Rapid Response Team (RRT) Maintenance TrackMichigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD)

MI RRT Project Summary RFA-FD-23-019 The Michigan Department of Agriculture and Rural Development (MDARD) is the lead state agency for both food and feed safety with authority to oversee all the segments of the farm-to- consumer continuum. Michigan’s over-arching goal and vision is to maintain high-quality food and feed regulatory programs while continuing to enhance MDARD’s multi-disciplinary, multi- divisional capacity to respond to food and feed issues within the agency, while improving effective working relationships with the FDA (ORA OHAFO HAFE6), Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Michigan’s 45 local health departments, academia, industry, and other stakeholders. The RRT Maintenance funding opportunity will allow Michigan to continue improving its capabilities to help advance the nationally integrated human and animal food safety system by continuing to strengthen the link between epidemiology, laboratory, environmental health, and regulatory activities; to expand use of Incident Command System principles during responses to all-hazard emergencies; strengthen Michigan’s regulatory inspection and sampling of human and animal food safety programs by rapidly identifying and removing unsafe food or feed from the marketplace and conducting root cause investigations to influence future prevention efforts; and enhance key components that support the RRT, such as training, communication, data sharing, data analysis, continuous process improvement, and development of best practices and other resources to support national response capacity and capability development.