2007 Commissioner's

Special Citation

Joint Institute for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition (JIFSAN) of the University of Maryland, College Park, partnering with FDA's Center for Food Safety and Applied Nutrition was awarded a citation for leadership in fostering effective partnerships in international food safety capacity building programs to improve the safety of foods imported into the U.S. and consumed globally.

Over the past six years CFSAN and JIFSAN have collaborated to develop a self-sustaining and effective system that delivers essential technical assistance to numerous developing countries that are the main sources of imported foods to the United States. As CFSAN and other agencies have identified critical educational needs in the area of food safety, CFSAN and JIFSAN have worked together to create capacity building programs in the areas of Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs), Good Aquacultural Practices (GAqPs), and good Low Acid Canned Food production practices (LACF). JIFSAN has then coordinated the logistics and funding sources for these programs, sending academic and government trainers to train more trainers around the world.

FDA could not do such training on its own; and by leveraging with the University of Maryland through JIFSAN, FDA accomplishes its purpose of fostering safer foods. Moreover, countries get training to improve the safety foods within their own countries and the success of food trade around the globe; and academic scientists gain experience as international educators in food safety.

The very successful GAPs training is designed to improve food safety through better production practices and worker hygiene on the farm and will have been provided 20 times by the end of 2007 to 13 countries (West Indies, Brazil, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, Mexico, Peru, Guatemala, Honduras, Korea, Thailand, El Salvador, China, and Chile). Follow-up studies have shown that the trainers who have been trained by these programs actually go out into their countries to train others at the farm level.

The GAqPs training promises to be even more important as farmed seafood becomes the world's primary source of protein; presently 80% of U.S. seafood is imported. Modeled after the GAPs program, GAqPs was offered by JIFSAN for the first time in November 2006 to Vietnam and will soon be provided to China and Thailand, along with a newly developed teaching manual. This program is supported by JohnsonDiversey Inc.

In 2005-2006 CFSAN delivered the first LACF training and public-private coalition building programs to Peru, Colombia, Ecuador and Chile. JIFSAN is now producing a teaching manual. Future plans include training sessions in Korea and Brazil. This program promises to build manufacturing and regulatory capacity to assure the safety of canned products exported to the United States, shifting the burden of compliance to manufacturers and competent authorities abroad, so that FDA can focus its limited inspectional resources on other high risk commodities.

These efforts constitute a highly effective, proactive tool for building critical capacity in food safety around the world. By focusing this training on countries that are major sources for the U.S. food supply, this cadre of individuals from JIFSAN and CFSAN has worked effectively to protect the health of American consumers.