Increasing the Capability and Capacity of Microbiological and Chemical Testing to Support an Integrated Food Defense and Food Safety System Special Projects Discipline, Sample Collection 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 surveillance collection of 1000 human and 1000 animal food products and testing for chemical and microbiological analytes. ODA-CPL seeks to address two issues during the 5-yr grant period. First, ODA-CPL shall provide proper training to laboratory personnel that will be responsible for sample collection, chain of custody records and documenting sample descriptions. This is being performed to ensure that any results generated by the laboratory can be deemed defensible by the FDA. Second, we shall explore the use of new technologies to make the sample collection process more efficient. Lastly, with support from the grant we agree to support the FDA by maintaining readiness through active participation through FERN.