The purpose of this Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) is to support enhanced human and animal food safety by strengthening the capacity, collaboration, and integration of food-safety laboratories and networks, thereby facilitating an effective and coordinated response to future human and animal food safety issues. The current FOA solicits applications from FDA's Veterinary Laboratory Investigation and Response Network laboratories for research related to emerging public food safety issues identified by the Vet-LIRN network office (VPO), for equipment and personnel necessary to expand laboratory capability and capacity, and for other related activities. This cooperative agreement program is intended to build domestic laboratory capacity as put forth in the Food Safety Modernization Act (FSMA), by developing the Vet-LIRN laboratory Network capabilities and capacity to investigate potential animal foodborne illness outbreaks.
In areas for potential research and related activities identified by the VPO program office, the Cooperative agreements will support research and other related activities that will:
1. Support short term surveillance efforts; 2. Support training, quality assurance processes, proficiency evaluations, data sharing to support national capacity/capability development;
3. Support the identification and adoption of emerging technologies and the harmonization of analytical methods used by new equipment platforms;
4. Support method development and validation projects; Matrix expansion projects may be needed with short turn-around times;
5. Support purchase of equipment needed for testing or developing tests for food/feed related samples.
6. Support emergency surge capacity testing during large-scale animal food/feed emergency events requiring testing of implicated diagnostic or animal food samples
7. Support travel to Network meetings to provide information to FDA on network projects.
Application Due Dates:
Jan 15, 2019, April 15, 2019, July 8, 2019
Jan 15, 2020, April 15, 2020, July 13, 2020
Jan 15, 2021, April 15, 2021, July 12, 2021
Jan 14, 2022, April 15, 2022, April 14, 2023
THERE WILL BE NO ADDITIONAL APPLICATION DUE DATES for July 11, 2022, January 16, 2023, and July 10, 2023.
Any applications that have already been received for the July 11, 2022, deadline will be reviewed for the next cycle in 2023.
​PAR-18-604 Expiration Date September 2, 2023
This cooperative agreement program is only available to Vet-LIRN veterinary diagnostic laboratories. All application projects must have national implication or application that can enhance Federal animal food/drug safety and security programs. At the discretion of FDA, successful project formats will be made available to interested Vet-LRN laboratories
FY 19 grant awards made under RFA announcement PA-18-604 may be increased for a total award amount of $2,500,000 for the life of the grant, $500,000 (Total Costs) per year. Application budgets need to reflect the actual needs of the proposed project and should not exceed the following in total costs (direct and indirect):
YR 01: $500,000
YR 02: $500,000
YR 03: $500,000
YR 04: $500,000
YR 05: $500,000