Newswise — When public health experts trace the origins of illness to a food, government officials rush to protect the public by having the item removed from store shelves. Representatives from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) as well as state officials visit or call thousands of retailers to ensure they are complying with the FDA food product recall. FDA reviews the information from these checks to ensure the recall is completed in an effort to prevent additional cases of food-borne illness. The process of conducting these recall audit checks involves significant communication among federal, state, and local public health officials.
To streamline the process, FDA officials are now working on a pilot program to coordinate food recalls on a secure online platform sponsored by the National Center for Food Protection and Defense (NCFPD), a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Center of Excellence. This online platform, called FoodSHIELD, provides a place for federal, state, and local public health officials, state laboratory personnel, and regulatory authorities to collaborate on drafting preparedness and response plans. During food system emergencies, this specifically includes the ability to quickly network and communicate with each other.
In May 2009, FDA officials conducted a simulation of a recall audit check, using FoodSHIELD to coordinate the effort, according to Jacqueline Little, Ph.D., team leader in the Office of Enforcement within the FDA Office of Regulatory Affairs. Using data from a recent recall, officials from seven states uploaded audit check results into FoodSHIELD. FDA officials in field offices reviewed the information and either approved it or contacted the states to request additional information. In all, the pilot successfully demonstrated the use of FoodSHIELD as a data sharing and communications tool for recalls, and its potential use in the future appears promising. “[The pilot] is a great example of our efforts to collaborate across agencies and on all levels of food protection,” according to Heather Brown, program analyst with the Office of Resource Management in the FDA Office of Regulatory Affairs.
While FDA uses FoodSHIELD for coordination during recalls, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS), which inspects meat, poultry, and processed egg products, uses the online platform’s working group feature to provide valuable information to state officials to help them prepare for emergency situations. In a new effort, FSIS Food Defense Assessment staff is launching a workgroup for sharing vulnerability assessments of its regulated commodities with the states for official use. State officials intend to use the documents to support their own food defense activities and improve their communication with industry. FoodSHIELD provides an ideal platform for this activity because it allows for a vetting process, access controls on documents, and record keeping.
Several federal agencies supported FoodSHIELD’s creation. The Association of Food and Drug Officials co-sponsored FoodSHIELD with the DHS-funded NCFPD. DHS awarded a grant in February 2010 to continuing funding the Center of Excellence through 2015, with the University of Minnesota continuing as the lead. USDA, including FSIS, funded FoodSHIELD’s development with a four-year National Integrated Food Safety Initiative grant. The NCFPD will support the platform’s ongoing operations beginning in fiscal year 2010 using funding from DHS, FDA, and USDA. The Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) – a group of federal, state, and local food testing laboratories – also provided funding for the creation of its own portal within FoodSHIELD. FERN, which is co-managed by FSIS and FDA, integrates the nation’s food-testing laboratories into a network that is able to respond to emergencies involving biological, chemical, or radiological contamination of food. Members of the Federal Interagency FoodSHIELD Workgroup, which includes FDA, FSIS, and the DHS Office of Health Affairs (OHA), are developing a charter and business plan for the continued use and funding by federal agencies for the FoodSHIELD platform. Federal, state, and local officials can use FoodSHIELD’s communication capabilities to quickly mobilize in an emergency, according to Travis Goodman, food defense coordinator for the Indiana State Department of Health. Before NCFPD launched FoodSHIELD four years ago, public health officials had to find and collect the contact information needed for urgent communications. Now officials can contact representatives from FDA, DHS, USDA, and relevant state agencies through the FoodSHIELD interface. The platform gives access to about 4,000 contacts, enabling widespread recalls or other actions to be broadcast widely and therefore undertaken quickly. “If you manage to save [response] time, you may just save lives,” Goodman said. FoodSHIELD’s communications environment allows public health and food regulatory officials to share real-time information during an emergency, Brown explained. FoodSHIELD can create working groups for specific threats or set up a Webinar to deal with an emerging threat in minutes, said Shaun Kennedy, director of the NCFPD and a professor at the University of Minnesota. “When there are emerging food-borne illness outbreaks, you’ll have folks sharing information back and forth to identify the source,” Kennedy said. “[FoodSHIELD] gives them a common portal to go through to share information.”
Another tool being deployed on FoodSHIELD that is useful in a food supply emergency is the Consequence Management System, a visual modeling tool for predicting the potential effects of a particular incident. The system helps public health officials understand how severe a threat to the food supply could be and how rapidly a contaminant could spread. Developed through a public-private partnership between BTSafety and the NCFPD, the Consequence Management System calculates and displays the potential morbidities, mortalities, and economic impact from a contaminant in the food supply, according to Kennedy. Public health officials can also use the tool to experiment with potential responses to the scenario.
“The FoodSHIELD site has uses beyond food supply emergencies. Officials can use FoodSHIELD to find information on issues such as food defense, regulatory programs, public health, laboratory testing, and other related topics,” according to Dr. Patrick McCaskey, executive associate for laboratory services at USDA FSIS. “FoodSHIELD offers members several ways to collaborate online, such as video conferencing as well as online review and editing of documents.”
Public health officials working on preparedness plans to keep the food supply secure can use the platform as a virtual workspace. Officials working on the 2010 DHS Food and Agriculture Sector annual report – an update to the nation’s risk management plan designed to protect food supply infrastructure – have used FoodSHIELD to discuss progress and ideas for food preparedness initiatives, according to Goodman.
Within DHS, the Office of Infrastructure Protection (OIP), OHA, and the Science and Technology Directorate all use FoodSHIELD’s capabilities. OIP obtains food system critical infrastructure information from the states using the platform. The OHA Food, Agriculture, and Veterinary Affairs Defense Division collaborates with states to develop food event capability assessment tools.
Federal, state, and local food regulators, laboratory staff, military personnel, and academics are eligible to join FoodSHIELD, located at www.foodshield.org. Government members must be vetted to obtain access to secure portions of the Website and to participate in FoodSHIELD working groups. FoodSHIELD currently offers more than 200 working groups.
For more information, visit www.foodshield.org.
The latest issue of the R-Tech Newsletter is posted at www.firstresponder.gov/Pages/NewsLetter.aspx. This link also provides access to past issues of the newsletter, as well as the opportunity to subscribe to future issues.
The newsletter is part of the Department of Homeland Security Science and Technology Directorate’s First Responder Technologies (R-Tech) outreach program to federal, tribal, state, and local first responders. R-Tech’s mission is to protect America against terrorism, disasters, and all other hazards by providing first responder solutions for high priority capability gaps due to technology and assisting first responders through rapid prototyping, technical assistance and information sharing. For more information, please visit R-Tech’s Website, www.FirstResponder.gov.
RSS