Georgia Department of Agriculture (GDA) Maintenance of Georgia's Human and Animal Food Rapid Response Team (RRT) - Project Summary / Abstract The overall mission of the Georgia Food and Feed Rapid Response Team (GA RRT) is to characterize, investigate, mitigate, and conclude food and feed emergencies as a part of a coordinated federal-state-local integrated food safety system. This project will allow Georgia to build upon past successes and continually improve and sustain the mission and resources of the GA RRT. Since 2012, Georgia has built and strengthened an integrated and multiagency response team not only within the state, but state to state, and engages all appropriate federal, state, local, and tribal stakeholders. These stakeholders include representatives from agriculture, environmental health, epidemiology, laboratories, law enforcement and many more. The GA RRT has been heavily involved in rethinking what an effective response is by innovating, developing, and revising best practice guidelines, standard operating procedures, and memorandums of understanding to build and strengthen the state’s capability and capacity to respond to food and feed emergencies. One of the major goals the GA RRT intends to build upon is the continual use of a coordinated, standardized, and integrated incident management team to respond to food and feed outbreaks and emergencies. The GA RRT intends to expand its resources to both neighboring RRT and non-RRT states. A commitment to mutual reliance is shared and the GA RRT has participated in PFP projects, including a reportable food registry coordination and recall information sharing project. We look forward to working on a project tying together response work utilizing the Incident Command Structure and resource sharing with other RRT states across the nation on FoodSHIELD. Finally, the GA RRT will emphasize data analysis and prevention by conducting environmental assessments and evaluating the data collected to share internally and externally. The GA RRT is confident the goals outlined in this project will advance efforts for a nationally integrated food safety system by supporting the MFRPS and FSTF programs within Georgia.
