FREE-B runs through food and animal disease exercises

U.S. Food and Drug Administration has developed “The Food Related Emergency Exercise Boxed” called FREE-B. It is designed with the intention of assisting government regulatory and public health agencies to assess existing food emergency response plans, protocols and procedures that are in place, under development or being revised. It features a compilation of scenarios based on both intentional and unintentional food contamination events.

FDA developed FREE-B in cooperation with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the USDA's Food Safety Inspection Service and Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service.

Of interest to the farm animal community is one of the five featured scenarios in FREE-B that looks at animal disease introduction, such as FMD disease. The other four, rounding out the package is traceback of a contaminated product; traceback and investigation in a cluster of illnesses from a foodservice operation; epidemiologic investigation of human illness and identification of food source contamination; and intentional contamination of raw meat at a processor.

The FMD section is called the “High Plains Harbinger” scenario, which focuses on an animal disease investigation caused by intentional infection of cattle with FMD virus. It highlights the various animal agriculture agencies, their roles and responsibilities. It also outlines those steps for veterinarians and law enforcement agencies during such an animal health emergency.

The exercise spans a five-month period, with the four modules addressing pre-incident, early outbreak, continuing outbreak, late outbreak and aftermath. There’s also a power point presentation and a detailed situation manual with outlined steps for veterinarians, producers, government officials and law enforcement. There is a tabletop exercise, in which participants assess plans, policies and procedures and evaluate how they would realistically apply them in an outbreak. In all, the exercise takes seven hours to complete.

After working through this hypothetical situation, participants will be better prepared to analyze the case and determine what other resources, if any, are required to successfully complete the investigation and possible impact on human food.

The FREE-B materials can be downloaded from FDA here. Veterinarians can also download the High Plains Harbinger exercise by itself. 

Source: U.S.FDA