Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** as a comprehensive legislation with…

Awards issued prior to january 20, 2025, were funded under previous administrations and may not reflect the priorities and policies of the current administration.** as a comprehensive legislation with over 50 rules, compliance with food safety modernization act (fsma) is now an important component of interstate and intrastate food commerce for an array of producers and processors in the united states. Along with the progress and finalization in implementation of various rules of the legislation, the compliance and technical support needs of the producers and processors are gaining momentum. Fsma compliance is particularly critical and disconcerting for smaller, hard-to-reach, and underserved operations as well as emerging/start-up entrepreneurs. Without food safety regulatory knowledge and technical assistance, these operations had to maintain only limited in profit and/or stay in regional markets in order to remain within the fsma exemption box. As such, our proposal is a multidisciplinary community outreach endeavor for: (1) building capacity for enhancing the commerce of value-added commodities in tennessee by process authority consultation and microbiological testing (2) conduct of technical assistant workshops and annual stakeholder meetings. (3) development of fsma value-added commodities toolkit and conduct of modified delphi needs assessment for toolkit's complementary resources. These efforts will be conducted in concordance, communication, and partnership with regional and national fsma partners to avoid/minimize duplication of endeavors. With existing communication channels with regional and national centers, expanding county operation and outreach infrastructure, access to small, niche, and hard-to-reach stakeholders, and extensive relevant programs and recent deliverables, the project team from the public health microbiology program, TSU cooperative extension, and albany state university are uniquely positioned to host this project.