Enhancing Human and Animal Food Testing in North Carolina in Support of an Integrated Food Safety System

Research & Related Other Project Information
Project Summary/Abstract
Component: Overall
The Food & Drug Protection Division (FDPD) within the North Carolina Department of Agriculture &
Consumer Services (NCDA&CS) will support a nationally integrated and prevention-focused food and
feed safety system by increasing sample testing activities, making data available to state and federal
partners, and building and deploying new analytical capabilities. The FDPD Laboratory has partnered
with FDPD’s regulatory program offices (the FDPD Food Program and FDPD Feed Program) to identify
commodity-hazard pairs of national and state significance and developed surveillance programs to
better characterize the risks these commodity-hazard pairs pose to public health and consumer
confidence. Because the FDPD Food and Feed Programs have fully implemented the relevant regulatory
program standards (Manufactured Food Regulatory Program Standards and Animal Feed Regulatory
Program Standards) and all proposed laboratory analyses are included in FDPD Laboratory’s scope of ISO
17025 accreditation, FDPD is confident that all data submitted to the US Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) will be accurate, precise, and actionable. In addition to expanding sample testing, FDPD will work
with FDA to develop testing capabilities in order to increase national testing capacity. FDPD proposes
development of whole genome sequencing capabilities in year 1 and participation in method
development and validation activities in later years.