Advancing Retail Food Safety through a Collaborative Association Approach - Retail food safety in the United States is carried out through more than 3,000 state, local, tribal, and territorial (SLTT) regulatory agencies. While this system allows agencies to respond to local needs, it also creates challenges in translating advances in food safety science into consistent day-to-day practice across jurisdictions. Strengthening the Integrated Food Safety System (IFSS) requires coordinated national action, practical implementation support, and sustained collaboration among organizations that serve regulatory, industry, academic, and public health partners. Building on two prior FDA-funded project cycles, the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA), together with our partners in the Retail Food Safety Regulatory Association Collaborative (Collaborative), will support six interconnected objectives to strengthen regulatory program capacity, reduce foodborne illness risk factors, and use performance metrics and continuous-improvement processes to refine tools, resources, outreach, and implementation strategies across the Collaborative. Objective 1: We will continue to lead the Food Code Adoption Strategy Workgroup as the primary forum for coordinating national efforts to advance adoption of the most current FDA Food Code. This work will include maintaining and expanding the national Food Code adoption strategy, updating the Food Code Adoption Dashboard and Toolkit, providing targeted support to SLTT agencies as they work toward Food Code adoption, and planned analyses examining Food Code adoption and outbreak data. Objective 2: We will support AFDO’s efforts to increase the use of risk-based inspection and intervention strategies by participating in the Objective 2 Workgroup, identifying implementation barriers and resource needs, and helping disseminate practical tools and resources. Objective 3: We will support ASTHO in increasing participation and advancement within the Retail Program Standards by contributing implementation insights, reviewing available data and trends, and helping identify outreach, peer-learning, and support strategies. Objective 4: We will support NACCHO’s efforts to improve foodborne illness outbreak investigation methods by helping identify existing tools, resource gaps, training needs, and opportunities to disseminate lessons learned from outbreak investigations and environmental assessments. Objective 5: We will support CFP in advancing Food Safety Management Systems (FSMS) and Active Managerial Control (AMC) by contributing regulatory and industry perspectives, identifying resource gaps, and helping promote practical tools for both regulatory and industry. Objective 6: We will continue to lead the Communications Working Group as the primary forum for coordinating Collaborative communications, resource dissemination, and stakeholder engagement. This work will include updating and implementing the External Communications Strategy, maintaining and improving Collaborative communication tools and website resources, supporting resource organization and promotion across all six objectives, and collaborating with FDA and partners to plan and host the annual virtual FDA Retail Food Seminar. Together, these six objectives support FDA priorities by strengthening the systems, tools, partnerships, and communication pathways needed to connect national food safety science with local implementation. By advancing Food Code adoption, risk-based approaches, Retail Program Standards participation, outbreak investigation capacity, FSMS and AMC, and coordinated information sharing, the project will help build stronger, more consistent, and prevention-focused retail food regulatory programs. Ultimately, this work will assist FDA in its goal of reducing foodborne illness and related deaths nationwide.
