Radiochemical, microbiological and chemical testing for food defense, method development and building capabilities

The Food and Drug Administration awarded Health Research, Inc.'s Wadsworth Center division a $2.23 million cooperative agreement on September 25, 2025, to provide radiochemical, microbiological, and chemical testing for food defense under the FDA's Food Emergency Response Network (FERN). The award funds work through June 30, 2030, performed in New York.

The Wadsworth Center will deliver integrated analytical support across three food defense domains: microbiological testing including isolate sequencing and metadata upload to the GenomeTrakr umbrella project at NCBI; chemistry food defense for organic and inorganic toxic chemicals; and radiological food defense for screening and quantification of alpha, beta, and gamma emitters in food products. The work builds on the Wadsworth Center's existing role as a FERN cooperative agreement laboratory and its standing as New York State's laboratory of last resort for microbiology, biodefense, radiochemistry, nuclear counting, and chemical emergency response, leveraging state-of-the-art mass spectrometry and sequencing infrastructure. This award operates under the Laboratory Flexible Funding Model, the FDA Research program (CFDA 93.103), and complements the Wadsworth Center's concurrent work as a USDA FSIS cooperative agreement laboratory for microbiology and chemistry food defense.

Abstract

(overall): the overarching goal of this proposal is to leverage the wadsworth center's considerable laboratory capabilities and capacity as a world-class public health laboratory and research institute, coupled with its scientific expertise to maintain a first-class integrated program for radiochemical, microbiological and chemical testing for food defense, method development and building capabilities that will serve the needs of the FDA's food emergency response network (fern). Building on its current success as an FDA-fern cooperative agreement laboratory supporting radiochemical, microbiological and chemical food defense activities, and as a USDA food safety inspection service (fsis) cooperative agreement laboratory for microbiology and chemistry food defense, the wadsworth center will continue to provide key leadership, scientific expertise and analytical support to fern under the next cycle of the laboratory flexible funding model (lffm). Wadsworth is the laboratory of last resort that NY state government agencies turn to for help with microbiology, biodefense, radiochemistry and nuclear counting technologies, and chemical testing for emergency response and preparedness based on access to state-of-the-art mass spectrometry expertise. The scope of this proposal includes microbiology food defense; sequencing of isolates in the wadsworth center's core sequencing facility, and the sequence and metadata uploaded to the genometrakr umbrella project at ncbi; chemistry food defense for organic and inorganic toxic chemicals; and radiological food defense for screening and quantification of a, b, and g emitters in food products.