FERN Microbiological Cooperative Agreement

<p>SUMMARY: The Pennsylvania Department of Health Bureau of Laboratories (BOL) will maintain a cooperative agreement with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) under the FDA FERN Microbiological Cooperative Agreement Program (Program Announcement: RFA-FD-12-018,reissue of PAR-09-215). The BOL will conduct analyses of food and food-related samples to provide expanded laboratory capacity to the Food Emergency Response Network (FERN).FERN will provide samples, instrumentation, test procedures, training and proficiency testing. The BOL will maintain capacity to test a minimum of 100 samples per week and a minimum of500 samples per year. Testing will be performed for the purposes of surveillance, food emergency outbreak response, and large-scale food emergency event surge capacity.</p>