U.S – The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has partnered with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to bolster food safety in retail and foodservice establishments.
This Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) was developed to help increase the consistency and capacity of retail food protection programs across the country, promote a general culture of food safety and facilitate continued communication between the FDA and CDC to assist state, tribal, local, territorial (SLTL) and industry partners.
The three primary goals of the MOU include to increase uniformity, consistency and capacity of STLT retail food protection programs, promote industry’s active managerial control (AMC) of foodborne illness risk factors and promote a culture of food safety and maintain a strong FDA National Retail Food Team (NRFT) and CDC National Center for Environmental Health (NCEH) workforce to assist STLT partners.
The agencies are seeking to improve STLT’s effectiveness in conducting risk-based inspections and foodborne illness investigations, promote a culture of food safety and food safety management systems within retail and foodservice establishments, and improve research in support of foodborne illness risk factor reduction.
To accomplish these objectives, the FDA and CDC are both tasked with establishing metrics to measure the success of collaborations as well as establishing direct and consistent relationships at multiple organizational levels, sharing best practices, and identifying opportunities for leveraging the resources of both agencies to more efficiently and effectively support STLT retail regulatory programs as well as both FDA and CDC retail food protection initiatives.
The FDA adds that it has previously collaborated with the CDC to help control the risk factors for foodborne illness outbreaks in retail settings in its announcement of the MOU.
“This MOU will ensure enhanced continued collaboration on this important work,” the agency wrote.
Within the FDA, the National Retail Food Team (NRFT) is responsible for formulating, coordinating, and implementing the Agency’s strategic plan and policy on retail food safety.
The NRFT’s overall goal is to reduce the occurrence of foodborne illness risk factors in retail and foodservice establishments.
Its mission is to provide innovative strategies for advancing retail food safety regulatory programs that can be applied by STLT governments and within the retail food industry to reduce the occurrence of foodborne illness risk factors.
To further this goal, the NRFT implements strategies designed to increase uniformity, consistency, and capacity of STLT retail food protection programs, promote industry’s active managerial control (AMC) of foodborne illness risk factors and a culture of food safety, and maintain a strong NRFT workforce to support STLT programs.
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