Increasing the Capability and Capacity of Microbiological and Chemical Testing to Support an Integrated Food Defense and Food Safety System Microbiology Discipline, Animal Food Product Testing Analytical Track Project Summary / Abstract The Ohio Department of Agriculture (ODA) Consumer Protection Laboratory (CPL) propose to strengthen federal efforts to protect the national food supply and enhance the state's regulatory effectiveness in food safety as part of the Food Safety Modernization Act and the Food Emergency Response Network. The agency shall participate in state-initiated product testing of animal foods products with the expectation of testing at minimum 500 samples for microbiological adulterants during each year of the five-year project period. ODA-CPL seeks to address three issues during the 5-yr grant period. First, ODA-CPL shall purchase new instrumentation that will help us more efficiently and accurately detect foodborne pathogens. We shall also purchase a specialized hood to help with sample preparation tasks. Second, we shall look to add on personnel to help us effectively conduct the human food surveillance project. By adding staff at the technician level, we can allow our more experienced scientists to conduct the testing and devote time to method development opportunities. Lastly, with support from the grant we will look to continually add more methods to our ISO 17025 scope of accreditation. We look forward to moving towards adding more of the emerging illness causing agents to our capability in the areas of toxicology, parasitology and eventually virology. By enhancing our scope, we feel we will be better able to serve our clients and federal partners.