Development and Maintenance of Human and Animal Food Rapid Response Teams

The purpose of this Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) is to develop and maintain Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) to facilitate long-term improvements and innovation within the national integrated food safety system by unifying and coordinating federal, state, and local human and animal food (HAF) emergency response efforts including:

1) Strengthening the link among epidemiology, lab, and environmental health/regulatory components and supporting foodborne illness detection, investigation, control, and prevention efforts;

2) Improving States' regulatory and surveillance HAF protection and prevention programs through the development and continued use of Incident Command System (ICS)/National Incident Management System (NIMS) principles and a Unified Command structure to conduct integrated responses to all-hazards HAF emergencies, rapidly identifying and removing tainted food from commerce, and conducting root cause investigations to inform future prevention efforts;

3) Addressing supporting components, such as training, data sharing, data analysis, communications, continuous process improvement, and development of best practices and other resources to support national response capacity/capability development; and

4) Identifying and implementing innovative approaches in alignment with presidential initiatives to Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) and Make Our Children Healthy Again (MOCHA) with the aim of reducing long term implications of foodborne illness through prevention, detection, and response efforts.

See Full Announcement for Details.