Progress of Strategies Developed and Implemented to Maintain a Human and Animal Food Rapid Response Team

The Virginia Rapid Response Team (VA RRT)
Background:
In 2009, the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services was awarded a grant by the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA) to develop strategies to improve food and feed rapid response capabilities
within the Commonwealth of Virginia. The Virginia Rapid Response Team was formed to include
representation from the major food safety agencies operating within the Commonwealth of Virginia as a
multidiscipline team for response to food and animal feed emergencies.
Federal funding also provided many opportunities for continual training for VA RRT core team members
and state response partners. RRT core team members attend FDA HAF2E district meetings, the national
Rapid Response Team meetings and National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) regional
meetings. The VA RRT was able to provide three training events during the previous funding period, to
introduce and exercise the state Food Emergency Response Plan (VA FERP) to state and local emergency
response agencies.
During the previous five-year funding period, the Virginia Rapid Response Team activated to coordinate
multi-agency responses to thirty-nine foodborne outbreaks and adverse event reports and seven emergency
weather events.
Methods:
The VA RRT was activated for these multi-agency outbreaks to facilitate communication between all
partners VDH, FDA Baltimore District Office, Human and Animal Foods 2 East (FDA HAF2E), VDACS,
DCLS and USDA during the outbreak response using a using a modified Incident Command Structure with
the FDA HAF2E Emergency Response Coordinator (ERC). The responses required coordination and
communication with several agency partners and included joint facility inspections, environmental,
ingredient and product sampling. Tests to detect cases matching into the outbreaks and samples collected
by the VA RRT were completed by the state health laboratory, Division of Consolidated Laboratories
(DCLS).
Results:
The development and implementation of the Virginia Rapid Response Team (VA RRT) has greatly
increased cooperation and coordination between the state central offices and local health departments, the
Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services (VDACS) Food, Dairy and Produce Safety
Programs, the VDACS Agriculture Commodities Program, the state health laboratory (DCLS), USDA, the
Virginia Department of Emergency Management, FDA HAF2E and the FDA CORE TEAM. Funding
provided in the RRT cooperative agreement provides team training and collaboration between these groups
to decrease foodborne outbreak investigation response time, increasing the probably of detecting the root
cause of the outbreak and collecting valuable information for outbreak prevention. The VA RRT
collaborated with Virginia Department of Emergency Management to provide two statewide training
seminars to introduce the VA FERP. An intentional contamination tabletop exercise written by the VA
RRT core team and VDEM to implement and test the VA FERP with new agency partners was completed
during the recent funding period.

Grant Number: 5U2FFD008050-03
NIH Institute/Center: FDA
Principal Investigator: Erik Bungo