RRT Best Practices Manual

Summary

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Rapid Response Teams (RRTs) Program is an FDA initiative that partners with state programs to build food safety infrastructure and a concept of integrated rapid response for all-hazards human and animal food emergencies.

Since 2008, FDA has worked with nine pilot RRTs through cooperative agreements to explore and establish innovative models of effective response. This involves engaging a range of key concepts such as national food program standards, the establishment of an Integrated Food Safety System (IFSS), the National Response Framework, and the Council to Improve Foodborne Outbreak Response (CIFOR) Guidelines. Nine additional RRTs were added to the program in August, 2012, and their work and experiences are also reflected in this Manual.

The RRT Best Practices Manual (the “RRT Manual”) documents the best practices that the RRT states and their partner FDA Human and Animal Food Division and District Offices have identified over the course of the project. Each chapter in this document was developed by a working group comprised of multiple RRTs and was reviewed by a broad range of food safety partners.

Each chapter describes best practices for a key response capability, providing both broad concepts and specific details so that other groups can easily customize the chapter to address unique capability development needs.

This document is expected to change over time to reflect further development of RRT models and other relevant policies and programs in food emergency response.

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