SUMMARY: MICROBIOLOGY ANALYTICAL TRACK 2 (HUMAN FOOD TESTING) Serious foodborne illness resulting from microbiological contamination of food is a notable and largely preventable public health problem. The overarching aim of this proposal is to contribute a comprehensive and integrated food protection laboratory hub to the national Food Emergency Response Network (FERN) that is capable of analyzing food across many diverse threat priorities. A cornerstone of this plan is human food testing for microbiological contamination. The Laboratory was awarded two successful FERN cooperative agreements that were used both to maintain the 7th continuous year of ISO/IEC 17025:2017-accreditation for our food testing environmental laboratory, as well as to strengthen collaboration with our in-house Sequencing Core to sequence whole genomes from contaminated food samples. This proposal now seeks to maintain this momentum by testing high sample numbers of diverse human foods. This planned strategy also leverages a strong and close collaboration with our in-house Sequencing Core. The proposal is focused specifically on the commodity/hazard pairs that the FDA has set as the national priority in PAR-20-105. Since the MDH Laboratories Administration is a human food regulatory laboratory and a primary servicing laboratory for the Manufactured Food Product Regulatory Standard, 15% or more of analyzed samples will be collected by trained Maryland Office of Food Protection collectors through this track.