50 States, One Goal: Working Together to Keep Our Food Safe ...!!!

By: Melinda K. Plaisier and Michael R. Taylor

Melinda K. Plaisier

The August 12 conference in St. Louis of the Partnership for Food Protection (PFP) was truly a meeting of the minds. This 50-state workshop drew food and feed safety experts from federal, state, local, tribal and territorial government agencies. These organizations make up the PFP. Our shared goal? To continue working towards a food safety system in our country that makes our food as safe as possible.

Partnerships have become increasingly important in our efforts. Simply put, we can’t do it alone. The scope of the public health mission is too vast. We need to take advantage of the unique contributions state and local partners can make through their food safety commitment, knowledge of local conditions and practices, and local presence to deliver training, technical assistance and compliance oversight. Together, we can ensure an effective public health safety net.

Michael R. Taylor

But building the kind of partnership we envision is an extraordinarily complex task. There are 3,000 food safety agencies in this country at the federal, state and local level. The challenge we face is this: How do we make PFP a reality that will work for decades to come? Working together to corral the complexities of our global food supply is critically important to our success and represents a significant shift in the way we work.

And creating that new reality is what our recent meeting was all about.

FDA itself is in a time of transition through Commissioner Hamburg’s initiative of program alignment. The agency is working to better align internal operations, increasing specialization among inspectors, compliance officers, laboratory staff and others to give them increased technical knowledge in a specific commodity area, and partnering them with subject matter experts in FDA’s centers. Ultimately, this will streamline decision-making and provide real-time technical and policy support for frontline staff.

This effort will better position FDA to meet the challenges we face, including the continued evolution of science and technology, the reality of globalization, and implementing the rules we are working to finalize that will help make the FDA Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) a reality—each rule,  in its own way, transformative.

Speaking with one voice as an agency and acting in unison across internal boundaries will enable FDA to better support our state partners as we all work to use innovative tools, training and approaches.

Our collaborations with the Association of Food and Drug Officials, the National Association of State Departments of Agriculture, the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, the National Association of County and City Health Officials, the National Environmental Health Association, and the Association of Public Health Laboratories—just to name a few—are equally valuable in this cause.

We are well on our way toward making our partnership through PFP a foundation of the modern infrastructure we are building to protect public health. Our partners are engaged, and FDA is all in. And now we are truly beginning to see some of the fruits of our labor. Until we meet again, our work continues.

Melinda K. Plaisier is FDA’s Associate Commissioner for Regulatory Affairs.

Michael R. Taylor is FDA’s Deputy Commissioner for Foods and Veterinary Medicine.

- See more at: http://blogs.fda.gov/fdavoice/index.php/2014/08/50-states-one-goal-working-together-to-keep-our-food-safe/?source=govdelivery&utm_medium=email&utm_source=govdelivery#sthash.pqRXgDSD.dpuf