The United States Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (USDA-NIFA) is investing $14 million into dozens of projects aimed at advancing food safety research, outreach, and training.

First, $4.5 million will go to support work under NIFA’s Food Safety and Defense Program, which funds basic and applied research projects aimed at improving food contamination control by developing methods and procedures to identify, detect, enumerate, reduce, and mitigate pathogens, allergens, physical hazards, and heavy metals in foods. The program also funds projects that develop and validate innovative technologies for food processing, manufacturing, packaging, cleaning, and sanitation to reduce the presence of pathogens in food and processing facilities.  

A total of 12 projects will be funded through the Food Safety and Defense Program (FSDP), including one study led by Emory University to improve virus testing for produce. The project aims to develop laboratory tests for viruses that are also able to detect virus viability.

Other topics to be explored by research projects under FSDP include, but are not limited to, technology for the detection of pathogens at low levels without the need for an enrichment step (Virginia Tech), a vaccine for Campylobacter in produce production (University of Minnesota), and pre- and post-harvest methods for detecting and reducing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in edible bivalves (University of Delaware).

Additionally, under its Food Safety Outreach Program (FSOP), NIFA will invest another $9.6 million into 23 research projects. FSOP provides customized food safety education, training, and technical assistance to operators of small to mid-size farms and food processing facilities; veteran, beginning, and underserved farmers and ranchers; and small-scale vegetable and fruit merchant wholesalers.

Among the funded projects is a multistate effort to build a University of Florida-led collaborative infrastructure in the U.S. Southeast to support U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA) compliance training, education, and Extension outreach to the produce industry. The project includes participation from 13 states: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia.

Other works funded under FSOP include, but are not limited to, efforts to educate and support Hawaii’s beginning farmers, small processors, and sprout growers; leveraging augmented reality tools for produce safety education and training; expanding food safety resources for small and mid-sized processors of low-moisture foods; and on-farm FSMA Produce Safety Rule and Good Agricultural Practices (GAPs) training for farm workers and underserved farmers.