WASHINGTON, Oct. 1 (UPI) -- The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has awarded 17 grants with a combined value of $5.2 million to enhance state and local food and feed safety programs.
The FDA said the grants will fund major cooperative agreements in four major areas: prevention, intervention-monitoring, intervention-defense and rapid response.
The grants include creation of the first Rapid Response Team cooperative agreement to more rapidly react to potential threats to the nation's our food supply.
"The RRTs will respond to all food hazard incidents in the farm-to-table continuum of food production and delivery by using incident command structure response protocols, a formalized crisis management system," the FDA said in a statement. "Each recipient was awarded up to $500,000 to exercise its response team, conduct a program assessment, purchase additional equipment and supplies, fund personnel, train, and share information and data as appropriate."
The funded RRT states were North Carolina, Massachusetts, California, Michigan, Florida and Minnesota.
Additional information on the newly funded safety programs is available at http://www.fda.gov/oc/initiatives/advance/food.html
