Wonderful Washington

Rapid Response Team
With FDA support, the WSDA established its RRT in 2009. “Since then, we’ve been able to foster lasting relationships between several food and feed safety related partners, including FDA, the WSDOH, Food Safety and Communicable Disease Epidemiology Programs, USDA APHIS and FSIS, local health jurisdictions, and academic institutions throughout the state,” says Randy Treadwell, MPH, RRT program manager. “The benefit of maintaining an RRT is not only to increase a state’s ability to efficiently and effectively respond to food and feed related incidents, but to establish relationships between agencies in order to create a truly integrated food and feed safety system.”

With building response capability also comes the opportunity to expand scientifically and technically, Treadwell says. “Through assistance from the Washington RRT, the WSDA Microbiology Laboratory has been able to add high performance liquid chromatography and whole genome sequencing to their list of capabilities, further expanding the agency’s ability to provide important technical information during food and feed contamination incidents,” he relates.

According to Treadwell, the Feed/ RRP engages feed industry partners through its Feed Advisory Committee, which assists the WSDA in collecting industry perspectives on upcoming legislative/rule making efforts, or improvements to the feed regulatory structure.

“The Feed/RRP enrolled in the AFRPS cooperative agreement in late 2015,” Treadwell notes.

According to Treadwell, in January of 2011, the FDA and the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), appointed a national working group to draft a document called Animal Feed Regulatory Standards (feed standards).

“The feed standards establish a uniform foundation for the design and management of state programs responsible for the regulation of animal feed,” Treadwell explains. “Through implementing the feed standards, a state program is expected to be better able to achieve and maintain programmatic improvements that help ensure the safety and integrity of the U.S. animal feed supply.”

As the feed standards are designed to help ensure a uniform and consistent approach to feed regulation among jurisdictions, the goal of the standards, which were finalized and published in 2014, is to leverage resources and share common successes to build systems within state regulatory feed programs, Treadwell elaborates. “When standards are implemented by states’ feed programs, agencies can better rely on one another’s data and findings,” he relates.

“The Feed/RRP has since conformed with three of the 11 standards thus far, including regulatory foundation, feed-related illness or death/emergency response, and outreach activities,” Treadwell says. “The program continues to work with our FDA and state partners to better standardize feed regulatory programs on a national level.” Thus far, 21 states have received federal funding for implementation of the standards during the next four years.

Treadwell points out that the Feed/RRP has recently revised a routine feed sampling plan which augments the sampling conducted under FDA contract in order to create a more complete profile of animal food types, distribution, and safety within Washington State. “Any positive pathogen results in feed are coordinated through the Washington RRT, which per procedure, keeps all partner programs and agencies informed on response activities and next steps,” he says.

All activities related to the Feed/RRP are listed in the standards, and their implementation improves tracking of each activity, adds Ali Kashani, PhD, Feed/RRP’s senior feed advisor. “Examples include documentation of staff training, evaluation of resources, cooperation with laboratories, responding to complaints and emergencies, and providing outreach and education, to mention a few,” he says. “Documentation of all activities is much more extensive under each standard when they are fully implemented.”

In addition to the Feed/RRP staff working closely in partnership with FDA, as well as other state and federal agencies, they maintain an active presence on the boards of directors for both the Association of Food and Drug Officials (AFDO) (Treadwell serves as the regional affiliate representative to the Western States) and the AAFCO. (Dr. Kashani serves as the AAFCO secretary treasurer and liaison to AFDO.) Several WSDA program staff members serve on workgroups and committees of these associations throughout the year.