MI RRT Project Summary RFA-FD-23-019
The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) is the lead state
agency for both food and feed safety with authority to oversee all the segments of the farm-to-
consumer continuum. Michigan’s over-arching goal and vision is to maintain high-quality food
and feed regulatory programs while continuing to enhance MDARD’s multi-disciplinary, multi-
divisional capacity to respond to food and feed issues within the agency, while improving
effective working relationships with the FDA (ORA OHAFO HAFE6), Michigan Department of
Health and Human Services, Michigan’s 45 local health departments, academia, industry, and
other stakeholders.
The RRT Maintenance funding opportunity will allow Michigan to continue improving its
capabilities to help advance the nationally integrated human and animal food safety system by
continuing to strengthen the link between epidemiology, laboratory, environmental health, and
regulatory activities; to expand use of Incident Command System principles during responses to
all-hazard emergencies; strengthen Michigan’s regulatory inspection and sampling of human
and animal food safety programs by rapidly identifying and removing unsafe food or feed from
the marketplace and conducting root cause investigations to influence future prevention efforts;
and enhance key components that support the RRT, such as training, communication, data
sharing, data analysis, continuous process improvement, and development of best practices
and other resources to support national response capacity and capability development.