retail food safety regulation.

The CFSAN/OFS/ Retail Food Protection Staff works to promote the sharing of best practices, including those regulatory and industry interventions that are targeted at improving the management of food safety practices in the retail setting. CFSAN/OFS desires to work cooperatively with a national organization to increase partnerships and collaboration with our regulatory partners at local health departments, as well as state health and agricultural departments that represent city and county health departments, to identify and help agencies implement innovative food safety approaches including adoption of the FDA Food Code and Retail Program Standards and continue efforts to promote the impact they have on the reduction of foodborne illness risk factors.