KY DPH-DLS environmental & food surveillance testing - overall project summary: RFA-FD-25-007 3/06/25 KY DPH-DLS environmental & food surveillance testing in order to properly and effectively…

The Food and Drug Administration awarded $388,867 to the Cabinet for Health Services (Kentucky Department of Public Health-Division of Lab Services) on September 20, 2025, under Cooperative Agreement U19FD008591 to conduct environmental and food surveillance testing for consumer protection in Kentucky.

The recipient operates ISO/IEC 17025:2017-accredited laboratory testing for food safety, including chemical analysis of mercury in fish, pesticide residue detection in produce, and microbiological pathogen testing using BAX Q7 and ABI 7500 PCR analysis for Salmonella, Listeria, E. coli O157:H7, Staphylococcus aureus, Campylobacter, Shigella, and other foodborne pathogens. The Division maintains a collaborative agreement with the University of Kentucky College of Agriculture to support whole-genome sequencing throughput using the Illumina MiSeq sequencing platform. The Division also holds State Regulatory Program agreements with FDA and maintains sampling protocols aligned with the Locally Focused Food Monitoring sampling guide.

Work is performed in Kentucky with a period of performance through June 30, 2030. The award falls under CFDA 93.103, Food and Drug Administration Research, which supports research, demonstration, education, and information dissemination activities across health and scientific domains.

KY DPH-DLS environmental & food surveillance testing - overall project summary: RFA-FD-25-007 3/06/25 KY DPH-DLS environmental & food surveillance testing in order to properly and effectively conduct food surveillance and provide consumer protection in our state, regulating entities and laboratories need not just, the capability, but an enhanced ability to ensure that the manufacturing and production standards are being instituted and maintained to the highest degree of safety and quality. ISO/IEC 17025 standards have become vital to many regulating bodies when IT comes to assessing the reliability and level of food safety practices. Kentucky division of lab services (DLS) is fully accredited, in both environmental microbiology and environmental chemistry food testing, with ISO17025:2017 and maintain a quality management system compliant with the standard. Our KY srps have an agreement with the FDA and maintain the mfrps standard 10 with our support and SRP, maintains a sampling agreement mirroring the prescribed lffm sampling guide. Our current scopes include chemical testing for mercury in fish using the milestone DMA-80 and EPA method 7473, also pesticide residue detection and quantification in produce utilizing both aoac and fern methods. The scope of microbiological testing for pathogens is carried out primarily using the FDA BAM but also fern and aoac methods. BAX Q7 and ABI 7500 PCR analysis includes salmonella, listeria, e. Coli O157:H7 and other stecs but also organisms associated with food quality such as quantification of aerobic, coliform and e. Coli bacteria. We are also capable of determining additional information concerning food quality by testing for food pathogens such as, campylobacter, shigella, c. Perfringens, s. Aureus and SE toxin, b. Cereus, as well as c. Sakazakii. We use the illumina miseq sequencing platform and have established a collaborative agreement with the university of kentucky college of agriculture to support the WGS throughput track by sequencing agricultural isolates for enteric pathogens. We also have an MOU in place to provide testing of agricultural waters and farm samples when "for cause" samples are collected. We perform testing on behalf of the KY state manufactured food regulatory program (mfrps) in the department for public health / food safety branch, which has a current food-safety inspection contract with the FDA and is enrolled in the mfrps. As a member of fern, we have the ability and facility to support testing for select agents using fern methods. Both, the microbiology and chemical analysts are in the federal select agent program (SAP) and have access to BSL2 and BSL3 facilities onsite. The KY DLS is active in the genome trakr network meetings, calls, and trainings. We currently have 2 analysts that have gone through the galaxy trakr training and have been able to use IT to its capacity. We are now fully capable of submitting metadata and sequences to ncbi directly, using the ncbi submission portal using this format, BIO-sample and SRR. DLS has the capability to assess sequence quality using the microrunqc tool in the galaxytrakr portal prior to submission. In summary, none of this is sustainable without funding and we are more than ready to assist other states and the FDA if the need arises. 1