Food Safety and Security Monitoring Project

To complement, develop and improve State, Indian Tribal, and local food safety and security testing programs for equipment, supplies, personnel, training, and facility upgrades to FERN microbiological, chemical, and radiological laboratories to establish additional reliable laboratory sample analysis capacity and analysis of surveillance samples.

These cooperative agreement and grants programs are only available to State, Local and Tribal government Food Emergency Response (FERN) laboratories.

Successful programs will benefit the general population as more rapid and reliable food testing to enhance food safety efforts is developed. The FERN laboratory network will also benefit from better testing methods, equipment and training.

Applications must present a project plan and provide evidence that their facilities, personnel and equipment are appropriate to carry out the plan.

The FERN cooperative agreements are intended to target state, local, and tribal FERN laboratories to provide increased analytical capacity and expertise (including method validation) in the event of food outbreaks or other large-scale food emergency events requiring surge capacity testing of implicated food samples. These funds cannot be used to fund or conduct food inspections for food safety regulatory agencies. They may not be used for new building construction, however remodeling of existing facilities is allowed, provided that remodeling costs do not exceed 25% of the grant.

The length of support will depend on the nature of the project, program relevance and the availability of funds. For those projects with an expected duration of more than 1 year, future recommended support, up to five years will depend on: 1) performance during the preceding year and, 2) the availability of Federal funds.

Applicants should review the individual Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) issued under this CFDA program to see the specific requirement that applies.

The required application forms as referenced in the Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) and required by 45 CFR 72, and as posted in Grants.gov must be used for this program. The FOA may be published in the NIH Guide or Federal Register. All applications submitted for new, competing continuations or competing supplemental grants must complete the required applications forms through Grants.gov at http://www.grants.gov.

Applications may be scored and ranked based on the following criteria: a) Ability of the project to improve scientific knowledge and technical capability including concepts, methods, and technologies that drive this field; b) Suitability of principal investigator, collaborators, and other researchers for this project, including organizational knowledge and training of the Incident Command System; c) Appropriateness of the overall strategy, methodology, and analyses to accomplish the specific aims of the project. Willingness of the organization to participate in FERN programs including but not limited to method development, food defense and food safety assignments, training, and proficiency testing. Expertise in desired techniques and technologies; d) Adequacy of the facilities, support services, quality control and quality assurance procedures and practices for food and environmental sample analysis.

All accepted applications receive a programmatic and objective review . All approved and recommended applications will be scored and compete for available funds on the basis of score, programmatic/scientific merit and program relevance. Geographic distribution will be a consideration in the award selection process.

90-120 days.

The Funding Opportunity Announcement will indicate if "Renewals" are accepted. Procedures are the same as for new applications.