Retail Food Safety Regulatory Association Collaboration

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AFDO Application for RFA-FD-22-008 - Retail Food Safety Regulatory Association Collaboration PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT The origin of this cooperative agreement announcement is from the development of the Retail Food Safety Association Collaborative (Collaborative). The Collaborative was formed in 2019 after a series of discussions among the retail food regulatory associations Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO), Conference for Food Protection (CFP), National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO), National Environmental Health Association (NEHA), FDA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) about the need to have a collaborative approach toward retail food safety to fully leverage each organization working in this space to maximize the effectiveness. Over the last two years, the Collaborative began many foundational activities that were designed to assist retail food regulatory programs and industry in a number of areas: reducing foodborne illness by implementing effective intervention strategies designed to reduce the occurrence of foodborne illness risk factors; implementing and achieving full conformance with the VNRFRPS; promoting use of risk-based inspection methods to effectively identify the occurrence of foodborne illness risk factors, conduct root cause analysis, assess gaps in industry active managerial control (AMC), and promote regulatory compliance; promoting adoption of the most recent version of the FDA Food Code; effectively responding to foodborne illness outbreaks; and responding to emerging food safety trends. The program is also intended to encourage the research, development, and implementation of industry food safety management systems and the prerequisite food safety culture necessary to achieve AMC of foodborne illness risk factors. Under this cooperative agreement, Collaborative members intend to build on these foundational activities through continued sharing of individual accomplishments. Each member has identified activities that individually, and collaboratively we will continue to gain better understanding of the retail food safety state regulatory program environment, reduce the occurrence of retail foodborne illness risk factors, and improve communications and availability of resources for state, local, territorial, and tribal food safety programs. AFDO’s major proposed projects under this cooperative agreement include:  Gaining a better understanding of the retail food safety state regulatory program environment through continuing surveys and interviews in targeted areas.  Reducing the occurrence of retail foodborne illness risk factors by: o Identification of foodborne illness interventions used at the state level, categorizing, and evaluating the interventions for effectiveness o Addressing identified barriers to adoption of recent version of the Food Code o Promote and assess implementation of risk-based inspections o Develop and promote strategies to improve active managerial control and food safety culture in retail foods through owner, operator, and manager training o Collating multi-state inspectional data and analyzing for trends among brands and between states; and o Improve response to retail foodborne illness outbreaks including Illness mitigation through better coordination of tools, environmental sampling training, and promotion of the National Environmental Assessment System (NEARS).  Improve communications and availability of resources for state, local, territorial, and tribal food safety programs.