Request for Comment on Federal Contract Inspection of Food Facilities, Manufactured Foods Regulatory Program Standards Cooperative Agreement, and Rapid Response Team Cooperative Agreement
The Texas Department of State Health Services has two ongoing cooperative agreements and a contract with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Each cooperative agreement and contract is listed below with the cooperative agreement and contract project period and a short description. A link is provided to the official FDA request for proposal.
DSHS solicits comments on these cooperative agreements and contract. We will accept comments throughout the year.
U.S. FDA Human Food Contract
FY 2019 – FY 2023: September 30, 2018 – September 29, 2023
The funds collected from FDA for conducting the food facility inspections are used to enhance staff resources that results in more facilities being inspected annually. An increased number of inspections helps to minimize the distribution of adulterated and misbranded products. Additionally, the regulated community benefits from the guidance provided by inspectors for minimizing the chance of distributing adulterated or misbranded product that could result in an adverse effect to the business.
The link below leads to the federal request for proposal for the 5-year human food contract starting in FY 2019.
FDA Food Sanitation Inspection Services Solicitation
Manufactured Foods Regulatory Program Standards Cooperative Agreement
August, 2013 – July, 2018
The MFRPS allows for the development of risk-based food safety programs by establishing a uniform basis for measuring and improving the performance of State manufactured food regulatory programs in the United States. By achieving and sustaining conformance with these program standards, food safety programs of Federal and State regulatory agencies can better direct their regulatory activities toward reducing foodborne illness hazards in food plants. Consequently, the safety and security of the United States food supply will improve.
The program standards are comprised of ten standards that establish requirements for the critical elements of a regulatory program designed to protect the public from foodborne illness and injury. These elements include the program’s regulatory foundation, training program, inspection program, inspection audit program, food-related illness outbreak response, compliance and enforcement, industry and community relations, program resources, program assessment, and laboratory support.
Link: PAR-13-164: Conformance with the Manufactured Food Regulatory Program Standards (MFRPS) (U18)
Rapid Response Team Cooperative Agreement
September 2013-August 2016
These cooperative agreements are intended to develop, implement, maintain and sustain multi-jurisdictional Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) that operate using Incident Command System (ICS)/National Incident Management System (NIMS) principles and a Unified Command structure to support integrated all-hazards preparedness, response, mitigation and recovery/prevention efforts for food/feed within the national integrated food safety system.
The goal of these cooperative agreements is to facilitate long-term improvements to the national integrated food safety system by unifying and coordinating federal/state/local food/feed emergency response efforts including:
- Strengthening the link among epidemiology, lab and environmental health components;
- Improving States’ regulatory and surveillance food/feed protection programs (with a focus on manufactured foods) to include foodborne illness/outbreak investigations, removing tainted food from commerce, and root cause investigations; and
- Addressing supporting components, such as training, data sharing, data analysis and communications.
Link: RFA-FD-13-006: Food Protection Rapid Response Team (U18)
Comments
Comments may be submitted to:
Lewis Ressler, Manufactured Foods Operations
Manufactured Foods Operations, MC 1987
Department of State Health Services
P.O. Box 149347
Austin, Texas 78714-9347
Phone: (512) 834-6770
Email: lewis.ressler@dshs.texas.gov